Shannon Leto
Shannon Leto (/lɛtoʊ/; born March 9, 1970) is an American musician best known as the drummer of rock band Thirty Seconds to Mars. He co-founded the group in 1998 in Los Angeles, California, with his younger brother Jared. Their debut album, 30 Seconds to Mars (2002), was released to positive reviews but only to limited success.[1] The band achieved worldwide fame with the release of their second album A Beautiful Lie (2005). Their following releases, This Is War (2009) and Love, Lust, Faith and Dreams (2013), received further critical and commercial success.[2] As of September 2014, the band has sold over 15 million albums worldwide.[3]
Shannon Leto
March 9, 1970
Musician
Jared Leto (brother)
Drums, percussion, keyboards, piano guitar
Leto has worked on several side projects during his career, including a collaboration with Antoine Becks, a recording with the short-lived supergroup The Wondergirls, and performing on occasional dates with Street Drum Corps. His creative contribution to music has received praise from musicians and critics. He is noted for his dynamic drumming style and his energetic live performances.
Early life[edit]
Shannon was born in Bossier City, Louisiana, to Constance (née Metrejon).[4] His mother has Cajun ancestry.[5] (Leto is the surname of his stepfather, Dr. Carl Leto, an ophthalmologist.) His parents divorced when he was a child, and he and his younger brother, Jared, lived with their mother and their maternal grandparents, William Lee Metrejon and Ruby Russell.[4] His biological father remarried and committed suicide when Shannon was ten years old.[6] Leto moved frequently with his family from his native Louisiana around the country.[7] He has two younger half-brothers from his father's second marriage.[4]
Leto's mother joined the hippie movement and encouraged her sons to get involved in the arts.[4] Leto became interested in percussion from the moment he and his brother started playing music together at early age, and his models were artists of many mediums.[8] "I come from a pretty artistic family," he explained, "There were canvases and paint everywhere, instruments, and all sorts of stuff. It just kind of made sense. I started playing on pots and pans at a very early age, so I just kind of flowed into it. It was just a natural progression."[9] He received his first drum kit when he was ten years old and began teaching himself, developing his own style.[4]
Shannon Leto has described his adolescence as a troubled time, in which he used drugs and dropped out of school. He said, "I was in a mess, I felt I didn't belong anywhere", calling himself as an "outsider" who hated conformity and rules, and "took any opportunity to break them." Ultimately, Jared helped him recover from drugs.[6]
Other work[edit]
In 1994, Leto found a minor role on the television series My So-Called Life, in which his brother starred. He later appeared in the films Prefontaine (1997), Sol Goode (2001), and Highway (2002). Leto recorded the songs "Drop That Baby" and "Let's Go All the Way" with the short-lived supergroup The Wondergirls in 1999, which members included Scott Weiland, Mark McGrath, and Ian Astbury, among others.[39] Since 2007, Leto has performed on occasional dates with American percussion band Street Drum Corps.[40] In June 2008, he joined Habitat for Humanity to work with Thirty Seconds to Mars on a home being repaired and renovated through the Greater Los Angeles Area's "A Brush With Kindness" programme.[41] Leto began producing American electronic band CB7 after meeting musician Antoine Becks in 2009.[35] CB7 later supported Thirty Seconds to Mars on the North American leg of their Into the Wild Tour in 2011. The same year, Leto created a side project with Becks and toured worldwide with him until the summer of 2012, when the duo split.[27] In 2014, Leto launched Black Fuel Trading Company, a lifestyle brand primarily focusing on responsibly sourced, direct-trade coffee.[42]