Linkin Park's Chester Bennington Opens Up About His Troubled Past
Thursday, 14 July 2011
Written by Elliott Batte
World famous Linkin Park frontman Chester Bennington has opened up about his alcoholic and abusive past in a saddening interview with Kerrang!.
Speaking after the band’s headline performance at Download festival earlier this summer, Chester revealed that he was once a “raging alcoholic” in the years prior the interview.
“I don't drink,” admitted Bennington. “I choose to be sober now. I have drunk over the last six years, but I just don't want to be that person anymore.”
It wasn’t the first time the singer-songwriter had confessed about his drink and drug fuelled past, telling Noisecreep in 2009 “My Life was falling apart in many ways that I was writing about on this record in terms of getting divorced, in terms of diving very hard into alcohol and drugs throughout this process." He went on to reveal that the hit ‘Crawling’ was based on his own experiences with alcoholism.
Unfortunately drink and drugs aren’t the only thing which poisoned the star’s past, as he went on to tell Kerrang! about his experience of child molestation.
“If I think back to when I was really young, to when I was being molested, to when all these horrible things were going on around me, I shudder.”
Linkin Park are currently working on a new album which Chester says will contain “serious” lyrics about subjects like politics and “other things”.
“We've been working on a new record for the past two months,” said the frontman. “The music is great and we're well ahead of where we're expecting to be. There aren't a whole lot of noises going on, but there are a lot of good songs. It will probably get a very polarized reaction. Which pleases me. As an artist, I want a reaction.”
“We've learned how to write serious songs and serious lyrics. We've learned how to deal with politics, faith and other things. Those are things that can get preachy really quickly, which we don't want to do. So you need to learn to talk to people and not at people.”
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