Linkin Park singer's death is another reminder that behind great art can lie greater suffering
Back in the ninth grade, a year or so after Hybrid Theory had come out, my friends and I would sit in some boring class or the other - chemistry, usually - and spend that time practising our musical chops. We'd do a top-to- bottom rendition of "In The End", still getting used to our newly-croaked voices. One guy would bang the table - "drums!" - another would do the rap bits in an American accent; a third would do a crappy job of Chester Bennington's challenging, high- pitched melodies.
Last night, Bennington died, aged 41, a suspected suicide. It's a rush of distant melodies returning. Like the time my friends and I went to the barber shop together, with the Hybrid Theory cassette inlay in our pockets. "Aisa haircut chahiye, boss," we told the bemused barber. The leaflet had a photo of all the band members; we'd picked our favourites.
After those initial years, I learnt to suppress any affections I had for Linkin Park. I taught myself to dislike them after their second album, Meteora, as I felt they were too "mainstream". I was young; I felt the need to align myself with musical ideologies. Linkin Park was fast becoming (to me) a punchline, and so I went one way after Meteora, the band went a different way. I was into labels at the time; Linkin Park was "nu-metal", I was not. I wasn't alone though - this happened with so many people around me, it's absurd. We all grew up adoring the living shit out of Hybrid Theory. Then, to a lesser extent, Meteora. Following that, we never really bothered.
But the memories formed in those three years - memories of adolescent confusion and young discovery - will last a lifetime. And Bennington's voice - not to forget his thrilling back-and- forth with Mike Shinoda's half-rap, half-teen- poetry - plays acentral role in that.
In that period of Linkin Park's existence, they were a phenomenon. It didn't matter how old you were, or what music you liked, or what school or college you went to. If you were young and your parents owned a working television in the early-2000s, you knew damn well who Linkin Park were, and you loved them. Because there really was no other option. Each song of theirs had the kind of hook you'd hum during REM sleep. It's a rare skill, to be able to capture that collective emotion and put it into song. They were, for that specific pocket of time, at the top of the world. In India, Bennington was arguably the voice of a young generation.
He sang every single line - even the soft, whispered bits - with the kind of rage and passion that made you wonder if his insides might come tumbling out into the world. Come to think of it, it was like a child hopped up on candy, entering a toy store, yelling at the top of his voice, going absolutely nuts. It stood for chaos and the yearning for childlike freedom that lies at the heart of every adult.
There's a video of Bennington doing a duet with the also recently deceased Chris Cornell on Linkin Park's "Crawling". It's delightful to see how Cornell's effortless control of the high registers is in contrast to Bennington going all out with every word - his voice crackling, his eyeballs shaky, his chest trembling with the excruciating physical effort he was putting in - on those exact same melodies. His delivery was always at 100%.
It's why his angst still remains as quotable, as relatable, as ever. They were simple feelings, thoughts any kid could relate to, sung with the kind of all-guns- blazing fury that's so easy to internalise and connect with. It's why his untimely death - sad and terribly tragic, all the more so given he'd been battling his own demons all these years - resonates so profoundly with so many people of a certain age, regardless of whether they've moved on from the band's latter day works.
Beyond just Linkin Park's own work, at the centre of which was Bennington, an aspect that's impossible to ignore is the impact they had on the musical education of our generation. The new-agey packaging of the sound, with crisp production; the interplay between multiple genres; the vitally rock 'n' roll heart of the whole operation. It was an introduction to a world existing outside the boundaries of what we knew - we were all, in the mainstream, so used to things falling into neat little arrangements. We were busy compartmentalising and picking sides.
And here was a band that just tossed all that shit together into a little bowl with disdain, and wrote these extraordinarily catchy songs with that template. They were the perfect gateway band, giving people a palatable glimpse of the endless possibilities that lay ahead of us at the time. As the news of his death is registering, I'm reading music journalists pointing how their sound signalled a future for rock music. At the same time, kids in metropolitans and small towns alike are recalling how their journey into rock 'n' roll began courtesy just this one band, how deeply it inspired them. They opened doors everywhere.
I confess, as the EP with Jay-Z, Collision Course, came out, I began falling out of love with the band. I'd discovered other music (some of which came courtesy Linkin Park itself), and I wasn't quite on board with their sound or the place they occupied in pop culture (whatever that means). So I never really followed them much; Bennington joining Stone Temple Pilots briefly a few years ago was met only with casual derision.
Yet his death comes as a cruel reminder that, so often, behind so much of the art we consume and dispose of each day lies a world of suffering. Bennington's impact is visible in the grief his death has evoked, in the personal stories of people who owe so much of their growing up to Linkin Park's music. However much it matters now, the vulnerability of his voice, the commitment with which he sang, has led to countless moments of catharsis.
Some suicide helplines in case you or someone you know is suffering from depression
AASRA- 022 2754 6669
The Samaritans Mumbai– 022 6464 3267, 022 6565 3267, 022 6565 3247
Lifeline Foundation– +91 33 24637401, +91 33 24637432
Connecting India– 9922001122, 18002094353
Sumaitri – 011-23389090