Episode 183: Chester Bennington

Chester Bennington had a voice that sounded like every broken heart trying to heal at once. He carried a lifetime of hurt into a microphone and turned it into anthems for millions. This episode traces the rise, the music, and loss of a frontman who gave us all permission to feel broken.

Episode Transcript

(00:00):
What's up dead O universe? I'm Kyle Poof from Death and
Entertainment, and I'm here to tell you about death and
entertainment presents. The Hollywood Walk of Death.
Think Hollywood's all glitz and glamour?
Think again. Join me on the Hollywood Walk of
Death, the newest true crime walking tour that takes you to
the exact spots where Tinseltown's brightest stars met
their darkest ends. From scandals to cold cases,
you'll never look at the Walk ofFame the same way again.

(00:22):
Book your tour now at hollywoodwalkofdeath.com.
If you dare. Private tours now available.
Now sit back and enjoy the show.Live from Los Angeles. 911 What
is your emergency? Here in Hollywood.
Now 2 counts of murder. Injury and death, Oh my.
God. Shocking new details.

(00:43):
That has stunned the entertainment world.
This makes me a little nervous. The hair stood up on my arms
just like in the movies. What do?
You call this thing anyway. Death Entertainment.
Greetings Dead O Universe, how the heck are you?
My name is Kyle Plouffe. And I'm Jerry Aquino.
And I'm Ben Kissel, and today weare covering one of the greatest

(01:05):
musicians in our lifetime. Oh yes, he was a legend.
He was a God among men. And his name was Chester
Bennington. Oh dear, I just got chills.
Get your tissues, everybody. Oh oh, it's a jerk off episode,
folks. It is.
There's gonna be some liquids coming out of our body.
Oh, tear jerk. Tear.
Jerk off. Maybe a little bit of this,

(01:26):
maybe a little bit of that. Well, OK.
But we're putting our gear from Lincoln Park to Lincoln Dr. Oh.
As we take off for this episode.Let's go.
How long did it take you to think about that, Kyle?
3 seconds, that was amazing it. Was really Lincoln?
Park to Lincoln Dr. I'm just I rarely applaud.
That's just. Amazing.
That was very good. Thank you.

(02:11):
If you want to understand Chester Bennington, you don't
start on a stage. You start in the desert.
Not the desert scene on postcards and tourism
commercials. Not the one with dramatic
sunsets and kitschy neon lit motels.
The real 1. The Arizona suburbs.
Oh my God, no. I've never.

(02:32):
Been. Oh, it's good creepy.
The Arizona suburbs baked under a heat so dry it cracked
sidewalks, backyards full of gravel instead of grass, a.
Lot of tan and taupe. Tan and taupe.
A lot of meth. Yeah, oh boy.
Also, kids riding their bikes past sunbeat fences in chain
link yards. This is where Chester
Bennington. Chester Charles Bennington, by

(02:54):
the way, that's for what he was like white trash kid from the
suburbs in Arizona. He has the most like British
sounding aristocratic name. Chester, Charles Bennington with
the Bennington's Fortune. Yeah, sounds like he's about to
foreclose on your house. Seriously.
He spent his earliest years right there in Arizona, a

(03:15):
skinny, awkward kid growing up on the outskirts of Phoenix.
He was born March 20th, 1976, the youngest of four, raised by
a nurse and a police detective. Oh.
Wow, very blue collar. Yeah.
His dad's specialty was with theChild Abuse Investigations Unit,
AA very grim path that Chester would later say was far too
close to the trauma he actually experienced himself.

(03:37):
What? He had to grow up very quickly.
Yeah, it's awful. I do like that his dad can go
shoot somebody at work and then his mom has to save their life
at the hospital. Right.
They worked in tandem together for that.
Chester was only 7 years old when, according to his own
verified interviews, he was sexually abused by an older male
friend. He said the abuse lasted for

(03:58):
years and he stayed silent out of fear and shame.
Oh. Poor kid.
It's so hard for men in this, inthat kind of context, to even
like, come forward and admit what's happening.
Yeah, I've talked about it a fewtimes on the podcast, but never
went to like crazy details. But our next door neighbor was a
a child molester that got a number of people I was very,
very close to. Oh my God.

(04:20):
And I had no idea until like years, 6-7 years later.
So even as a child, people are like ashamed of it.
Yeah, it's just it's it. It'll fuck you off for life.
Little little levity here. Usually the molester is named
Chester, but in this case the moles did was Chester.
Yes, yes. Chester the Molester, the.

(04:41):
Oh my God. OK, well, Chester, no molester.
We had, we had a music teacher named Chester.
We called him Chester the Molester.
We really tortured that man. I feel bad to some degree now.
The guy went home every day justhanging up his hat like, well,
Chester the Molester again, yeah.
I got into education thinking I was going to be the cool

(05:02):
teacher. I'm Chester the molester.
The molester love kids. Oh well.
The abuse, compounded with the chaotic home life, carved an
early emotional landscape that Chester later described as,
quote, constant fear. Oh, and when he was 11, his
parents divorced. He stayed between his parents,
and they're demanding jobs oftenkept them away from home.
Like his dad was always gone, you know, fighting child

(05:24):
molesters, right? Tragically, Chester had said
openly that this period built a deep loneliness in him, one that
never fully healed. And school wasn't much better.
He was small, quiet, artistic and the kind of kid who becomes
a target. So super popular in Phoenix, AZ.

(05:44):
He had said he was beaten up so many times he lost count.
The physical and emotional isolation would eventually
become the raw material for his lyrics, but at the time it was
just raw pain that sucks poor. Kid, Oh my God.
That makes the that complete makes sense for someone that
just ends up, you know, screaming for a living.
Yeah, that's true. Someone that was holding in a

(06:05):
lot of things growing up for a while.
Yeah, You didn't get into reggae.
Yeah, yeah, yeah, yeah, yeah. The, the childhood, I guess.
Sure. So he found escape any way he
could, through art, eventually through music.
Unlike the heavy bands he'd become associated with, his
early obsessions were more melodic and Moody.
The Cure, Depeche Mode, Stone Temple Pilots even, and even

(06:27):
Foreigner, which you would neverput him on that.
Let's go. Apparently he would imitate them
loudly around the house long before he stepped in front of
the microphone. I love that.
By the time he was a teenager, he wasn't just listening, he was
trying to create. He had scribbled poetry, filled
notebooks, sketched stuff and used art.

(06:47):
Used art the same way some kids use air.
And that was before ChatGPT kids.
Yeah, exactly. Look at that.
He had to do it on his own, right?
You imagine. Good Lord, just.
Your thoughts in a notebook and a pen.
No cell phones. Innocent time.
Well, very hard time, yeah. Very, very hard.
Isolating. But the darker coping mechanisms

(07:09):
grew too. Alcohol, weed and eventually
harder substances. Chester always insisted in
interviews that he hated who hadhe had become during those early
experiments, calling it a self destruct button.
I get that one that he did not know how to stop pressing.
Yeah, at school he felt like an outsider.
At home he felt alone. But at band practice, for the

(07:30):
first time he felt heard 'cause he got a bunch of friends
together and they created a bandcalled Gray Days.
Oh, Gray. Days DAZE.
Interesting. I see Gray days.
Days and it happens to be Gray, yes.
In the early 90s Phoenix had a small but passionate alternative
music scene. Local clubs, makeshift gigs and

(07:52):
post grunge bands trying to catch lightning in the bottle.
Chester joined one of those bands, an up and coming group
called Grey Days. This wasn't fame.
This wasn't even almost fame. These were weekend shows,
scratchy demo tapes and practicespaces that smelled like
cigarettes and old carpet. You know, band life.
Exactly. Let's go nitty.
Gritty. That's what I I always dreamed
of that art life. I never dreamed of a mansion

(08:15):
hanging out with P Diddy and Jay-Z.
It was always like the art life.Exactly what they're living
right now. Yeah.
Even with the smell and horriblecigarettes and old carpet, there
was something happening in that room.
Chester's voice, even at 17, didnot sound normal.
It didn't even sound local. It didn't sound amateur.
It was powerful, elastic and emotional in a way that seemed

(08:36):
bigger than the venues they played.
Wow, I would have loved to hear that.
Three days I I do think black mold might really have affected
his voice in a positive way. Oh my God.
That's a good band name too. Black mold.
Black mold. Go to see black mold.
Yeah, they're really good, but they'll infect your lungs and
you'll die shortly after seeing them.

