This one hurts.

When I first discovered Linkin Park, I was a hip-hop kid. It was what I grew up on and, not being particularly open-minded about music as a 16 year old, it was all I ever intended to listen to. And then I heard Chester Bennington’s voice for the first time.



Flicking through my go-to set of music channels — Channel U, Kiss, MTV Base — after school one day, I caught a glimpse of Jay Z standing on stage with something I’d never seen before: a live band. Curiosity triumphed, I set the remote down and quickly found myself wrapped up in this alternate version of ‘Encore’. Initially, I assumed this was just Jay’s backing band, but then as he dropped his “I came, I saw, I conquered” line and the music swelled and swelled around him, I knew something else was coming. I had no clue what it was going to be, but something special, something other was about to burst out of the speakers. Then it hit.

Starting gently enough, all the camera focus was now on this scrawny, awkward looking dude in a baseball cap. I never knew that someone could be described as ‘unconvincing’ in the way they wore something before, but Chester wasn’t fooling anyone, was he? And he was singing his fucking heart out. Caked in sweat and with a vein bulging prominently in his neck, this guy was taking a song I thought I knew inside out and adding an entirely new dimension to it. By the time the song had reached its next crescendo and Chester’s signature rasp had found my ears for the first time, I knew I needed more. The next day, I hassled my best friend — and the only rock music fan I knew who I hadn’t filed under ‘Weird Grunger’ and forgotten about — for a go on his iPod. I found ‘One Step Closer’ on there and quite literally the course of my life was changed forever.



That’s no dramatic overstatement, either. That’s not the writer in me clawing to say the most impactful thing I can conjure up. It’s the truth. A week later, I bought a guitar so I could learn the ‘One Step Closer’ riff — the fucker was in a non-standard tuning though, so I was stuck for a few months. That summer saw me glue headphones to my ears for the first time as I listened to nothing but Hybrid Theory, Meteora and Reanimation from the time I woke up until the moment I went to sleep. By the time school started up again, the same friend that had opened the gate was so sick of me singing ‘Crawling’ at him in every class that he marched me to HMV on the walk home and bought me ten non-Linkin Park rock records just so that I’d sing literally anything else. “As if there’s more of this,” I probably thought. And now, eight years on, I pay my bills by writing about rock music, the thing I obsessed over from that day forward. All because Chester Bennington managed to show up on a Jay Z track and steal the show.



In that sense, this is the first passing of a public figure that feels like a true loss to me. I’ve lost my Elvis, as that one seemingly perma-viral webcomic puts it. Sure, I’ve not been a fan of anything the band have done for a decade (and, if I’m being honest, even Minutes To Midnight felt like I was forcing myself to enjoy it), but I owe Chester and Linkin Park, well, everything.

I’m not writing this because I’m the only one with a story like this; far from it. Pretty much everyone within five years of my age who listens to rock music today will tell you something similar. Linkin Park are (…were? Fucking hell.) the influential rock band of this millennium and the impact of their output will be felt for generations to come – and that wouldn’t be the case without the talent of Chester Bennington. That’s what should be dominating conversation for the next month. Leave out all the rest.



Thank you, Chester Bennington. Rest in peace.