Linkin Park star Mike Shinoda has opened up about late bandmate Chester Bennington’s character, revealing the tragic rocker was “complicated” and “child-like”.
The singer committed suicide last summer (17) and his friend and bandmate is only just coming to terms with the tragedy, offering up a few truths about Chester in a new Rolling Stone interview.
Mike admits writing songs about Bennington’s death for his new solo album, Post-Traumatic, made him study the late rocker like never before.
“He was really loud, and it wasn’t just volume – he had a loud personality,” Shinoda recalls. “We would joke that he could just go about anywhere and make friends with everybody in the place. He was just a really fun-loving dude, but he was also complicated… (He could be) really hot and cold on stuff.
“My joke with him was that he never liked a movie. If he’d seen a movie I hadn’t yet, I’d ask him how it was and either it would be an 11 out of 10 or, ‘I can’t believe anybody ever made that movie. Who the fuck decided to put money behind such a piece of crap? I wish I could get my money back’. That was just him.”
Bennington battled depression and anxiety issues in life, but Shinoda reveals that when the singer was on form, he had a “child-like openness” that was infectious.
“It was almost random,” he adds. “With some people, it would be surface-y, and with others, you’d find him telling them crazy things. Like, if he was sitting next to somebody on a plane, you’d hear him telling them all this stuff you shouldn’t tell another person on a plane. It’s that phenomenon.
“He’d have these moments of child-like openness and directness in a way.”