(08:57):
Great A's guitarist Sean Dowdle later described hearing Chester
for the first time as shocking, saying he couldn't believe that
the sound was coming out of a kid.
Wow. Which I'm sure his child
molester said that too. Oh my God.
Good Lord, it's just. Not just not cool, man.
Gallows humor. We'll delete that.
No, that's. Staying in, if I have to

(09:18):
sacrifice my well love personality, then you do too.
Yes, let's see, there were earlyrecordings, some are on YouTube
and older scene archives, of Chester belting the beginnings
of what would become his trademark, the contrast between
fragile melody and screaming cathartic release.

(09:40):
But Great Days was also the place where Chester's personal
struggle started colliding with the professional ones.
By his own account, his drinkingand drug use intensified during
this period. He described himself as
unstable, committed, talented and ambitious, but also barely
holding himself together. I mean the art life.
The art life, I get it. And yet he still found himself
ascending throughout all of it. I know, it's crazy.

(10:03):
Yeah, I find that really impressive.
I've spoken, I've spoken to a couple of therapists on this and
technically that's very bad because then you're like, I can
do it. I'm doing better than ever.
The crowds love me. But it's the that's the double
edged sword of it all. Yeah.
If he would have just like crumbled and failed, he would
probably would. He probably would have, just
like. Maybe this isn't the right path
to success. Yeah.

(10:24):
But success was going with it. I.
I see. It's almost more dangerous.
Yeah, because sometimes I, I getlike a little drunk over the
weekend and then I'm like, well,there goes my week.
And that's not, and yeah, I'm not productive at all.
So I can only imagine someone with, you know, worse vices with
a lot more things to do and he gets them done.
In the early 90s in Arizona witha lot of trauma as well.

(10:48):
Yeah. A lot going on, yeah.
During this time where he's, youknow, starting to drink, miss
gigs and he's getting into fights with the band, there are
disagreements, creative clashes and a growing mismatch between
Chester's drive and the band's direction.
Hear me out, guys. Instead of Gray days, what if we
call it Sunny Nights? I like that.
Sunny nights. Let's go.
Good. Sounds like some kind of Miami

(11:09):
Vice song. Sunny nights.
In 1998, things came to a head and Chester left the band,
either by quitting or by being pushed out, depending on which
retelling you're being told. You can't fire me.
I quit. Exactly.
Either way, he was now a singer without a band, at a time when
the industry was collapsing, grunge was fading and record
deals were drying up. He was a work.

(11:31):
He was working at a digital services company, answering
phones, feeling directionless. Can you imagine that?
Chester Bennington answering thephone.
What do you want? My VCR isn't ejecting the VCR
tape. What exactly do you have?
Any advice for that? Oh my God.
Scream at it, you say. I should scream at it.

(11:52):
OK, I'll continue to scream at it.
Thank you. Good job.
Good job. Then his phone rang.
It was a call that would change everything from a small
California band searching for a vocalist, a band whose demos
weren't setting the world on fire.
Yeah, at the time they were still called Zero with an X.
Like Xerox? Xerox copies.
Yeah, exactly. Just think of the dog from

(12:14):
Nightmare Before Christmas. Wasn't his name 0?
No, I don't think it was. I think it is.
It is. We better get this right.
Oh my God this will be a nightmare.
Before before Christmas, yeah. Zero.
It is 0 with. AZ.
Votes with AZ with AZ, well, OK,but it was.
Not way off off. I'm taking the West.

(12:35):
It doesn't matter if you give itto me, I'm taking it.
That one's taken. W for wrong don't.
But soon this band zero, they would rename themselves and the
world would find out. Let's.
Go. Wait, wait.
Zero was what? It was something what?
OK, Chester Bennington would walk into a recording studio in

(12:58):
Los Angeles and sing something that would alter the next 20
years of not only their lives, but rock music as we know it.
Oh yeah, everyone's lives. Literally everybody's lives.
Yeah, so in 1998, Chester Bennington was only 22 years
old. Oh.
My God. Baby.
Grey Days is gone. He was newly married, living in

(13:21):
Phoenix and working at that digital services job answering
phones. He later said the job made him
feel like he was stalling out while he watched over while he
watched other musicians move ahead.
I hate that feeling. It's it's been non-stop, yeah,
20 fucking years. Yeah.
That's what's happening right now, yeah.
Cannot judge yourself based uponother people's successes or

(13:42):
failures. You absolutely can't.
You can't, and yet you do. I'm going to get you guys some
motivational Instagrams, OK? So the band rebranded itself
from Zero to Hybrid Theory. What does it sound familiar?
Wait, yeah, it does sound. Familiar hybrid theory.

(14:02):
Reflecting the fusion they were building, Mike's hip hop
influence, Chester's rock and emotional melodies, and Joe and
Brad's electronic alt rock sensibilities.
Chester, as soon as he got into the band, he was like met up
with them. Everything was good.
They're like, let's fucking go. You got the, you got the, you
got the rizz and, and we got themusic.
So let's go. He moved to LA permanently,

(14:23):
living in near poverty during the band's earliest days.
Wow. He said he'd never worked harder
than he did making that first record, and that first record
was called Hybrid Theory. So they were still the band
Hybrid Theory at this point. Yes.
So they were getting label feedback at this time and they
were. They were getting awful feedback
saying it was too weird for radio, too soft for metal, too

(14:45):
heavy for pop. What are you?
Oh my God. Shut up.
What are you? Yeah.
Amazing is what we are, yeah. We just don't have a room for it
right now here on K Rock. Coming up, poison, followed by
Poison, followed by Mötley Crüe and then poison.
Yeah, pretty much. Warner Brothers rejected them
twice. JetBlue kept pushing internally,

(15:07):
sensing something big, and by late 1999 Warner Brothers
relented and signed them under the condition they changed the
name again. So they chose Linkin Park.
I was so a rare W though. A rare W for the industry, yes.
Yeah, I wonder why they came up with Lincoln Park.
Like do we know the origin of the title?

(15:27):
Yes, it was a nod to Santa Monica's Lincoln Park, and
partly because the the domain lincolnpark.com was available
for cheap. I love it.
This is what you know you. Needed a website?
Sometimes it's just that simple.My love.
Is it really? Really, they love that.
What's the deep thought behind it?
Well, it was free. If we fucking found it on
GoDaddy, they said that it was open for us.

(15:49):
So. Yeah, specifically the Lincoln
spelling. Yes, I, I believe it was
Chester. Someone in the band was like
sleeping in a park and they wokeup and saw the sign in Lincoln
Park and wow. So that's where they were right
before they ended up like, you know, making it big.
That's insane. Well thank God they weren't in
like Kaminsky Park or something.Imagine.

(16:14):
Rutabaga Park coming to the stage, everybody.
Chattanooga Park here. We.
Go 3 Meadows Dr. Yeah. That.
Kind of works. Chester and Mike became the
emotional center of the band. Mike would later say Chester
could take the most personal lyric and make it universal.
It was amazing. Chester was trying to hold his

(16:35):
shit together, maintaining sobriety while the pressure
built. In early interviews, he admitted
he was terrified of failing again after great days and
everything else that's happened in his life.
Yeah, I can imagine. It's just sometimes it feels
it's, it's always feeling all ornothing, especially when you're
that close to, you know, povertyand trying to make it work.
Yes. Absolutely no Plan B.

