Chester Bennington, lead singer from Linkin Park committed suicide from hanging today around 9am. He leaves behind 6 children.
http://www.billboard.com/articles/columns/rock/7873783/linkin-park-chester-bennington-suicide
Damn. Linkin Park was one of my favorite bands growing up. In The End it doesn’t even matter.
He did it on Chris Cornell’s birthday and supposedly they were very close. Should have considered those 6 kids perhaps.
Yep, don’t know anything about the guy, but many in his profession lead a pretty hedonistic lifestyle with not much thought beyond their needs and wants.
It’s sad that people who have [financially] so many resources available choose this way out.
Hopefully a good life insurance policy and royalties for his kids.
Isn’t a policy out there that is going to pay on a suicide…
There are some that will. Mine had a suicide clause that lasted about 6 months after I got signed up for the policy basically saying if I off’d myself within those 6 months it wouldn’t pay out.
I loved Linkin Park in Jr High and High School and still have their stuff on my iPhone. There were signs in the past he had some issues including drug abuse. Sucks to hear and I wish people would reach out for help instead of taking the selfish way out and leaving their loved ones to clean up the mess.
This is true. Some will. Have seen a few even that did. So… yeah.
They definitely had some good songs. But, I will also say that if you listened to some of the songs there were definitely rather dark undertones, and I will say that in some ways I am not surprised, much. I will admit to the first thing that popped into my head when the suicide was announced was a couple lines from the song Bleed it out,
“Find a new place to hang this noose
String me up from atop these roofs
Knot it tight so I won’t get loose.”
Granted, one can argue on the fact that there is a lot of music out there that has dark undertones of death, suicide, or that depending on one’s interpenetration it could have that meaning.
From one perspective nobody has a greater right to one’s existence than oneself, and that includes the right to end it when they find existence intolerable for some reason. If I was in charge I would have painless suicide assistance clinics. There were be free counseling available to you but if you really want out, that should be the most basic right of any living thing.
I love life as much as anyone, but I can think of a few dozen things that would make continued existence unacceptable. I might go Bronson for a few months and do some vigilante justice but that would be the only delay.
Also you have to wonder if the kids are better off with or without a potentially unstable parent. I really don’t know what drove him to this action so I can’t judge his character.
You guys really think he didn’t think about his kids? People don’t just kill themselves for the hell of it, he likely had some incredible demons that were unbearable and he couldn’t think of any other way out.
If you haven’t had severe depression it’s easy to just write it off as, oh he was just being selfish because for you that is what suicide would be. I have a feeling that wasn’t exactly how his mind was working.
It’s a real shame he couldn’t find the help he needed.
With his resources he could have easily gotten the help he needed. For whatever reason he didn’t…I have no sympathy. He chose to kill himself rather fight through and get help. He chose to kill himself rather than stick around and be a dad.
Frankly, I hate how celebrities are put on such a pedestal when the only thing that separates them from other addicts/users is their bank account.
Interesting band in that they fully integrated the rap/rock duet/fusion into their core, rather than as an ad hoc affair from song to song.
Some dark songs, but life isn’t all unicorns and cupcakes.
You are expecting someone that clearly had mental health problems to act rationally and that just doesn’t work.
If you can amass a net worth of $30 million dollars and function day to day, I can’t fathom ones mental health problems being debilitating. But I guess we’ll have to wait for tox screening to come out.
Exactly. If people are coming to the conclusion that killing yourself is the answer, they are inherently irrational and to expect them to make rational decisions is, crazy. Maybe people can have enough conflict in their head to seek help, but a lot don’t.
I read a new york times piece on him and it mentioned he was molested repeatedly as a child, ages 8-13 I think it was. Would go a long way to explaining his troubles mentally. And more than likely was a huge contributor to his addiction struggles. Very sad, no matter your bank balance or talents.
If only money solved mental illness we would never have a suicide or mass shooting again. Unfortunately it’s far more complicated than your post makes it out to be.
I don’t think people who are contemplating suicide think much about anything other than an escape from there pains. Your heart and your head think differently at times and its sometimes hard to get the two to work together as a team. Money, fame, popularity- those are mental desires of the head. Love, happiness, contentment- those are emotional desires of the heart. God says he is a refuge to those who seek him. And He is.
I agree with your statement about what separates celebrities from ordinary addicts, but I’m here to tell you for certain that I personally have known people with insane amounts of money that are also insane. They live in a completely different bubble than the rest of us, often it’s a mystery to me how they successfully generate the kind of money they do but artists can be effin weird. But they have so much money that people cater to their strangeness or somebody hires a handler.