Chester Bennington revealed his dark thoughts and relapse into crippling drug addiction in one of his last ever interviews
He admitted his lyrics could be'depressing' but claimed he was beating his demons
LINKIN Park frontman Chester Bennington tackled his demon drug relapses and dark thoughts in one of his final interviews.
It is feared the singer took his own life after being found dead by a housekeeper hanging from a bedroom door in his LA home.
However, talking to, Bennington said Linkin Park’s “One More Light” album followed bleak times for him but insisted he’d come through the other side.
“If you read a lot of the lyrics it seems pretty depressing,” said Bennington.
“For me I went through a lot of s*** in the last few years. I f***ing hated 2015. 2016 was better but there was a lot of anger and resentment on my end I had to work through. All this was going on while we were making this record.”
Bennington hinted at relapsing into the drug addiction he’d fought almost his entire adult life.
The frontman said he enjoyed being open about his battles in the hope it would help others and insisted he was in a good headspace.
“I’m coming from a real place. I’ve been active in s***, in my disease thinking I’m hiding it from everybody as opposed to being honest.
“You have be honest without fearing what people will see.
“In the process of making this record I went from being torn down in the last few years and full of fear to taking my life back.
“I deserve to be happy. I deserve to be free. There’s nothing I’m afraid of right now.
“Being in that place opens up the doors for other people to be in that place. When you’re authentic and you’re real with your friends magical s*** happens.
“The person I am today at the end of making this record and I the person I was at the start of making it are two totally different people. I have such a lust for life now, such a positive outlook.”
In one song, “Halfway Right”, Bennington wrote about a drug-fuelled brush with death from his past.
“I was strung out on some really f***ing heavy drugs and I was really young and I was driving my car and I blacked out. I woke up driving in a field, down a dirt road, in the middle of a farm. I didn’t know how I got there, he revealed.
“It was crazy. I was remembering this constant f***ing battle I have with myself, this constant cycle I couldn’t see at that time where these choices and these behaviours and where this journey would take me in my life.
“But when I was a guy in my 20s getting out of it, I didn’t realise I’d have these problems for my whole life. I didn’t think I’d be in one of the biggest bands in the world with a beautiful family at 41 going ‘F***, I could have easily have blacked out driving my car again two months ago’
“It’s a dark song, it’s a reality check for me. The chorus is the insanity of my situation — ‘I scream at myself when there’s nobody else to fight.
“It’s f***ing crazy.”
The Los Angeles County coroner has confirmed the death of the star – with reporting he was found dead in a private residence in Palo Verdes Estates, Los Angeles.
The singer is survived by his wife of twelve years, Talinda Ann Bennington (nee Bentley), and six children – Jamie, 21, Isaiah, 19, Draven, 15, Tyler Lee, 11, and Lily and Lila, 7.
They were not at the house when the incident took place. It’s thought that he was alone when he died.