(16:55):
Once you have a major corporation like Warner Brothers
being like, OK, let's fucking dothis.
You're like, we cannot fuck thisup.
Yeah, we actually have a a push behind us now, and let's make it
happen. And then you just keep on saying
let's not fuck this up, Let's not fuck this up.
We fucked it. We're fucking it up.
We're fucking it up. I fucked it up, yeah.
Self sabotage starts creeping in.
You got to stay positive and he's in his early 30s at this

(17:16):
point then. No, I think he's still in his
20s. No, he's he's 23.
Oh, still. Oh, wow.
OK, yeah, it happens. Quick so the songs that emerged
from from that tension that theyspoke about after crawling,
which is an incredible song Chester explicitly said this
reflected his struggles with substance abuse and feeling like
he wasn't in control of himself such.

(17:36):
A good. Song One Step Closer, which is
like the first song that everybody heard that all of us,
you hear that fucking guitar come in and you're like, oh
shit. Mike said.
He wrote it out of pure frustration during recording
sessions when producers kept demanding changes.
Interesting. Paper cut, Chester explained the
song came from anxiety and feeling watched or judged, which

(17:56):
they felt the entire process. They would be having like a
great recording session. And then these suits come in and
they're like, well, we've seen other people do this, how about
you do that? And they're like, get the fuck
out of the room. Oh my God, that's.
Chester, hear me out. Dolly Parton's pretty big.
You want fake tits? You know she used to make beats
with her nails. Maybe you should get your nails.
Done. By the time the album wrapped

(18:20):
and they they had it all mastered and everything, the
band still had no idea whether anyone outside their circle
would give a shit. And boy, would they.
Yeah. If you make your friends laugh
and if you make you laugh, or inthis case obviously with music,
it will work universally, but not that unique.
Right, exactly. So they originally were Hybrid
Theory had to become Linkin Parkand they still love the name

(18:43):
Hybrid Theory. So they named the album Hybrid
Theory. That's.
Awesome, perfect. And that's a great name from an
album. Yes, and I had no idea why, but
it came out. I was just when I was
researching, they had talked about it in 99 and I just never
knew. They called themselves Hybrid
Theory because when they were going through all these meetings
and everything, they were like, like I said, you're rap rock.
I guess that's what we're going to call you.
And they're like, we don't want to be called rap rock.

(19:04):
We're not one or the other. We're a hybrid of everything,
right? And so that's that was their
theory. Brain can't compute.
I don't understand what that is.Yeah, what box can we shove you
into? Singing fast rock music.
What is this rap rock? Rap.
So this this album, Hybrid Theory came out October 24th,
2000, exactly 1 year after Chester arrived in California.

(19:29):
They were just hoping for modest, modest success.
They talked openly about maybe selling 50,000 copies if things
went really well. Oh, that's adorable guys.
You guys are. So you guys are so cute right
now. Early reception was cautious.
Rock radio didn't know what to do with the sound, MTV was still
dominated by Limp Bizkit and Corn Mike's wrapping didn't fit
the established mold. Chester's voice was powerful,

(19:51):
but clean enough to stand apart from the growl heavy new metal
landscape. You see Limp Bizkit 'cause it
was 'cause I feel like that's like almost getting there.
They became paired together likethey were like, yeah, 2, two
siblings, almost, right? Nothing about the rollout
suggested what was coming next. But week after week, something

(20:12):
strange happened. Single radio stations began
adopting one step closer. Message boards lit up with fans
trading burn CDs. Oh, what the time, What the time
to be alive. Mt VS TRL unexpectedly picked up
Crawling. That's awesome.
And by early 2001, the band was facing something no one, not
even their label, predicted. Hybrid Theory wasn't just

(20:33):
climbing the charts, it was about to become the best selling
debut album of the 21st century.Nice.
Let's go. Yeah, yeah.
Take. Take that labels.
Yeah, seriously. And then at that point, if a
suit ever came in and was like, well, how about this?
I'd be like get the fuck? Out of here.
Seriously. Take that and the labels like,
oh, we will. We're going to take all the
royalties, we're going to take all the money.

(20:53):
So don't worry, we're taking that.
And then we're going to claim that it's our reason.
We're the reason we're the. Reason you did this?
Yeah. I mean, they made the music, but
I gave them a lot of suggestionsright the fuck out here.
Chester was still living modestly, the band was still
sharing cheap hotel rooms, and the label still had modest
expectations even after all that.

(21:14):
So yeah, when One Step Closer really started hitting the
airwaves for listeners, especially teens and young
adults, the song felt like an adrenaline needle controlled
chaos catharsis in under 3 minutes within weeks.
Within weeks, rock stations in the US and Europe began
reporting unusual spikes and requests for the song.

(21:34):
At the time, MTV gave the video a buzzworthy label, a precursor
to Heavy Rotation. I actually forgot about that.
Buzzworthy Buzworthy. Yeah.
You would get like the instead of like the before the trailers,
like PG or R rating screen. They use that for MTV as
buzzworthy. That's.
Right. Pay attention to this shit.
Interesting. It's so crazy how time has

(21:54):
changed. I mean, I guess it was 25 years
ago for me. It was just yesterday though.
Yeah. Running back home trying to see
TRL. The good old days.
See what Carson Daly is wearing,but.
The two black fingernails. Yeah, it was so extra.
It was. In 2002, Crawling won the Best
the Grammy for Best Hard Rock Performance, giving Chester and

(22:15):
the band a level of legitimacy that few new acts ever achieved
so early. Yeah, it's interesting.
I guess they were really early, but it just did.
He's just been, he's been going from the get.
I also don't like when the get out of your Grammys.
Yeah, like, don't like. Legitimacy, right?
They were already legit. Yeah, the fact that everyone's

(22:36):
singing the song and wants it requested, That's legitimacy.
Fuck the Grammys. Yeah, that's true.
The Grammy win, though, it did cement something.
Linkin Park wasn't just a moment.
It was a movement. And not just a bowel movement.
OK, there we go. I was going to say that.
What happened next is one of themost significant events in
2000's rock history. When Warner Brothers released In

(22:58):
the End as the fourth single, the label was reportedly unsure
of its commercial potential. Why?
I don't know guys, your last shit was really, really
successful. You learn.
Even if it's not as good, peopleare still going to listen to it
of. Course.
JetBlue later later wrote that many at the label thought the
piano intro was too soft for active rock radio.

(23:18):
Guys hear me out. I'm get out of here.
I'm Tommy Wondeck and they call me one Dick.
I got 3 Dicks. Pianos are gay kids.
Yeah, and we don't like the music here at Warner Brothers.
No way did you set in the end and I and like I immediately
hear the chords playing Yeah in my head.
It's ridiculous. It's just good.
It's fear based. It's so fucking stupid.

(23:40):
Like, oh, maybe people won't like, maybe people won't like
it. Yeah.
They just take it off the radio then, right?
Yeah, they were wrong. In the End became one of the
biggest rock singles of the decade.
The most played music video of 2001 on MTVA Billboard Hot 100
Top five hit in a permanent fixture in the band's legacy.
There's gotta be nobody in the world that doesn't know the

(24:00):
lyrics to that entire song. Yeah, exactly.
The video, directed by Johan, became iconic, featuring Chester
performing on a massive digital obelisk in a desert environment.
More obelisk please, Yeah. So with all these singles
exploding, the band hit the roadhard.
They played Ozfest 2001, the Family Values Tour, European

(24:23):
festivals, countless radio showsand hundreds of small venues
between headlining slots. That family values tour was
fucking awesome. Hell yeah.
Do you remember that? Oh, that was like, that's where
they all got together. Yeah, and then like, even like
an ice cube and iced tea would be there, too.
There was a little. Documentary they made about it
that is really really good. So good.
So they're playing the small venues with, you know, just to

(24:45):
fill different cities and like what they would, what the
industry would label as like flyover States and get you in all
the small towns, Wisconsin beingone of them.
But it's not. It's not right.
That's the consumer right there.That's America.
That's America literally is stop.
I used to call I used to tell this little story about how the
fly over states, the Midwest. It's the perineum of of the

(25:07):
states. And sometimes you just got to
stop there. Put your finger on the tank.
Yes, put your finger on the tank, because that's the pulse.
That's the pulse of the country,and that's the pulse of the
body. Feel your pulse through your
taint. I don't.
You can do it now if you're listening.
Pause. Feel your taint.
Do you feel your? Do you feel your?
Pulse. Oh my God, please don't.

