just a heads up: this essay includes some discussion of suicide
The news of the death of Chester Bennington, front man and lead singer of Linkin Park, affected me deeply. This was strange: a lot of musical greats have died recently—Prince, Bowie, Chuck Berry—and while each death saddened me, I refrained from outward shows of grief. This time was different.
It felt even stranger because, for the majority of my adult life, Linkin Park has been little more than the butt of a joke. It’s the kind of band some people associate with their emo teens, and thus worthy of derision. I even have an ongoing joke with some coworkers: who can sneak the most of the lyrics of “In The End” into a design review as possible?
“I tried so hard!” “And got so far!” “But in the end, you know. It doesn’t even matter.”
That’s usually as far as I get before I get a crumpled sticky note thrown at me. But there was a time when I learned every word to that song, and those words were a mantra to me, a refrain that I could use to feel stronger.
Bennington’s death hit me hard in part because of how he died. I found out through a tweet, obscurely referencing his death and calling for the press to report it responsibly as he had died of suicide. I immediately searched for answers and within minutes got them all: How he died. How he did it. I knew that I shouldn’t have—that’s one of the very things responsible reporting calls for, and something I should look out for. I live with depression and suicidal ideation. I know better — that Knowing How fuels unhelpful, harmful fantasies. I’ve had it happen to me before: seeing a tweet, a headline, a medical report that gives me every detail I need to have a vivid image of my body, experiencing that method, an intrusive desire that I don’t want and I don’t honor.
But this time, I didn’t imagine it happening to myself, or as it happened to him. I remembered his music, and I felt thankful that it was there at a crucial time in my life.
I have an in-depth knowledge of Bennington’s oeuvre. Linkin Park was the first — and for a long time, only — “secular,” non-Christian band I ever listened to, at least on purpose. I grew up in a strict church environment, with parents who were well-meaning but afraid of everything. Growing up, I wasn’t even allowed to listen to Christian Rock, for fear that it had the devil in it, somehow, living in the amped-up guitar strings. I once asked a friend to gift me the Christian-rock band Audio Adrenaline’s Underdog album for my birthday, because I had been forbidden to buy it with my allowance money. My mom was furious. She accused me of being sneaky, of already being sucked in by demonic forces that wanted me to listen to this music. She explained to me her honest belief that Antichrist Satanists had invented rock music, that even Christian rock bands might unknowingly conjure this evil and bring it into our home. I had nightmares about this as a kid, of being possessed by demonic forces because I accidentally heard a song they lived in, lying in wait to poison my head. I’d have vivid images of ghosts in my room, shifting here and there, ready to get inside of my head. In a way, they did, but not from the rock music.
Imagine telling a child that they are already bad. That they are evil at their core and will have to work their entire life to live against their own nature and be good. If they don’t manage to pull that off, they will suffer for eternity. Try explaining eternity. Try to explain fire and burning and hell. Tell them every natural impulse is the work of a monster, there to trick them into doing something wrong so that they can be trapped there forever. Try not to let that fuck them up.
By 8th grade, I had chipped away at my parents enough that even they enjoyed Audio Adrenaline, DC Talk, The Newsboys, Jars of Clay—all the rock bands that were beginning to emerge as a dominant Christian Contemporary Music genre in the early 2000s. Better them than Black Sabbath, right?
When I first heard Linkin Park’s “One Step Closer,” with its harsh, exploding refrain (“Shut up when I’m talking to you / Shut up / Shut up”), I knew I was listening to something Bad. In fact, one of the “bad kids” at school played it for me, intending to scare and titillate the mousy goody-two-shoes students like me. But I heard something in that reedy tenor that I knew was for me, and I wanted to hear more. To his surprise, I asked the kid to burn me a copy of his CD, and he brought me Hybrid Theory and, later, Meteora. This music was strange, loud, crashing and haunted. The guitars sawed at me. The screaming scared me. I loved it.
Linkin Park came to me in an unusually restrictive environment. The denomination of the Christian school I attended required me to wear a khaki-and-polos uniform daily, except Thursdays when girls had to wear a plaid skirt and a thin, white oxford for Chapel. The worst days were when it rained, and we’d rush across the long courtyard from the school buildings to the church, hugging our nascent breasts to hide them from the gawking boys. They’d play at distract-and-bother, trying to impel us to uncross our arms. Once in the chapel, we’d shiver quietly, singing the hymns in eight-part harmony because instruments weren’t allowed in worship. Women weren’t allowed to speak publicly in the church besides to ask for prayer or join in a recital of scripture; I remember one of the most egregious examples of this rule occurred my Junior year when a former Senior who had joined the army died in Afghanistan. His best friend, a woman, wasn’t allowed to lead a prayer for him. She stormed out, and the captain of the basketball team gave an uninspired elegy. My senior prom was a formal dinner because dancing led to impure thoughts, which led to abortion, which led to hell.
