He’s always in her thoughts. The snapshot memories are there forever, capturing his kindness, the way he smiled, or the goofy times in which he’d made her laugh. There was romance, fun and passion – it dominated everything he did and she loved that about him. But his unswerving authenticity and unbounded loyalty felt important, too. So was an emotional rawness and the way in which his children idolised their dad.
To most of us, Chester Bennington was Linkin Park’s totemic frontman and the occasional singer with Stone Temple Pilots and Dead By Sunrise; the underdog champion and perennial fighter taking swings for the disenfranchised everywhere; the man most likely to speak his mind when everyone else had lost their nerve. But to Talinda Bennington, his wife of 12 years, Chester was “the best father, friend and husband anyone could have.”
It’s been a year since Chester died by suicide, an incident that darkened the rock world in a summer already shadowed by the death of Soundgarden singer Chris Cornell – one of Chester’s closest friends, and a loss that affected him keenly. But 12 months later, the headlines seem just as unimaginable now as they had back then, his memory and image feedbacking through arena-sized anthems on replayed albums. Old Linkin Park footage and interviews circle on YouTube, breathing new energy and poignancy into his memory. And amid the fallout to July 20, 2017, no-one would have quite grasped at the empty spaces once occupied by his larger-than-life presence like Talinda, as well as his mother Susan Eubanks and sister Tobi Knehr – the women closest to Chester, the three people that understood him best.
All of them have been emotionally shattered by the loss of their life-partner, son and sibling, though they’ve summoned the strength to talk about Chester’s legacy in order to mark a year since his passing for this Kerrang! celebration. Their words call out to those Linkin Park fans affected deeply by his tragic departure, while shining light on to the deeper intricacies of a character many people connected with so strongly. More urgently, it’s their valiant effort to prove that death isn’t the escape route for anyone suffering from depression, anxiety, or other potentially consuming conditions. Spreading the word about mental health issues has become a focus for Chester’s friends and family. The hope is that his farewell won’t have been in vain.
For Talinda, finding the right words to describe Chester has been an emotional process, but she’s gathered the courage to recall the tenderness of their relationship, Chester’s role as a father to six children – Jaime, Isaiah, Draven Sebastian, Tyler Lee, Lily and Lila – and his unswerving desire to improve as a person on a daily basis.
“As his wife, he always told me how much he loved and appreciated me,” she says. “He was very physically affectionate and told me that I was beautiful every day – even when I was fat and pregnant! As a father, he was very present. He would take time to listen to the little ones to find out why they were upset, when their only way of communication was crying. He would take time to watch Barbie movies with the girls, and play video games with the boys. And as the head of our family, he always worked hard to secure our future and make sure we were provided for. He was always fighting to be healthy for our sake as well – both physically and mentally. He wanted to be his best for us.
“I’m going to get really personal here,” she continues. “He would stare at me when I was asleep and tell me how much he loved me. I would wake up to him recording this on camera – he would watch the videos while he was away and missing me – and I would start laughing so hard; out of slight embarrassment, but mostly because it was so romantically corny.
“He was so special to me because he was my soul mate. We knew each other inside and out and could oftentimes communicate without words. He was so special to me because he was a present and loving father to our babies and the most romantic and loving husband a woman could ever dream of. Where did that come from? God. He was my heart and soul.
“I loved him from the moment I laid eyes on him.”
In the space of the past 12 months, the legacy of Chester Bennington has grown in stature. His presence remains vivid; his personality gaining more respect and heft by the day as new tributes from those attached to him – written to commemorate the moment of his death last year – gather momentum. Only last month, close friend and bandmate Mike Shinoda explained that Chester had carried with him a “child-like openness and directness”. It wasn’t unusual for him to pour out all sorts of things to a passenger sitting next to him during a flight, explained Mike, “stuff you shouldn’t tell another person on a plane.” With each interview, another layer of Chester’s character has opened up, revealing new depths and endearing traits, like turning the pages of an intimate biography written by the people closest to its heartbeat.
For those working within his orbit, he could be a combative character, however. A man who by his own admission wanted to “stir things up” in the studio while lyrically scrapping for the priorities he considered most important. These creative muses and political standpoints soon became an endearing bond between Chester and Linkin Park’s whirlpool mosh-pits. People understood the struggles as being all-encompassing; they recognised Chester’s need to rail against his perceived enemies over seven studio albums, because he fought the good fight.
“The stuff that can get you pissed,” he explained of his band’s songwriting focus shortly after the release of the band’s sixth studio album, 2014’s The Hunting Party. “Independence, identity, creativity, freedom of expressing all those things. There’s just so much about the world that pisses me off right now. It just gets crazier and crazier… At the same time, there’s no one single answer for all of our problems.
“We’re in an interesting place as a world society. There are a lot of really amazing innovations and amazing things that can make the world better, but at the same time there are still people surviving and people still living in the dark, in burning dung, in heaps of garbage. It doesn’t make sense to me.”
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