(25:28):
OK, Welcome back. Back to the show.
Back to the show. Chester said at one point they
were playing more than 300 showsa year.
They had him working, yeah. Wow.
The sudden fame was exhilarating, but it was it was
also the first time that Chesters internal battles
collided violently with public success.
I can imagine, yeah. He had exhaustion, alcohol,

(25:49):
relapses, the pressure of instant celebrity and trying to
main stability with his young family.
Yeah, I mean, he got married so young.
He did, yeah. That's crazy.
He's also like a sex object in some ways.
Yeah, I just remember a lot of the ladies really like.
Just oh, wow. Yeah, he's all tatted up.
He's got. Yeah, he's got.
Eye like they always liked his eyes.
They liked his. Eyes liked his eyes, You know,

(26:10):
he's got, like, the skinny, likelean skinny thing, Yeah.
He's got the, you know, the skinny emo boy look.
Yeah, exactly. I'm assuming, as we all know,
skinny boy, huge Dick. He's got big Dick.
Energy he does he was saying hismental health was really
declining despite this, he remained intensely professional
on stage it's. So insane to just like just
think about how artists are always like there's so many

(26:33):
stories that I hear that during their most successful time, it
was also the worst period of their lives.
Really fucking scary stuff, yeah.
Yeah. A lot of pressure.
It makes success scary. It really does.
Scary, yeah. But he rarely cancelled shows,
almost never complained. He poured every ounce of himself
into each performance, often leading to the point of vocal
injury, which is tough. Which is crazy because he sounds

(26:56):
like the number one person to not be able to do that.
Yeah, like he just sounds so effortless.
So the band traveled to New Yorkand Los Angeles, recording in a
mixture of high end studios and makeshift writing rooms.
Chester and Mike Shinoda both described the Meteora sessions
as more intense and more structured than Hybrid Theory.
Meteora. Meteora.
That's what they named the sessions.

(27:18):
That's the album #2 it's called Meteora, OK?
It's so fucking good. Their first three albums, that
is Linkin Park. It's it's like quintessential
just. Yes, Linkin Park.
I didn't even realize how many albums they had after that.
There's like 5 or 6 that I didn't even.
I had heard some songs but it was very like soft electronic
like. Yeah, they went pretty kind of

(27:40):
like I don't want to say mainstream, but I am going to
say mainstream. Sure, yeah.
It just didn't feel like it was for me anymore.
Meteora sounds like Medusa's, like, sister, but she doesn't
have snakes in her hair. She has, like, worms.
And it was like, Meteora's coming over gross and shit.
She's all fat. Yeah.
She doesn't turn you into stone.She turns you to like weird
plastic. And you're like totally like

(28:00):
conscious when it sounds like, dude, come on, not again this.
Sucks I didn't even get hard before I got turned into fucking
plastic. Chester said the band wanted to
prove that Hybrid Theory wasn't a fluke.
In multiple interviews, he notedthat the second record carried a
different kind of weight. We didn't want to be the biggest
band in the world. We wanted to be the best.

(28:21):
That's all that matters. There's a difference.
Yes, there is. The band built a wall of sound
heavy guitars from Brad Delson, meticulous turntable textures
from Johan, precise rhythm from Rob Borden and the dual vocal
lines that had matured enormously.
Yeah, I mean, they really found their groove.
Yeah, Chester's voice on Meteora.

(28:41):
People said it was sharper, morecontrolled and more vulnerable.
Interesting, interesting trio there.
Yeah, Numb was one of their first songs that came off it.
It quickly became one of the most defining songs of Chester's
entire career. He described it as capturing the
frustration of personal expectations, both internal and
external. The video became one of the most
played on MTV in 2003, shot in Prague with imagery of

(29:05):
isolation, academic pressure andself doubt.
Yeah, a lot of things are shot in Prague.
Oh, really? Tax breaks.
And also it's just, it's cool looking place.
Yeah. Somewhere I belong also off this
album, Chester explained the song was about finding internal
peace after years of feeling outof place.
Such a gorgeous. Song.

(29:25):
Oh yeah, breaking the habit. The track was deeply personal,
though. Mike Shinoda wrote the lyrics,
Chester said. Performing it felt like ripping
a page out of my own diary and. Then there was that awesome
animated music video that came with.
It Yeah. The animated music video,
directed by Johan, depicted cycles of trauma and self
destruction, themes Chester was confronting in real time.

(29:45):
I mean, they're the lyrics to all of these songs.
They're just like, they're just so raw and they just like get to
like everyone's like dark place.It's like, it's like almost
shocking to hear it outside of your body.
Exactly. Yeah.
When Meteor released in March 2003, it debuted.
It debuted as number one in the US, selling 810,000 copies.

(30:07):
Nice in its first seven days. Let's go.
Seven days 7. Days it's topped the charts in
the US, the UK, Australia, Germany and Canada.
Wow, good job Canada. Those are also our biggest
countries as well. Oh fantastic.
Oh, I love you. Who?
Knew Canada was so upset. Yeah.

(30:27):
Critics praised it for its focusand precision.
Fans devoured it. The tours got bigger, the crowds
got louder, and Chester's private battles grew heavier.
Wow. That sucks.
Because in 2003, even though through all this success, maybe
even partially because of it, right, Chester went through the
emotionally and financially brutal process of divorcing his
first wife, Samantha. Wow.

(30:49):
It just sucks. It's awful.
The split was documented in several interviews as being
extremely destabilizing for him.Oh, no.
I mean, I can imagine that just like kind of rips the
headquarters like stability fromunder the ground while you're
running around doing everything.It's gonna be such a mind fuck
to be like there are people, 60,000 people showing up to our

(31:09):
events every night. Everyone wants a piece of me
except for the one person I wantto stick around, right?
That has to be just fucking yeah, debilitating.
How, How is it that all these people know this?
Like the lyrics to my song, but I can't get a text back from my
wife? Yeah.
We don't know who's to blame, Dowe?
Yeah, we don't. We don't.

(31:30):
We don't. This was the same year that the
band was touring non-stop. Chester was juggling global
fame, a dissolving marriage, custody battles, constant press
and the pressure of maintaining a public persona.
That's a lot. That's got to be the toughest
thing too, to show up and be like, hey everybody, how are
you? I'm doing great.
Right. I'm ready to kill somebody.
He later described 2003 and 4 asthe darkest stretches of his

(31:52):
life. Wow.
During the media orators, Chester began drinking heavily
again. He opened up about this in
multiple interviews, saying alcohol had become a method of
self medication during emotionalspirals.
As it usually is. Yeah, what's documented is that
Chester said he reached the point where he didn't recognize
himself. He said, quote, I hated the

(32:13):
person I was. It's brutal.
It is sad he's never been more loved in his life, right?
Yeah, that's the ironic part. It is, but also it's like he
knows that it's not real. He knows he's just a person.
He's the one who takes the liquid dumps in the fucking
morning. Like he knows he's just a
biological person. And then all of a sudden you go
on stage and you transcend all that.

(32:33):
And then when you get off stage,it's very difficult to go back
to just. OK.
I'm Chester. I used to work at a call center.
Yeah. In 2003 they were on the Project
Revolution tour and Chester suffered severe abdominal and
gastrointestinal issues. Hey I called it Liquid.
Dumps. Liquid Dumps.
What do you think about our third album being called Liquid

(32:54):
Dumps? I love.
It sponsored by Tums. The Tums tour.
It was later identified as a hiatal hernia.
He was hospitalized multiple times on tour.
Shit. Doctors were telling him he has
to stop touring and singing. No what?
Wait, what? He said Hell not.
In fact, Chester performed several shows with a broken

(33:15):
wrist after jumping off stage inMelbourne in 2007.
He's a rock star. He's just such a fucking rock
star. Yeah, exactly.
It's just, you know, he was already pushing himself far
beyond healthy limits and lovingit.
Right. Also, that's on the fans in
Melbourne. You gotta catch Chester
Melbourne. They're a rock'n'roll plays.
Come on guys. What's what's up with that?
You guys just let a rock legend fall.