I didn’t know I was queer yet. In truth, queerness wasn’t even something I considered, because liking girls was a foreign option, and sex was a forbidden topic. It took me years to realize I was in love with my best friend, my first boyfriend’s sister — classic set-up. But I did know that something was different. Something felt wrong in my core, pooling under my ribs and constricting me. I wasn’t meeting expectations. I had many black nights, awake with nightmares, replaying all I’d done wrong that day and praying that it didn’t relegate me to hell forever, fearing my lack of perfection would be an eternal sentence. Into this came “Crawling”—
There’s something inside me that pulls beneath the surface/ Consuming, confusing / This lack of self-control I fear is never ending / Controlling, I can’t seem / To find myself again / My walls are closing in (Without a sense of confidence / I’m convinced that there’s just too much pressure to take) / I’ve felt this way before / So insecure
These words were like staring at the sun to find its black center: so true, and so direct. “Crawling,” ” Numb,” and “In the End” were all on the radio. Becoming a teen is hard, and to many of us these words became the soundtrack to our angst. To my sheltered heart, they were permission. Bennington’s self-loathing and aimless rage spoke to me on a level I didn’t understand, connecting me to anger I didn’t know I had. His anger was so present and so empathic. It told me it was okay that I had it too—that I wasn’t alone, that my feelings were normal. It replaced my fear, and it helped me survive. It was anger that I could work with, that I could use to reshape my hurt. He taught me to make the walls I needed to build a space that I could grow inside. Rather than inflicting me with demons, Bennington’s music helped me fight them.
It’s strange to laud a — by all accounts, straight, white, cis male — on this website. It’s a weird thing for me, a person who has fully integrated misandry into my personal brand, to do. But Linkin Park helped me fully accept myself, they taught me that feeling “wrong” was normal, and put me on the path to learning that my queerness is one of the best damn things about me. Some people will look at Linkin Park’s lyrics and use them to draw a thick, black line to how Bennington died, but that would be a mistake. Bennington took the suffering of being human, and he met it head-on. He used it to create, and his deft ability to negotiate his personal traumas walked many of us through doing the same. Sasha Geffen, of Consequence of Sound, said it best:
…scanning Linkin Park’s music as the preamble to an inevitable tragedy flattens the work, squeezes all the holographic dimensionality out of it. To live with the scars Bennington wore is itself a triumph. To make music so generously from those scars, with so much vulnerability, is a gift that takes incredible strength to give.
I don’t know anything about Chester Bennington’s life since he helped make Linkin Park’s debut and sophomore albums. I don’t know what his life looked like when he got up every morning to face the day. But I do know what it looks like to do that, and I know that the fact that he did, for many years, was brave as hell. I know that when I most needed to, I used his music and lyrics to give shape to monsters that felt too vague and too big for me to understand. Though he never knew me, never met the overwhelmed, baby queer teen crying in Austin, Texas in 2002, I felt like for a time we fought the same malady, side by side. He took depression into his hands and gave it voice. He didn’t let it overpower him, but he let himself feel it, and he screamed it out. His death feels to me like that of a fellow soldier, in the trenches of the same battle I’m fighting. It makes me want to keep fighting. He lived a life of honesty, and I hope that he rests in power. Thank you, Chester Bennington.
Great article, thank you! It’s not going to be the same without him, I loved Linkin Park growing up!!!
Great read! Chester will be dearly missed and never forgotten
Hybrid Theory showed me that it was ok to feel how I felt AND ok to want to feel better. I carry those first two albums in my bones. Thank you for this beautiful tribute, my friend <3
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“I carry those first two albums in my bones.”
Yes, same, thank you for this lovely way of phrasing it.
Don’t mind me, just casually two steps away from crying in public.
This was super beautiful, thank you!
Chris Cornell and Chester Benningtons deaths affected me even more than Prince and Bowie because sound garden and Linkin park were my soundtracks growing up. I have a good chunk of my childhood repressed, and clear memories start with middle school in the mid 90s, and that music is in my blood.
Excellent piece. Being 14 and not even knowing that there was a thing called ‘depression’, but then having this band that sounded exactly like what I was feeling a lot of the time…I dunno. I’ve never stopped appreciating what LP meant to me in that time.
