Chester Bennington

Chester Benington survived a tough childhood to become one of the leading rock/metal singers of his time, as the frontman for California's Linkin Park and briefly for Stone Temple Pilots. Born in Phoenix, AZ, Bennington was the victim of sexual abuse as a child; he only revealed this in an interview as an adult and later said that the abuser was his father. When he was eleven his parents divorced and he began using a number of drugs, this continued through his teen years. He became anti-drug after getting straight. Turning to music as an escape, Bennington first joined the grunge-inspired band Sean Dowdell and his Friends?, he and Dowdell then formed Grey Daze who made three albums before imploding in 1998. Those albums found their way to A&R exec Jeff Blue, who teamed him with a band called Xero; when Gold became VP of A&R at Warner Brothers he signed the band, now called Linkin Park. The 2000 debut Hybrid Theory began a run of enormous success for the band, who combined the emerging nu-metal sound with radio-ready riffs and hooks. The second full album Meteora consolidated their success, producing four hits in "Somewhere I Belong", "Breaking the Habit", "Faint", and "Numb". The band also took its part in Metallica's memorable Summer Sanitarium Tour of 2003. Bennington proved a fearless live performer who injured himself onstage more than once. During a 2007 show in Melbourne, Australia he broke his wrist jumping off a platform, and finished the show before being taken to the emergency room. The band briefly split for solo projects afterward and Bennington launched Dead by Sunrise as an outlet for songs that didn't fit the Linkin Park mold, including acoustically-based and electronic pieces. Linkin Park regrouped in 2006 and made a Grammy appearance performing alongside Jay-Z and Paul McCartney. The band remained at the forefront of metal while branching out musically, flirting with electronics on 2010's A Thousand Suns and writing more personal songs on 2014'sThe Hunting Party. They also gave a full performance of the Hybrid Theory album at that year's Download Festival. Bennington took a side trip in 2013, when Stone Temple Pilots parted with their troubled singer Scott Weiland. He fronted that band for the next two years and cut the High Rise EP with them, before returning to Linkin Park fulltime. The success of that band continued as they played the Blizzcon video-game convention in 2015 and began work on their seventh album One More Light. The first single "Heavy" proved another step forward for the band, their first track to feature a female singer (pop vocalist Kiara). The end of 2016 also found Bennington touring with the classic-rock revue Kings of Chaos alongside members of ZZ Top and Guns 'n' Roses. On the eve of a tour to support the new album, Bennington-who was shaken by the death of his friend, Chris Cornell of Soundgarden--shocked the rock world by hanging himself on July 20, 2017. The band went on hiatus after an emotional performance on the song "One More Light" at his funeral.