(33:38):
Isn't it all rugby? Rugby players there like they're
big? Yeah, it's supposed to be big
people. And Melbourne loves Rock'n'roll.
There's a place called Cherry Tavern.
You gotta go. It has carpet.
The whole place smells like yes,but it is one of the most iconic
places ever. It's on like ACDC way.
They have like Guns and Roses drive and shit.
Melbourne loves rock'n'roll, dude.
Wow, that's awesome. I don't know that.

(33:58):
Yeah, it's really fun. We should go.
We should go. We.
Should go do it. Yeah.
So they're trying to reinvent themselves every, every album,
you know, every tour, they're trying to do something
different. They're trying to stay in their
own lane and not listen to the outside pressures of what Warner
Brothers wants and all that shit.
In 2004, Linkin Park had become one of the most important rock
bands in the world, and even more so, they started, they went

(34:19):
cross genre. Oh, their collaboration with
Jay-Z. Oh yes, there we go.
The Collision Course EP debuted at #1 and produced another
massive hit, Numb Slash Encore. Such a good mashup.
Oh boy. It's so crazy how they took
songs that they already made, yeah, and found a way to put

(34:40):
them together in a way that was so cool.
Hell yeah. And everyone loved it.
Everyone, I don't know anyone that listened to that was like,
ah, fuck that shit. Yeah, it's impossible.
It's so good. There's like a couple of songs
that I can't like. There's a couple of wizzy songs
that I can't hear without turning it into that Linkin
Park. Yeah, yeah, yeah.
I keep going with the yeah, likethe one way or the other Yeah,

(35:02):
listening to Linkin Park, and then I start doing the Jay-Z
part. Yeah, something like that.
Chester admired Jay-Z so deeply,he said the collaboration made
him feel respected across genre.That's awesome.
That's so cool. Yeah, Jay ZI mean, you know, if
you if you liked us, that'd be cool.
It doesn't even matter. Like I'd still take, I'll take

(35:24):
that. That's great.
And be like, oh, thank you, Mr. Z.
Mr. ZI. Hate calling him Jay.
Dude, it's. Harder I.
Don't know. I had a friend who ran talent
transportation in New York City and he would always like chase
stars around and like who were trying to run away from him
because he would always be like Mr. or Mrs. Whoever.

(35:46):
And I remember Bon Jovi came in and he he was chasing around
going Mr. Jovi. Mr. Jovi, like his last name, is
not Jovi, right? It's like a pizza restaurant,
Mr. Jovi's. His first name is not Bon
either, right? God.
But the louder the band's success became, the quieter
Chester's internal world got. By 2005, the band was in a

(36:08):
strange place. They were one of the biggest
acts on earth, but the creative process was getting harder
because you're always constantlyevolving and right.
And you're also having the pressure of trying to do better
than your last thing, which was amazing.
It's gonna sound the same but different.
Yeah, you know, we just mentioned, you know earlier
don't compete with other people,but also you can't really
compete with your with yourself,with your past self, right.

(36:28):
Yeah, you know, it doesn't have to be what is better.
What does that even mean, right.Why does it?
Also, why does it have to be different of every all the time
That's. True.
Just. Make the same shit, you know,
McDonald's, everyone loves it. Yeah, that's a good point.
The label wanted another album. Of course they do keep shitting
them out. Exactly.
With no concern of how much they're working, how much
they're traveling, how much they're pushing them, they don't

(36:49):
give a fuck. But then they have two massive
albums. The fans love it.
So the fans are expecting another masterpiece.
Because if you drop like something that people just don't
like, they're like, what the fuck is?
This trust me, I I know I used to.
I have an understanding now of what fandom is, the dark side
and the good side, and it's veryinteresting to see.
They don't love you. Yeah, they they they are.

(37:12):
Obsessed. They're obsessed.
And then as soon as you do something to disappoint them
that you have no idea what you've done, Yeah, but all of a
sudden they spiral and now you're hated by them.
It's very bizarre. Yeah, Chester and Mike were both
grinding relentlessly, and Chester was carrying unresolved
trauma beneath it all. Yeah.
He said he was trying to be two people at once, the one the
world saw and the one I was actually dealing with.

(37:32):
Yeah, poor kid. We actually have an interview
here. I'll let it play.
It's gonna be a few minutes, butit's one of his last.
It is his last interview ever. And he talks about, yeah, just
his mental health, you know, at the time and before and where he
was expecting to go. Anybody out there can relate?
But like I have a hard time withlife sometimes.

(37:54):
Sometimes it's great, but a lot of times for me, it's really
hard and, and no matter how I'm feeling, like I always find
myself like struggling with certain patterns of behave.
I find myself like stuck in, like a, in like the same thing
that's keeps repeating over and over again.
And I'm just like, how do I end up?
How am I in this? And it's that moment where

(38:16):
you're in it. And then you can separate
yourself from that situation andyou look at it and you see it
for what it is and you're, you're able to then do something
about it. Like you've, you've now broken
out of that, that circle, that cycle and.
Is it is it a are you kind of because the first, the first
couple of lines on the track make me think that you are like

(38:36):
overthinking things in your life?
Is it like a you're? It could be, I mean, I mean,
honestly, like there's so many, there's so many circumstances
that for me that relate to this situation.
But like, I know that for me, when I'm inside myself, when I'm
in my own head, it gets this place right here, this, this,
this skull between my ears. That is a bad neighborhood.

(38:58):
And I am, I should not be in there alone.
I need I can't be in there by myself.
What you talking about? It's.
Just you, just you just it's insane.
It's crazy in here is a bad place for me to be by myself.
And so when I'm in that, like I get I my whole life gets thrown
off like if I'm in there, like Idon't say nice things to myself.

(39:19):
Like there's another Chester in there that's like he wants to
take me down. And so and I find that it could
be whether it's substances or whether it's behavior or whether
it's like depressive stuff or whatever it is.
Like if I'm not like actively like doing getting out of myself
and and being with other people,like being a dad, being a

(39:41):
husband, being a bandmate, like being a friend, helping someone
out. Like if I'm not, if I'm out of
myself, I'm great. If I'm inside all the time, I'm
I'm horrible. I'm a mess and so.
Wow, yeah. Yeah, it's, it's very important
to recognize that being around people does help.
Very relatable. Yeah, very relatable.

(40:03):
But also, I mean, it's just tough because he's revealing all
of this and not not to diss the DJ or anything, but, you know,
the reaction is just, yeah, he'sreally being very vulnerable
there. Yeah, I, I, I appreciate that he
was so like, what are you talking about?
Cause a lot of people don't understand what like bad mental
health is like, yeah. And they don't understand
depression. They don't understand the voice

(40:24):
in your head that's telling you you're a piece of shit.
Right. Exactly.
And that all comes back to the trauma from his childhood, which
all of us have. And, you know, and he's talking
about the the Chester inside that's trying to take him down
internally. It's just so fucking bizarre to
explain, but right, Millions of people deal with that.
Absolutely, too. There's in their music.
This is what I love about their music is like, you can have the

(40:45):
depressive thoughts. You can have, you know, the
outbursts and the anger and all that stuff.
But in the end, they're all always talking about, like,
trying to get better. Yeah.
And it seems like he was constantly working on himself,
which is great. And I think more people should.
Fighting really, really hard. Yeah, and so, you know, he's got
the internal battles. He's got weird shit going on
outside, you know, outside of his home, too.

(41:08):
In 2006, 2007 and 2008, there was such a weird thing that I
didn't even know happened. In early 2006, Chester and his
wife, Talinda, began noticing strange activity on their phones
and on their computers. Chester was receiving emails he
didn't recognize. His wife's messages were being
read without her knowledge. Private conversations were being

(41:29):
forwarded to unknown accounts. According to the Federal Court
documents filed in 2008, a female government employee what
named Devon Townsend, an IT worker at a national medical
insurer, had been illegally accessing Chester's personal
data, hacking accounts, forwarding private family photos
and stalking the Bennington household digitally for months.

