As I made my bed last night and prepared to call it a day, my phone beeped, a text had arrived from a friend; it read – “Mate, Chester Bennington is no more”. That was it, my sleeping plan gone for good. I felt numb, gutted and shocked beyond words. For the first time in my life, the demise of a celebrity was hurting me. If fandom could be defined, this was it!!
Cobain had passed away when I was too young to understand his legacy and Mercury had gone when I was a toddler with no idea whatsoever about the kind of phenomenon he was. Jackson was huge, but I wasn’t really a big fan. Chester though, might not be in the same league, but he to me was an integral part of my growing up years, my high school days, my teens: his voice and his screams were something that my generation had admired, adored and loved. Chester was gone, with him perished the dream of watching LP perform live.
As my teenage years flashed in front of my eyes, I did shed a tear, not because he was gone, but; he took away a part of me, a part of my childhood. The memories of buying audio cassettes way back in 2001 to downloading videos of LP performing in Texas, I had grown up and so did technology. From tapes to audio in mp3 format, things had evolved but that voice remained the same. Although LP as a band had started to experiment, fiddling with different genres, Chester with his vocals hadn’t lost his magical touch.
Way back in 1999-2000 when boy bands were a rage, Brazilian collectives and established singers like Dion and Twain were making headlines, Eminem had emerged on to the scene and had a dedicated fan base, my generation craved for something different. Something that would be an amalgamation of the old and the new, something that would define angst and hope; love and denial, a voice that would not just be raw but a cut above the rest; and there was LP!! A band that would go on to represent all of it- rock, rap and metal – NUMETAL had arrived!! Lyrics that would pierce through the heart and touch the soul, songs that would crawl through your skin, make you numb and in the end, give you some hope.
The hope grew and manifested; record after record; album after album and collaboration with other artists, it kept people like me asking and seeking more. But, like everything else music had to evolve, and that began to show. Post-2007 LP shifted gears, the screams had mellowed and metal elements faded. Auto-Tune had emerged and the excitement of listening to LP was never really the same. No criticism here, but expectations of a follower like me wasn’t met, the LP of yesteryears was sorely missed.
Cut to today, LP will never really be the same; a guitarist; a drummer can be replaced, the back- up vocals can be managed, the lead singer though is the soul of any band. Hard it is to imagine any iconic band without its lead; think of Led Zep without Robert Plant or Metallica sans Hetfield. Chester’s shoes are way too big to be filled, and for a fan like me, I’ll do what I’ve been doing for many years now, plug in my earphones and hear Chester scream – that’s what he did best. RIP Chester Bennington, you’ll always be missed !!

P.S: I’ll keep you in my memory and Leave out all the rest!!