Linkin Park: Mike Shinoda opens up on Chester Bennington’s death
Mike Shinoda of Linkin Park has shared his thoughts on the grieving process due to the early death of his friend and bandmate Chester Bennington. Bennington died in 2017 by suicide at his home after a life of depression and alcohol and drug issues.
Shinoda appeared on The Howard Stern Show on SiriusXM this week and addressed Stern’s questions about the difficulties that he must have faced being in a band with Bennington and how his suicide has impacted his life ever since.
The producer and rapper admitted that when Chester joined the band, none of the other members of Linkin Park really knew the extent to which he had suffered in his childhood. The effect of this was that Bennington often turned to drugs to ease his pain, making him the life and soul of the party one night and a walking nightmare the following morning.
“I’ve never met anybody with such a crazy childhood… just barely staying out of jail,” Shinoda said. He added: “It was hard and in the midst of all that… he’d just go missing and come back obliterated, like you couldn’t even talk to him. There was an element of Chester that was very fun sometimes when he was that way and then usually the next day it would be so dark. He’s super hungover, he’s angry at everybody, yelling at everybody.”
The pain of losing Bennington was so great for Shinoda that he even considered quitting music. “For me, it just felt like too much. To get back on it and try to do some version of music and also be seen through the lens of what had happened… it was like being a member of a club that I didn’t want to join.” Evidently, the effect of the Linkin Park singer’s death was almost too much to bear for its head honcho.
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