(41:51):
That is horror movie shit, yeah.She used her fucking government
status to look up their everything.
That is insane. Yeah, that's some crazy
psychopath shit. It is.
It's almost worse than a home invasion, because a home
invasion it's like, let's get this on, let's go.
I can tangibly see you. Let's fight.
Yeah. This person just lurking

(42:12):
digitally. Creepy.
She had tampered with Chester's phone records, monitored his
voicemails and gain access to internal Lincoln Park
communications. Oh my God, that's so so creepy.
She was caught after a month long FBI investigation.
Wow. In November 2008, she was
sentenced to two years in federal prison for wiretapping,
unauthorized computer access, identity theft, and stalking.

(42:34):
Not. Even sure if that was enough to
be honest, it's scary, but to goYolinda on his ass and shoot
him? All of she not only had access
to him, but she has access to anyone that she wants to
apparently. Exactly, she was caught for
this. Yeah who?
Who the fuck else is she? Like stalking?
So true And monitoring. How many asshole pictures do you

(42:55):
have of mine? I want him back.
She gave him back. Yeah, she did actually.
Her again, her name is Devon Townsend, so if you know a Devon
Townsend out there, get the fuckaway.
Yeah, boy, scary. Protect yourselves.
Yeah. Please.
The case is fully documented. There's no ambiguity about what
happened. And this is, you know, a a
period of Chester's life where his anxiety and distrust

(43:18):
escalated sharply. I.
Can only imagine. I believe that.
Yeah, the paranoidness of being like, I wonder if someone's
listening to me right now. Well, and this is where you are
imprisoned to some degree. He's got to go back to the
Rotary phone, you know? Yeah, like fame as a fuck dude.
Oh my God. Following this stalker incident,

(43:38):
Chester threw himself into rebuilding his life, stabilizing
his home environment, and openlysought therapy for addiction and
trauma. Good.
For him. But recovery is not linear.
Never. Chester described his addiction
cycle as a pendulum, periods of sobriety, then the bottle
calling again fanmates. They said he was trying harder
than ever to fight the darkness,parenting a bunch of kids,

(44:01):
maintaining a marriage and stepping into more leadership
with Linkin Park. The band shifted their sound
with Minutes to Midnight, which is one of the.
It's the Holy Trinity right there.
You get Hybrid Theory, Meteora and Minutes to Midnight.
That's is Lincoln Park. Absolutely.
It became a more political, moreemotional record.
Chester pushed himself vocally even while dealing with chronic

(44:22):
pain and injuries. The touring machine never
slowed, and his internal battlesintensified.
He described himself as becominghypersensitive to everything
during this era. Yeah.
I can imagine. I mean, it's years at at this
point where the tours don't stop, where he's still
struggling with his with his life.
Yeah, Warner Brothers is like, let's do another one, guys.
More work. So they can make all the fucking

(44:44):
money in the world. I was speaking to a young
upstart musician who's fantasticand I was with and she was with
her agent. And I looked at him and I was
like, this guy is here now because you're playing the
Hollywood Bowl. He's not going to be with you in
fucking Poughkeepsie. He's not going to be with you in
Des Moines. That's where the that's where
you cut your fucking teeth. And that's where she gets
lonely. Middle of fucking nowhere in the
the winter time, all of a sudden, you know the industry

(45:06):
isn't there. They make their fucking money
off of your work. Yeah, exactly.
Never forget that fucking. Between 2010 and 2017, Lincoln
Park released 1000 Suns, Living Things, The Hunting Party, and
One More Light. Chester remained the emotional
center of the band, but privately he was oscillating
between periods of intense productivity and deep
withdrawal. There are a bunch of things that

(45:28):
were documented that happened, you know, as factors for this.
On May 18, 2017, Chris Cornell, one of Chester's closest
friends, died by suicide. Wow.
Chester actually performed Hallelujah at the funeral and
delivered a letter saying. You have inspired me in many
ways. Friends later revealed that
Cornell's death shook Chester brutally.
The event is widely cited by those close to him as a turning

(45:49):
point. Chris Cornell has the best
version of what's Oh my God I can't believe I'm just blanking
on this. Nothing nothing compares to you.
His Cornell's Nothing Compares to You is so good.
I just got goosebumps. Thinking about it is incredible.
Yeah. He had verified signs of
improvement during this time as well.
Like he was sober for stretches,He was exercising, eating clean

(46:09):
and spending more time with his family.
He filmed. He filmed several upbeat videos
for social media and stuff like that.
Wow. It's kind of scary though when
you start seeing the upbeat stuff.
It's. So scary because it's just like
it. It's very capable of having a
sharp drop. Yeah, he had therapy sessions
scheduled. The band was excited about One
More Light, and he also had signs of struggle, like his

(46:32):
close friend said that he was having episodes of deep
depression. Even though he was maintaining a
a happy persona online, alcohol relapses were still occurring.
He was overwhelmed with grief from Chris's death and express
feelings of self loathing and shame in interviews with, you
know, just coming in on morning radio.
Yeah, I'd be like, I hate. Myself Welcome to Welcome to

(46:54):
Clinton. The fuck We got Chester
Bennington in here. Chester, you know you ever been
called the molester before? Right.
Wow. Well.
That's just crazy. You know, I get that on a
personal note, when I lost KevinBarnett, we all lost Kevin
Barnett in 2019. Yeah, that was very difficult
and it took a lot of years to even work work through that.
That's one nice thing. When I went to passages, what
was that last year? You know, really got to talk

(47:16):
about some of that. Stuff that's good, yeah.
But it's so sad when you lose someone who's so amazing.
Right. Someone you've worked with
personally, you're actually friends with, and you know, you
just see everything that happenson the other side of it.
And also just question. It makes no fucking sense.
It's stupid. Yes, the way that he went.
Yes, it's just stupid and it's aggravating how dumb life is.

(47:36):
Very frustrating. So during this time, Chester was
fighting harder than most peoplerealized, Recovering one week,
relapsing the next, laughing with his kids one night,
drowning in grief the next morning.
The stalker incident, the decades of trauma, the addiction
cycles, and the losses he carried all built toward a point
he couldn't escape. And on July 20th, 2017, Chester
Charles Bennington, the voice ofLincoln Park, was found dead by

(47:58):
suicide in his home at Paulo's Fair Days Estates in California.
He was only 41. I thought he was older than
that. I actually thought he was a
little bit younger. Oh shit.
Yeah, it's so scary now that you're just like getting to that
age. I know.
Oh my God. Yeah.
The the early 40s, it is a very traumatic time.

(48:20):
They say. It's almost a second pure
birthday. Yeah.
And your brain is yeah, cuz yourbrain is like totally changing
again. Yeah, it's like every 20 years
or something, they say. Wow, what happened that morning?
The days before it in the aftermath have been documented
in public records, interviews and family interviews with
family and bandmates and reporting.

(48:42):
According to Chester's wife, July 19th appeared normal in
interviews years later. She described the evening as a
happy family night. Normal included playing board
games with his children, laughing and making plans,
talking excitedly about upcomingband events and demonstrating no
visible signs of acute distress,she said.
He was in good spirits and acting like the man I had

(49:02):
married. He had called her the morning of
July 20th and left her a voicemail.
Oh. My God, what did he say?
Do we know what he said? She said that it was just like
normal, like talking about what he was going to do during the
day and like what the very loving happy sounding.
It's so crazy. It is so scary.
Brain. But it's also like it.

(49:23):
It's so sick because my father died by suicide 10 years ago.
And I remember talking to him right before it happened.
And, you know, he had been depressed for a long time.
He had just lost his wife, my stepmother, the year before and
was just struggling, struggling.And I, for the first time, got
him on the phone after I moved out here.
I was here for like a month and he was like, laughing.

(49:44):
And I'm fucking laughing his assoff.
And I was like, dude, just come fly out here.
I was like, you got some money in the bank?
Come fly out. And he's like, Oh yeah, I'll be
out there real soon. Or some of the effect of like,
I'll be out there with you soon.And so you always think of that
like, what's he saying? He was going to make the plan to
come here? Or is that like the ethereal
like I'll be? There.
Oh gosh. It's shit like that where it
sounds happy but it's not. Wow, yeah.