This is a beautiful article. I almost didn’t read it because I too have the depression and suicide ideation. So I stay away from any article that can trigger it. This didn’t do it. It made me remember I’m not alone. It made me grateful I’m not as deep in the darkness these days. It reminded me that things have gotten better. It reminded me I don’t have to believe all those terrifying things preached to me growing up Southern Baptist. It reminded me of all those long nights I didn’t sleep. It reminded me that I mostly sleep peacefully through the night now. And it reminds me to have compassion for others. Thank you for sharing.
This broke my heart. I’m so glad this article could speak to you based on our shared experience, and I’m so glad you can sleep through the night now. Stay strong out there. <3
This was beautiful. I had a similar Christian upbringing and Linkin Park was one of those groups that I felt very conflicted about listening to. I still enjoyed them, but the lyrics didn’t resonate with me until the late 2000s. I was in my mid twenties and divorcing, getting excommunicated, and coming out of the closet. Suddenly Chester’s voice gave me incredible clarity. I didn’t feel like I was alone. I felt like I had an outlet. I knew that other people could understand me. They’ve been one of my favorite groups ever since and anytime I feel like I need that outlet, I still listen.
I should add, I have also struggled with self-harm, suicidal ideation, and substance abuse. At that time in my life, I finally realized, at least a little, that there wasn’t something inherently broken in me. That I actually had at least a little value.
<3
This was really beautiful, thank you. It really hit hard, cause like many here I spent my HS years listening the first album over and over and paying loads of money to see them perform. I regret at little not listening to the last two albums they way I listened to the first two and the remix album.
Thank you!
This was a really beautiful and touching read, thank you for writing it.
Thank you for reading.
Thank you for this. I needed to not feel alone with how hard this hit me. Linkin Park were so important in my teens dealing with shame and depression and perhaps most of all helping me process and move on from my best friend’s suicide attempt. In that context this seems like a particularly brutal ending for the man whose music brought me so much hope and stopped me feeling so alone. Thank you for letting me know I’m not alone in feeling this way.
I’m so sorry you had to go through that. It really is heartbreaking. I’m so glad you don’t have to feel alone <3
I still remember the first time I listened to Faint. Until this day it helps me.
Thanks for writing this
Thank you!
I’m not crying, you’re crying
I’m not crying these are just invisible onions I am chopping, here, vehemently,
Ooh, word. I love this article. And I still love “One Step Closer.”
THIS:
“Imagine telling a child that they are already bad. That they are evil at their core and will have to work their entire life to live against their own nature and be good. If they don’t manage to pull that off, they will suffer for eternity. Try explaining eternity. Try to explain fire and burning and hell. Tell them every natural impulse is the work of a monster, there to trick them into doing something wrong so that they can be trapped there forever. Try not to let that fuck them up.”
Raquel! Get out of my head!!
My bad!
The music of Linkin Park spoke to me as a teenager because it expressed the anger I wasn’t allowed to express and addressed head-on the wrongness (of unrealized queerness, of depression and self-harm, of trying to cope with abuse) that I was feeling. Thank you for writing this.
Thank you for reading
Thank you so much for writing this. I know a lot of great people have already passed away but this one has hit me the hardest so far. I would listen to him scream the words i could not say. He helped me through some of the worst years of my life filled with abuse and cruelty. He made me a strong human who takes no shit from people who hurt me. Im so so sad he is gone, but im so so thankful for what he did for a generation of humans
I’m so glad we could both find strength <3
I feel that “Imagine” paragraph so hard.
My metal tastes have changed beyond nü metal (including Linkin Park) but there’s no denying that genre brought me out of Christian music and let me towards other music that would resonate and make me feel more than hated. So yeah this death meant something for what this music once meant.
<3
Raquel, thank you so much for writing about how much Chester and Linkin Park impacted you! Linkin Park was there for me too when I was an introverted, weirdo middle schooler. It didn’t really hit me how instrumental Linkin Park was to me till I was reading your essay. I cried just thinking about this dude who really gave us so much! I texted my childhood best friends who also loved Linkin Park and we reminisced about our hella awkward middle school years. We use to sign off our letters to each other, “LP ROCKS!” with like little stars drawn around it.
Thank you, Yvonne! That means a lot. Also, that’s amazing. **LP ROCKS!**
Thank you for this. Of the recent musician deaths this one hit me hardest as well. I too first heard and began listening to Linkin Park at a time I really needed it and I am forever thankful for it. I really appreciate you story and take on this
trans woman here, listening through hybrid theory again and just remember how I felt as a kid. Just feeling this a lot right now
Wow this is so relatable.
My parents didn’t let me listen to Christian rock until 8th grade too. For me, it was the Wow Hits 2006 cd.
I had a huge crush on Chester as a teenager. Im a gay male. I really wish he was still alive. He channeled his pain in a beautiful way