This morning I woke up to the devastating news that Chester Bennington of Linkin Park had sadly committed suicide.
Unsurprisingly, Last.fm were flooded by Linkin Park in the top tracks, top artist and most loved charts (One More Light is probably too old to chart in recent releases now).
Some people have blamed Chester’s death on the negative reception to their latest album One More Light. I disagree. A Thousand Suns was also very poorly received, and even Minutes To Midnight was polarising. One More Light was definitely weaker and probably more controversial than either of those, but that’s not why Chester committed suicide. Not on Chris Cornell’s birthday and in the same manner.
To me this is clearly a copycat suicide. Not that I’m judging him for it, I’ve already lost one friend to suicide this year, and came awfully close to losing someone even closer late last year and I don’t know how I would have coped. But we need to remember that our actions have consequences for the people we leave behind.
Musicians die all the time. Hugely influential musicians. But this was different. This wasn’t like Chris Cornell, who I’d honestly never heard of before (I’d heard of his bands but never listened to them). Lemmy was the same, I knew of him and his band but never really listened to them. This wasn’t like Michael Jackson, an artist from another era. I was way too young to know of Michael Hutchence let alone remember his death.
This was different. This was my era. My music. One of my bands.
And it fucking hurts.
Who cares if one more light goes out?
Well I do