FLASHBACK - The frontman of the alternative metal band, was found dead on July 20 at his home in California. He was 41 years old. A discreet character whose career was closely linked to the pains of his childhood.
His unique timbre has made him one of the most popular singers of his generation. With Linkin Park, Chester Bennington has sold more than 70 million albums, including 30 million of the very first, Hybryd Theory . Showman energetic, father of six children, he hid nothing from his fans of his cracks ...
He grew up far from California
Chester Charles Bennington was born March 20, 1976 in Phoenix, Arizona. From a modest background, he has a very early passion for music, citing Depeche Mode and Stone Temple Pilots among his favorite bands. After the divorce of his parents, when he is 11 years old, he begins to drink and consume narcotics. Addictions he will never really get rid of, become an adult.
He was raped at the age of 7
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Chester's father, Lee Russell Bennington, was a detective specializing in crimes against children. Ironically, Chester is only 7 when he is sexually abused by an older boy. A tragedy that he will long hide from his family, his classmates who mistreat him, and who will feed many songs of Linkin Park as the tube "Crawling".
His mother kicked him out
After his divorce from his father, Chester finally left to live at the age of 17 with his mother Susan, a nurse by profession. When she discovers that he is taking drugs, she asks him to leave the house. To survive, the young man takes a job at Burger King. While singing ...
He recorded his first album at 17
In 1993, in full grunge era, Chester joined the band Gray Daze with whom he will record three albums before leaving five years later. In jail, he works in a computer company when an agent proposes to audition in Los Angeles for Xero, the group that will become Linkin Park.
He had 6 children
In 1996, Chester was just 20 years old when his girlfriend, Elka Brand, gave birth to a baby girl named Jaime. The young woman has a son, Isaiah, whom the singer will adopt in 2006. In the meantime, he married Samantha Marie Olit with whom he will have a son Draven Sebastian, born in 2002. In 2006, he remarries with Talinda Ann Bentley with whom he had three children: Tyler, born in 2003 and the twins Lilly and Lila, born in 2011.
He sang with his favorite band
If Chester has recorded 7 albums with Linkin Park, and another with the ephemeral Dead by Sunrise, in 2009, he realized a kid's dream in 2013 when Stone Temple Pilots asked him to replace Scott Weiland on tour. Then, on a mini-album, High Rise, the same year. They will end their collaboration two years later, the singer preferring to devote full time to Linkin Park.
He made cinema
In 2006, Chester made a brief appearance in Crank , the action-packed action movie starring Jason Statham. He is the client of a pharmacy. Three years later, we see it in the sequel. But horror movie fans mostly remember his death in one of the awful traps of Saw 3D , the ultimate opus of the saga of which he was a fan. In recent months, he was working on a reality TV project.
He was close to Chris Cornell
Over the years, Chester had become very close to the singer of Soundgarden, one of his teenage idols, to the point of becoming the godfather of one of his children. After his brutal death last May, he posted a moving letter on Twitter and sang at his funeral Leonard Cohen's magnificent Hallelujah. Dark luck, Bennington killed himself on Cornell's birthday.
He was a fan of the Phoenix Suns
Although he moved to Los Angeles with a wife and children early in Linkin Park's career in the early 2000s, Chester remained very attached to the city where he grew up and where his brothers and sisters lived. And to the Phoenix Suns, the NBA team that he continued to support while Mike Shinoda, the other singer of the band, Californian by birth, is an absolute fan of the Lakers.
He was addicted to social networks
A rock superstar, Chester regularly posted his daily life on Twitter, where he had 791,000 followers, and on his Instagram page, followed by 958,000 people. The last picture posted is a snapshot of the Linkin Park concert on July 6th in Birmingham.