On This Day in 2017, Rock Lost the Grammy-Winning Voice That Defined Nu-Metal’s Biggest Era
· Vice
July 20, 2017, marked two sad occasions in the rock world. First, it would have been Chris Cornell’s 53rd birthday had he not died by suicide that May. But more shocking still was the news that Chester Bennington of Linkin Park had taken his own life at age 41.
Visit tr-sport.bond for more information.
For a community of family, friends, and fans already reeling from one huge loss, this was unimaginable. The news broke on July 21, the day after Bennington was found dead in his Los Angeles home. Just barely two months earlier, he’d performed a heart-wrenching rendition of “Hallelujah” at Cornell’s memorial service. Taking cues from Jeff Buckley’s cover version, it served as a tribute to Cornell, with whom Bennington was close, but also to Buckley, who was close friends with Cornell.
Bennington poured a lot of his pain into his raw, emotional vocals with Linkin Park. He didn’t hide his struggles with depression, substance abuse, and childhood trauma. After his death, his widow Talinda Bennington said there were signs that he might attempt suicide.
“I am now more educated about those signs, but they were definitely there: the hopelessness, the change of behavior, isolation,” she told CNN. She also admitted that these behaviors weren’t uncommon, but that she often couldn’t relate to her husband’s struggles.
“That was all part of our daily life,” she said. “Sometimes, some signs were there more than others. Sometimes, they weren’t there at all.” Talinda added, “I don’t suffer from depression; I never have. Watching my husband go through it, I had no idea. I could not relate.”
Chester Bennington’s Death Shocked the Music World, But He Was Open About His Trauma
According to Talinda, everything seemed fine in the days before Bennington’s suicide. But she clarified that, looking back, he was not doing well.
“We were on a family vacation, and he decided to go back home to do a television commercial,” she recalled. “This was not a time where we or any of our family suspected this to happen, which is terrifying … We thought everything was OK.”
In later years, Chester Bennington became more open about his struggles, which fueled his powerful performances and songwriting. But in the beginning, Linkin Park’s meteoric rise to success churned up rumors that they were industry plants. Speaking to The Guardian in 2011, Bennington recalled feeling intense anger at the accusations. They often came up in interviews, with journalists implying that what he wrote about “wasn’t real.”
“I’m like, ‘F**k you, you don’t know me,'” he said at the time. “And personally I would want to jump across the table and f***ing kill you. ‘How dare you question what I’m singing about?’ Eventually I thought: ‘OK, you wanna know? This is where I come from!’ and I told a journalist things I’ve never told anybody.”
These things included childhood sexual abuse, physical abuse, drug addiction, and depression. He added, “And my dad—a policeman—rings me up and says: ‘What the f**k do you mean this happened to you when you were a kid? Who did it?’ And I was thinking: ‘What have I done?'”
Linkin Park’s Initial Success Came At a Time of Inner Turmoil for Its Lead Vocalist
Linkin Park’s first two albums, Hybrid Theory and Meteora, were made while Chester Bennington was in the throes of his depression and substance abuse. He kept his harder drug use secret from the rest of the band, who were more into weed and beer. But at that time, the bands they were touring with were into heavier stuff. Bennington got pulled into it, and it added fuel to the fire of his unaddressed trauma.
He eventually revealed the name of his abuser to his policeman father. But it came with the further revelation that his childhood abuser was also a victim, and Bennington chose not to pursue a case.
“I didn’t need revenge. I realized… ” he told The Guardian, trailing off. But co-vocalist Mike Shinoda finished the thought for him. He quietly added to the realization, “That it can end with you.”
Around the time Linkin Park started making their third album, Minutes to Midnight, Bennington went through intense therapy. In 2005, after finalizing his divorce, he married Talinda, who helped him get through therapy. Later, he healed the hostile relationship he had with his first wife and mother of his oldest child.
“I’d become a person that wasn’t me,” he said in 2011. “This is me. I’m a nice, friendly guy that was always stuck behind this monster that was just really a hurt kid.”
When Minutes to Midnight came out in 2007, Bennington’s vocal style had changed. It was no longer the pained roar of suppressed trauma. This drastic but positive shift in his mental health, which influenced many aspects of his private and artistic life, makes the reality of his death that much more shocking.
“I realized I didn’t have that inner beast anymore,” Bennington said, six years before his tragic passing. “I didn’t want to scream.”
The post On This Day in 2017, Rock Lost the Grammy-Winning Voice That Defined Nu-Metal’s Biggest Era appeared first on VICE.