The voice of the broken

This last month, I was shocked at the news of the passing of Chester Charles Bennington, the frontman for Linkin Park. I’m usually not taken aback by celebrity deaths, since I am too removed from the entertainment scene to feel a connection either to the lifestyle or its inhabitants. This however, was different. I felt sick and shaken, especially because he committed suicide. He hung himself in his home.

Linkin Park released their debut album in 2000. I first heard of them and came across ‘Hybrid Theory’ when I was in junior college, at age 16. The album was a huge commercial success but I never would have guessed this was the band’s debut effort. The lead singer was a skinny, bespectacled, bejeweled, earnest looking guy, with one of the most unique voices ever.

When I was in college, kids branded themselves metal-heads and considered the mosh-pit as an exclusive club, entry into which was determined by the heaviness of the rock bands one was ‘influenced by’. I never quite understood the tribalism of college kids and found myself swimming against the tide, in more respects than one.  

When I first listened to the Hybrid Theory cassette – yes, a cassette. CDs were just becoming popular and not everyone had a CD player - they seemed to me to be yet another band seeking popularity based on manufactured angst. As I went down the playlist, I was fascinated by the unusual combination of lyrical depth, melodic composition, and vocal firepower. Chester’s range was incredible – from low whispers, to soulful croons to feral screams. His heart was truly in it, in the fullest sense of the term.

I enjoyed their next album as well, Meteora. ‘Crawling’, ‘Numb’ and ‘In the End’ became increasingly popular and went on to become their most recognized songs. Although I liked the popular numbers, my preferred songs were the lesser known ones like ‘This is my December’. The lyrics were heartfelt and moving -

“And I'd give it all away

Just to have somewhere

To go to

Give it all away

To have someone

To come home to”

Chester would have been in his early thirties, when his star was rising in the 2000s. At that time, I had no idea of Chester Bennington’s personal story. Not even the vaguest idea about his searing pain, his unrelenting heartache and the demons he fought on a daily basis.  I read his biography only after his death, and then, many of the haunting lyrics he had penned, came flooding back and made awful sense.

After college, I moved on from Linkin Park, and save for some singles like ‘What I’ve done’ largely lost touch with their work. ‘What I’ve done’ was striking, with lyrics drenched in despair but lurching toward hope. Much like he was trying to find God, he sang “let mercy come and wash away what I've done". 

In the end, though, he gave in to the demons who vied for his life. Through his life, with gut-wrenching frequency, he felt like giving up, throwing in the towel and severing the last thread of sanity he was hanging on to. Always inching one step closer to the edge. In the land of the living, death stalked him unremittingly -

“I'll face myself to cross out what I've become

Erase myself

And let go of what I've done”    

                                                                    

#chesterbennington #linkinpark #hybridtheory #meteora