(50:06):
And that could be exactly the type of thing that he did.
Like I love you, I'll see you later.
So sad. It's so sad it.
Is really sad I remember when I got the news when I was at work
and I like dropped my phone and I like had to like I I couldn't
work for the rest of the day yeah, it's just.
It's brutal. It's just to see someone that
you that, that you like know andlove who goes to the same

(50:27):
struggles that you do. And they're like some kind of
like an idol for that reason. And then they and then it kind
of like takes them. Yeah, it's really sad.
It was at 9 AMA housekeeper discovered Chester unresponsive
in his bedroom. Law enforcement confirmed he
died by hanging. No suicide note was found.
Jesus. A partially consumed alcohol
bottle was present and no illegal drugs were found.

(50:48):
I. Can't believe that's so intense.
Yeah, Dang toxicology report showed a small amount of
alcohol, no ecstasy, no cocaine,no meth.
This was not a drug induced event, it was a psychological
crisis that. Is insane, yeah.
What is known is that Chester was alone at the house the his

(51:09):
wife and children were out of state.
He left a voicemail for his wifeand she had spoken publicly
about the message, saying it wasnormal and loving, not alarming.
He had future plans with Linkin Park.
They were supposed to be in the One More Light tour just a few
days after, and he had agreed tofilm promotional material and
book therapy sessions. Wow.

(51:30):
Yeah, she explained to Linda, had explained that Chester's
depression cycled in waves, meaning you could appear content
for hours right before a crisis.So yeah, there were, there were
like, you know, Reddit threads, rumors coming up saying Chester
was murdered. Whoa.
Oh. My God.
Thank you Reddit once again. Come on, Chester was it's an
inside job. Like what are you talking?

(51:53):
About yeah, they've connected him to like, Anthony Bourdain
and Anne Haish and a bunch of people saying they were getting
together to expose Jeffrey Epstein.
Oh my. God, and they were gonna do a
documentary about child trafficking and that's why they
were all killed. And it's like none of them even
worked in the the film industry at Zephyr Anne Hache.
But she didn't didn't work in any capacity and documentaries.

(52:15):
Yeah, right. Right.
It would have been great if theywere making a documentary about
that. Yeah, for sure.
Awesome. Yeah.
And people are saying like, oh, there should have been signs.
His family should have known theday of blah blah blah.
You don't know, you don't. Know Monday morning
quarterbacking. There's no fucking I mean, there
are signs that you know, you could pick up over time but it's
only after the fact where you go.
Oh shit. Yeah, right.

(52:36):
It's ridiculous. You can't blame anyone or
anything, Yeah. And I I can imagine the fans are
all looking for answers but. That's exactly what is turning.
On his family is not like the way to go about it.
Yeah, no. Chester's death caused an
immediate worldwide response. Fans created memorials in over
40 countries. Lincoln Park canceled the world
tour. They issued a public letter to

(52:58):
Chester saying you touched so many lives, your absence leaves
a void that can never be filled.Sales of Hybrid Theory and One
More Light surged. Chester's Widow Widow launched
the Global Suicide Prevention Initiative and the band
performed A tribute concert on October 27th, 2017 featured
dozens of musicians from Blink 182 to System of a Down,

(53:19):
honoring Chester's legacy. It was so emotional.
And then like everyone was like,I, I think when, when they did
the songs, the microphone was just held out to the audience
and they were the audience sang Chester's entire parts.
Fuck, it was so, so emotional. Yeah, it remains one of the most
emotional live stream concerts in rock history.

(53:40):
Yeah, After Chester's death, thefuture of Linkin Park was
uncertain. The band went silent.
Fans wondered if the story had ended forever.
But years later, in 2024, something unexpected began to
take shape. A rumoured resurgence, a new
vocalist in a controversial connection to Scientology and
former circles around none otherthan actual convicted felon

(54:03):
Danny Masterson. Oh my God.
Wait, wait, what happened? We didn't make the tears crawl
right back up into my eyes, justlike Jesus.
When Chester Bennington died in July 2017, Linkin Park's future
seemed frozen in place. The band retreated, Mike Shinoda
released solo work, and fans assumed the group might quietly

(54:24):
dissolved. For years, the conversation
around a new vocalist was off limits.
Emotionally, artistically, and ethically, the idea of anyone
standing where Chester once stood felt almost sacrilegious.
But time changes everything, andin early 2004, the rumors turned
into murmurs, and the murmurs turned into headlines.
Lincoln Park was coming back. How murmurs.

(54:47):
And not with a legacy guest vocalist, but with someone
entirely new, someone with a background that drew both
excitement and scrutiny. Her name is Emily Armstrong.
Oh. So we don't like Emily Armstrong
or do we like Emily Armstrong? It's complicated.
It's definitely. Yeah, she has met the audience
with a lot Like we have all beenvery hesitant.

(55:08):
No one has been exactly welcoming with open arms right
at the first hearing of her. Yeah, I remember I randomly got
a call from my buddy who's in the music industry, and he's
like, are you watching this? And I was like, watching what?
He's like, Linkin Park is back. And so they came back.
They had a countdown on their YouTube page.
And then once the countdown ended, it opened up to them

(55:30):
walking on stage in Los Angeles.Yeah, they.
Had they just had a live stream concert?
Oh. Cool.
And I was like, what the fuck isthis?
Yeah, it was. It's a little strange.
They had this this girl come on stage with them singing all of
Chester's parts, and she couldn't fully do the stuff that
he was able to do. I see.
So I was like, this is like thisor this is a cover band.
This is disrespectful. Oh I see, it's like a Fleetwood

(55:51):
Fleetwood Mac cover band where they have an album called
Murmurs instead of a Rumors. Exactly, Yeah.
So Emily Armstrong, I guess. She's best known as the lead
vocalist of the alternative rockband Dead Sarah.
It was formed in Los Angeles in the early 2000s.
Her voice is raspy, powerful andemotionally explosive.
Quality qualities fans immediately compared to

(56:13):
Chester's raw intensity. OK, so there's some similarity
there. Yes, by 2020, Armstrong had
built a reputation as one of themost underrated rock vocalist
out there. So what most fans did not know,
at least at first, was the second layer of controversy
surrounding her. Because Emily, She grew up in
Los Angeles, within a community that included members of the

(56:33):
Church of Scientology. So Linkin Park is now
Scientology? I I also learned that Isaac
Hayes, who played chef on South Park, when when that Scientology
episode came out, he was like, not mentally all there.
So Scientology is the reason that he quit.
He wouldn't have quit. That's what his son said.

(56:54):
They tarnished chef. And for that Scientology, he'll
never be forgiven. Oh.
My God, I didn't know that they.Fucked it all up.
She has never come out and said herself that she's a
Scientologist, but there are she's been at events and been
labeled not a like something higher than a member.
It's like a valued member of theChurch of Scientology.

(57:16):
She's. A very important.
Person yes, exactly. She's not a suppressive person.
She's a very important. Person not a suppressive, OK?
Also, I'm still getting mail fora Scientologist who owes Deuce.
OK, buddy, 'cause you used to live in my house.
You owe Deuce up to $65. Oh, it was 8 like last year I
remember up to 65. Now they're fucking and that's

(57:38):
gonna take like 10,000 years to work off 'cause they paid like a
fraction of a cent per hour his.Theatin level is so crazy.
The the number of things he has.Oh my God, it's ridiculously.
You gotta get to an audit, yeah.Please.
So it's not really a rumor, but it's not a confirmation of
membership that she's involved with the Church of Scientology.

(58:00):
It's part of her footprint and part of what sparked immediate
controversy with her name attached to Linkin Park.
So what is verified is that Emily and Dead Sarah have
performed at events and venues frequented by Hollywood
Scientology circles. Several public photos place
Armstrong within overlapping social circles, linking various
LA celebrities, including Danny Masterson, and including others

(58:24):
involved in Scientology scandals.
There's a huge Scientology building.
It's not Burbank, right? Yeah.
And it's like never open until. It's they have a huge event,
then they block the street off. Until they have a huge event and
then they have a private parkingarea where it's never never
used. Yeah, it's like an acre of land
that's just completely never used.
It's just really bizarre. There's LA is a strange.

