About Chester Bennington
Back in 2000 or 2001, when MTV was becoming one of my favorite TV channels (sorry Cartoon Network and Nickelodeon), I was starting little by little to explore new music genres. After leaving my “pop fan” stage, I was into funk, “soft commercial” punk, some ska and pop-rock (Matchbox 20 style); other kind of rock songs caught my attention but I was trying to avoid everything that sounded too “hard”. Nu metal — a sub-genre that nowadays is remembered as dumb-ish — was very trendy among teenagers who loved rock, and bands like Korn or Limp Bizkit had already a big fan base, I liked some of their songs but that was it. I changed channels every time a song of Metallica or System of a Down was being broadcast. Too harsh for my delicate ears. I also did the same with a song/video called “One Step Closer” played by a weird band called Linkin Park; the guys looked so aggro and I didn’t like the sound of it.
That was me at 14 years old.
One day, I was at home watching MTV when all of a sudden “In The End” video appeared in front of me. My 14-year-old self thought Chester looked very handsome and had a cute smile, but apart from the “visual attraction”, I loved the song from beginning to end. I tried so hard and got so far, but in the end it doesn’t even matter, those words resonated with me very deeply, deeper than expected. Soon that song started to sound in one of the — only — three radio stations that didn’t play salsa, cumbia, proto-reggaeton or depressive love songs in Spanish. Lots of options if you are a rock fan in Peru, as you can see. I was so happy listening to that song every time it was featured on the weekly ranking of such radios, especially Planeta (which played very commercial rock music and pop, basically in English), but I felt more intrigued to know more about the band. Apart from not skipping any more Linkin Park’s videos on MTV (I felt enormously happy singing along to “One Step Closer”, “Crawling” and “In The End”, the only singles with videos until then), I feel frustrated because Planeta only played In The End, and In The End… I was craving for more Linkin Park’s songs.
Doble Nueve is — as their slogan says — “the rock radio in Lima”, but I always tried to avoid it because it was too rock-ish for me. But that changed after I heard “My December” on that radio station, a nice electronic ballad where Chester’s voice turned so emotional and touching, that was not included on their first album, “Hybrid Theory”. And a year later or so, they played very inedit songs that were recorded way before that album. After that, they won my heart and I became a big fan of the radio for many, many years.
They always played exclusive and amazing songs, and other radios were quite lame compared to it. Because I was all the time listening to Doble Nueve, waiting for a Linkin Park song to be played, my ears became more and more used to all those other rock songs — classic, psychedelic, progressive, British punk, grunge, thrash, hardcore, nu metal… you name it— that were being played there and on MTV. Rock became my drug, my utter happiness and in a certain way, my reason to live.
I knew by heart most of the songs of “Hybrid Theory” — because I printed the lyrics, and well, as a non native English speaker it was very useful — and became the official soundtrack of the end of high school (I finished high school at 15 or 16 y.o.). Being an introvert and insecure teenager with a very unhealthy relationship with my family, I found on Linkin Park’s lyrics and Chester’s charming and powerful voice, full of angst and real feelings, my safe haven. I remember thinking “Points Of Authority” was the perfect song to describe the whole situation I was living back then.
As the curious person that I am, I looked for more info about Chester and the guys. When I found out he was sexually abused as a child, and his cop father was never nice to him, and he was a geek back in high school — I still remember that pic with his big curly hair and glasses — , plus his struggles with drugs, I understood where all the angst came from, and as a fellow “outcast”, he gained my total sympathy. I was slightly disappointed to know he was married (he’d divorce and re marry some years later), but nevertheless, felt happy for him and it gave me some hope that after being through a lot of shit, things can get better and you can have a “normal and happy life”. He was the reason I started to listen to Stone Temple Pilots after discovering it was his favorite band (I would never imagine he would end up replacing Scott Weiland for a season). I kept collecting pics of him (and Mike) though, and printing them behind my mother’s back who didn’t like me to spend the ink on ‘stupid stuff’, but for me, those pics were a real treasure. She didn’t allow us to put any pictures or posters on our bedroom’s walls, so I kept the printed pics in a special folder.
I used to dream about going to California, just to meet him and telling him how important his music was for me, how much it had helped me, and giving him a hug, after attending a concert of them. Also, met other people online who loved Linkin Park as much as me: a Mexican girl, another from the UK and a couple of Americans. RIP Geocities. I bought a pirate version of their DVD, with a lot of the stuff that happened on the backstage, that was pure gold. I knew the name of the tours or festivals where they were performing, like Ozzfest, Family Values Tour, etc., even though I knew it would be totally impossible for me to go there.
I also loved Meteora, their second album, although it didn’t resonate with me as deeply as Hybrid Theory. Then, the remix album came out, it was nice too. By that time, I was already on college and my life was slightly different, I started to listen to bossa nova, indie, world music and trova. Rock was (and is) still an important part of my life, but I didn’t have time and effort anymore to keep up with what was going on with the band. Social life and (big amounts of) homework happened, plus they were inactive for some years, and when they came back with “What I’ve done”, I was already another version of myself, and I thought they sort of sold out when they changed their style, since nu metal wasn’t a profitable sub-genre anymore. I guess from then and on I stopped being a fan.
Never became such a passionate fan again of any other band or artist (maybe Regina Spektor?), but I knew recently they went to Peru to perform. My sister let me know about it but I wasn’t really excited though, since I stopped liking them for so many years, plus imho their albums became more and more disappointing through the years. That was not an isolated opinion, a lot of people thought the same, but Chester never took criticism very well. Now, my old 15-year-old self is right now in tears after finding out he left, and my current self still feels confused, or even worse, numb.
