Chester Bennington, the fierce lead singer for the platinum-selling hard rock band Linkin Park, was found dead in his home near Los Angeles on Thursday. He was 41.
Chief of operations for the Los Angeles County coroner’s office, Brian Elias confirmed the death, in Palos Verdes Estates, and said it was being investigated as a possible suicide after law enforcement authorities responded to a call shortly after 9 a.m.
“Shocked and heartbroken, but it’s true,” Linkin Park’s guitarist and main songwriter Mike Shinoda wrote on Twitter.
“It is being handled as a possible suicide,” said Brian Elias, chief of operations at the coroner’s office.
Just hours before his death, Linkin Park had released a video for its latest single, “Talking To Myself,” whose lyrics took on a new meaning.
The song appears to take the vantage point of Bennington’s wife, Talinda Ann Bentley, as she begs him to control his substance abuse.
Bennington who had six children from two marriages — had wrestled with alcohol and drugs since he was a pre-teenager and he coped with his parents’ divorce.
Born and raised in Arizona, Bennington said that a family friend abused him starting at the age of seven.
“I was getting beaten up and being forced to do things I didn’t want to do. It destroyed my self-confidence,” he told the British music site Team Rock in 2014.
“Like most people, I was too afraid to say anything. I didn’t want people to think I was gay or that I was lying,” he said.
He turned his rage into music with a growling metal voice. Linkin Park became one of the leading forces in the wave of so-called nu metal which incorporated pop structures and hip-hop, with Shinoda often rapping in between Bennington’s vocals.
Bennington’s start with Linkin Park sounded like the lore of an earlier era. After abortively trying to make his mark musically in his native Phoenix, a talent scout heard his voice and arranged an audition in Los Angeles with Linkin Park.
The band quickly found a chemistry with Bennington notwithstanding his very different background from Shinoda, a trained classical pianist with a degree in graphic design.
The band, which had struggled before Bennington’s hiring, sealed a record deal with leading label Warner and its debut, “Hybrid Theory,” became the top-selling album in the United States in 2001.
Rockers paid tribute to Bennington including Avril Lavigne, who recalled his kindness when they both played Germany’s Rock Am Ring festival.
“I can’t even deal. Horrible news. To lose one of the best,” she wrote on Instagram.