Remembering Chester Bennington One Year Later · 7:35pm Jul 17th, 2018
This past decade has seen a great deal of celebrity deaths. We’ve lost artists and entertainers whose works have inspired and brought joy and comfort to numerous people, and hopefully will continue to do so long after they’re gone.
All these deaths were deeply saddening but possibly the one death that hit me the hardest on an especially deep level was the passing of Linkin Park’s frontman Chester Bennington. Three days from now will mark the one-year anniversary of his death via suicide, which had spurred me into revisiting the band after years of not having listened to them. (I actually would’ve posted this on the anniversary, but I was a little bit impatient to get this out). And despite me being long past my teenage years and not listening to much rock these days, I was, in some ways, taken aback by how surprisingly well their music has held up and especially how much I still identified with some of these lyrics.
Like many in my generation, Linkin Park came out during a time when the world felt uncertain (it was the early 2000s after all). It was popular to dismiss their music and lyrics as typical “angry white boy with First World Problems” fare, but in the wake of Chester’s suicide, which has more than validated his lyrics’ authenticity, I came across several articles examining the band’s legacy. Many of these articles hit upon a similar theme - for numerous young teens of different creeds, colors and nationalities, Linkin Park “got” them. Chester’s lyrics illustrated the struggles with pain and despair, with a deep rage to back it up. To listen to the band was to hear those emotions be expressed in a way that was easy to understand.
His music was a clear expression of all he had dealt with in his life as well. Chester had always been completely open about his struggles with his mental health, addiction, and a childhood marked by abuse. And he poured every bit of that pain and rage into his music as his own way of dealing with the pain, and in turn, he helped his listeners know they had every right to feel pain and anger when everyone else told them to smile and be happy. He made misunderstood teenagers worldwide feel understood, validated, and seen in a way their authority figures couldn’t and wouldn’t see them.
For a young teen who had to deal with moving around constantly due to her father’s job and was dealing with the pain of watching her parents’ marriage utterly fall apart before her eyes, along with other teenage issues, Linkin Park’s music helped get me through the dark times. Their music was the sound of emotional catharsis, an outlet with which to express the anger that kids often weren’t allowed to express in full, lest we be scolded by our parents for being ‘ungrateful’ or ‘whiny’. And Chester’s voice was the perfect instrument for that, with a range that could produce soft and comforting whispers reassuring the listener they aren’t alone in their pain to piercing screams of righteous fury.
(Needless to say, my parents practically had heart attacks when they heard Linkin Park. To their ears, it was overly loud and harsh noise with depressing lyrics. Though that was kind of the point…)
It's impossible to think about what the early 2000s emo/screamo/alt-rock/pop punk scene would be like without Linkin Park and Chester expressing every negative emotion you’ve ever felt with such crystal clarity. And even now, years later, it's impossible for me to think about what the music scene today even would be like without him, as numerous artists across different genres expressed grief for his passing and how he influenced them, from rock bands like Bring Me the Horizon and Imagine Dragons to rappers like Lupe Fiasco and Silento and electronic DJs like Kayzo and The Chainsmokers.
And maybe that's why Chester’s death devastated me more than the other high-profile celebrity deaths that have happened in recent years (besides Carrie Fisher’s and Anthony Bourdain’s). You could hear his pain in every song and it hits twice as hard now considering his suicide, because we know from his own words how much he was dealing with. We heard with our own ears what a unique and beautiful mind he had, how he could turn that anguish into a universal catharsis for the band’s fans. Linkin Park might not have the same sound that they used to, but they are iconic all the same, and Chester and his words and his voice played a huge part in that.
(Best thing to come from Michael Bay's Transformers movies, bar none.)
I don’t really think there will be anyone else quite like Chester in the future and the effect he had on me as a teenager can’t be understated. As silly as it is to say, Linkin Park raised me just as much as my own parents did and spoke to me when I was not in the mood to listen to anyone else. They taught me that my feelings were valid. That I didn't have to be happy all the time, but that I could be. That it was possible, and they would be there for me until I believed that. So, with one year having passed since his death, the best way I can think of to honor his legacy is to keep fighting. To lift others up, to make them feel less alone. Just like Chester did for all of us back in 2003.
Thank you, Chester. Rest in peace.
It really shocked when Chester committed suicide. It’s one of those things that truly comes out of the blue when it happens. Makes me kind of sad thinking about what could of been going through his head that he felt suicide was the only option to stop the pain. I loved listening to linkin park when growing up. Especially while on the open road while going to camp in Yellowstone Park with the rest of my Boy Scout troop. It helped made the hours go by.
Yeah, I had my phase with Linkin Park and Green Day, for about a year, starting with the latter, ending with the former. Not long after, I chose to turn my sights towards stoicism.
4902746
Yeah, admittedly, my "emo" phase was indeed a phase that I grew out of and I moved on to generally happier and more uplifting kinds of music (aka raving music), but I still appreciate the kind of music born from anger and rage, especially in this day and age (strangely enough, I've been getting into industrial music and listening to Rammstein of all things).