(58:46):
Place. It is a weird, lawless land.
I went over there when they werehaving one of their big events
and there's like celebrities andstuff coming and going and, and
instead of the red carpet, they had black carpet.
I was like, that's creepy, man. That's fucking.
Dark. Dude, yeah, it's cool.
That's very Foldemort. Let's walk the black carpet.
Yeah, that's. So neat.
Wow. Just a bunch of short fat guys

(59:07):
with tall chicks. Yeah.
Fucking cool, guys. This is awesome.
Yeah, We're like edgy, even though we're like not because
we're totally conformed. Yeah, so the the fandom was
completely split into several camps.
Camp one, this is the future fans who felt the band deserved
a second life, who believed Armstrong's voice brought

(59:27):
necessary emotional weight. So, you know, as as a podcast
that is, you know, has differentmembers over the years.
I completely get it. I I understand why people would
be like, this isn't the same. I'm out or you know, you.
You deserve to keep going. Yeah, but also.
She's a female vocalist, so you don't want to say that her voice

(59:47):
has weight, OK. Because she'll be like, what do
you mean my voice is fat? How fat is my voice?
I think her voice is fucking. Her voice is heavy set.
Yeah. It's plump.
It's plump voice, dude. Yeah, it's curvy.
It's got ass. Camp 2 is No one should replace

(01:00:08):
Chester fans who felt the band should continue only with legacy
projects or instrumentally. Right, right.
You can see that. But but, yeah, you can only hold
the microphone out to the audience so many times, right?
Yeah. And also, the band has a right
to perform. The band was the band's awesome.
Yeah, exactly. The the rest of them are still
alive. Yeah, right.
So camp three, you know, people that are supportive of it, but

(01:00:29):
they're concerned about the Scientology and Danny Masterson
saying, saying it's red flags. Yeah, the whole thing with Danny
Masterson is like, basically like he's been seen in photos
with her. Yeah.
And then they were saying that privately she has supported him
before he was convicted. So those are rumors.
Those are murmurs. Those are murmurs.

(01:00:52):
Right. So I fought this new project for
so long. I didn't love the concert,
obviously, because she was struggling with his, with his,
you know, version of songs and stuff like that.
So when this new album came out,it's called From Zero, which I
really like because they're starting from less than one.

(01:01:12):
They're starting in the hole andthey recognize that.
They knew a lot of people would be upset.
But this new album, man, I listened to it yesterday and
like sobbed. It's good.
Well, it's very good. So she has her own thing.
She can't do exactly what Chester did, but she can bring
the same type of energy. And Linkin Park, they, they,

(01:01:32):
they did their own thing, like we said, from like 2010 to 2017,
definitely a little bit more, you know, electronic sound and
everything. Now it's back.
The old sound is back, Hybrid Theory sound is back.
It's like heavy guitars, the fucking crazy beats, good raps
from Mike and this girl can bring it.

(01:01:53):
Alright, so as a Linkin Park fan, I understand if people are
like, I don't wanna give it a chance.
Let me tell you, give it a chance.
Interesting. There's a lot of powerful
moments where it seems like they're talking directly to
Chester and certain points where, you know, they're sad,
they're angry, they're, you know, emotional wistful.
And the last track is talking about how they'll never let him

(01:02:16):
fade. Oh, OK.
So it's kind of an in memorial. Yes, album.
It's like a whole thing because it's like, it does seem at
certain points there are momentswhere they're covering the five
stages of grief, which is, you know, ends in acceptance.
Yeah, but you got the anger in there.
You got the begging. You know, this can't be.
This can't be right. A bargaining.
There's actually 6 stages of grief that nobody talks about,

(01:02:39):
and that's called food and that's called Domino's.
Yeah. Yeah, and Taco Bell, Yes, Or Del
Taco if you're in Los Angeles. Right.
Well, I heard a couple of the songs earlier.
Yeah. And I definitely hear the power,
the heaviness of like that, justlike heavy rock sound.
Mm Hmm. In their songs.
She can definitely bring it. It makes me wonder why she

(01:03:02):
couldn't do the exactly, you know, Chester's old songs
because. Right.
She's doing great vocally now inthat new album.
Yeah. I can't wait to listen to more
of it. OK, yeah, I think she found
exactly her exact range. Got it 'cause she goes very high
and then comes down and gravely and like it just lets you know
Chester was that fucking talented.
Where he had more of a range, hehad a huge.

(01:03:23):
Range, she leaves the Freddie Mercury of screaming.
Yeah, I love that. So to Linda Bennington, she's
been one of the most vocal advocates for Chester's true
legacy, not as a rock star, but as a father, husband and man
battling relentless illness. She said Chester didn't want to
die. He had a disease.
There were days he was strong and days he wasn't.

(01:03:44):
But he loved his family. He loved life.
She actually started foundationscalled Give an Hour and 320
Changes Direction, global initiatives aimed at mental
health support and suicide prevention.
She continues to speak directly to fans, saying Chester's fans
saved him as much as he saved them.
Her message was always clear. Chester was more than just the

(01:04:05):
moment he died. Oh.
Absolutely. Yeah.
That's a great, that's a great way to put it.
Yes, Mike Shinoda came out and said he didn't know if he could
ever make music again. And he didn't know if Linkin
Park could go on. Chester.
Chester wasn't just our singer, he was our family.
Yeah, absolutely. I can't imagine how shocked they
were to find out as well. Yeah, and again, the five stages

(01:04:29):
of grief, they, they had to havebeen so upset, pissed.
Everything runs the whole gamut.And he said in 2025, we're not
replacing Chester. We're continuing a legacy we
built together, OK? Brad Delson also in the bands.
He rarely speaks publicly, but he said that Chester was the
bravest person he knew. He sang about his demons because

(01:04:49):
he wanted people to know they weren't alone.
I. Love that.
Joe said he treated every fan like he treated every fan, like
they were the only person in theworld.
He gave everything, even when hedidn't have anything left to
give. I love that.
So good, yeah. Mm hmm, you got it without.
Well, we're nothing without the fans.
Yes. And every fan felt like he was

(01:05:10):
singing directly to them. Oh, absolutely.
Just so resonant with everyone'swhen everyone struggles.
And of course, because of that, one fan did stalk him to the
point where she got his emails and stuff like that.
But. Yeah, yeah, yeah, she.
Was in the federal government. It's insane.
That's the catch 22 of all that,Yeah.
Across every interview, every bandmate, every family member,

(01:05:32):
and every friend, a few themes repeat.
Chester loved his family. He loved his fans.
He battled trauma and depressionquietly, courageously, and for
decades. And his death was His death was
the result of a mental health crisis, not a lack of love or
hope, and his impact continues to save lives.
Absolutely. And suicide, it's just a moment,

(01:05:54):
you know it Just yeah. If you can get past that moment.
Yes, I mean, gosh, we've all, I'm sure all of us have had our
experiences with attempted or whatever.
I mean, we're life is very difficult.
Yes, we can thank God that we'rehere today.
Exactly. Just try to be here tomorrow
too. Absolutely.
And I, I think Chester all of the time or just just having the

(01:06:15):
those words that he was able to reach out with all of us makes
feel a little less alone. Absolutely.
Absolutely. Yeah.
So RIP Chester Bennington. All right.
P All right everyone. Well, thank you so much for
listening to another fantastic episode of Death and
entertainment powerful lessons, I think today and take care of
yourselves and of course, love yourself.

(01:06:35):
Be yourself. Hail yourself.
And until next week. Don't go dying on us.
Bye everyone you have just heard.
A true Hollywood murder mystery.I have never seen anything like
this before. The movies, Broadway, music,
television, all of it. A place that manufacturers
nightmares. Look everybody, that's a wrap.

(01:06:58):
Goodnight. Please drive home carefully and
come back again soon.