hester Bennington, Linkin Park Singer, Is Dead at 41
hester Bennington, Linkin Park Singer, Is Dead at 41
Chester Bennington, the ferocious lead singer for the platinum-selling hard rock band Linkin Park, was found dead in his home near Los Angeles on Thursday. He was 41.
Brian
Elias, the chief of operations for the Los Angeles County coroner’s
office, confirmed the death, in Palos Verdes Estates, and said it was
being investigated as a possible suicide after law enforcement
authorities responded to a call shortly after 9 a.m.
Mr.
Bennington, who was known for his piercing scream and free-flowing
anguish, released seven albums with Linkin Park. The most recent, “One
More Light,” arrived in May and debuted at No. 1 on the Billboard album chart. The band was scheduled to start a tour with a concert on July 27 in Mansfield, Mass.
Mike
Shinoda, one of Linkin Park’s founders, spoke on behalf of the group in
a tweet. “Shocked and heartbroken,” he wrote, adding that the band
would issue a statement.
Mr.
Bennington also performed in a side project, Dead by Sunrise, and
joined Stone Temple Pilots as its lead singer after the band split with
the vocalist Scott Weiland in 2013.
In May, he responded to the suicide by hanging of his friend the singer Chris Cornell in a note he shared on social media.
“I can’t imagine a world without you in it,” he wrote. “I pray you find
peace in the next life.” (Mr. Bennington also performed Leonard Cohen’s
“Hallelujah” at Mr. Cornell’s funeral. Mr. Cornell would have turned 53
on Thursday.)
A
week later, he posted a series of positive tweets, including one about
being artistically inspired: “Feeling very creative this last week. I’ve
written 6 songs and I’m happy with all of them. Just getting started.”
He added the emoji for the devil-horns hand gesture.
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But
Mr. Bennington had been open about his struggles with drug and alcohol
addiction, which had fueled many of his biggest hits with Linkin Park.
“I
have been able to tap into all the negative things that can happen to
me throughout my life by numbing myself to the pain, so to speak, and
kind of being able to vent it through my music,” he said in a 2009
interview with the website Noisecreep.
“I don’t have a problem with people knowing that I had a drinking
problem. That’s who I am, and I’m kind of lucky in a lot of ways ′cause I
get to do something about it.”
On
“Crawling” — one of the band’s defining singles from its debut album,
“Hybrid Theory,” which went on to sell more than 11 million copies in
the United States — Mr. Bennington sings: “There’s something inside me
that pulls beneath the surface / Consuming, confusing / This lack of
self-control I fear is never ending.”
The song, he said later, was “about feeling like I had no control over myself in terms of drugs and alcohol.”
“That
feeling,” he added, “being able to write about it, sing about it, that
song, those words sold millions of records, I won a Grammy, I made a lot of money.”
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