And the sun will set for you

I won’t lie and proclaim myself the world’s most enthusiastic Linkin Park diehard, but for people my age, it’s hard to overstate how ubiquitous the band was during the time period when most of us were first becoming music fans. The nine-note piano introduction to “In the End” will be etched in our brains for eternity, along with the “Numb/Encore” Jay-Z remix and the theme songs that they wrote for the first two “Transformers” movies before the series went completely off the rails.
           
So, when I heard the news that lead singer Chester Bennington had passed away of an apparent suicide last week at age 41, I couldn’t help but flash back to the days when Linkin Park stood alone atop the pyramid of American rock. My good friend Jack Mills brought a copy of the “Hybrid Theory” album over to my house, and we spun it for hours while playing Nintendo 64 and playing “21” on the basketball hoop in the driveway. Those were simpler times.
           
What Linkin Park was doing musically—melding rap and rock with industrial elements—wasn’t particularly unique in that era, but they managed to do it better than anyone else and reach mass accessibility in the process, due in part to the versatility and raw emotion conveyed in the voice of Mr. Bennington. They were less political than Rage Against the Machine, less dumb than Limp Bizkit, less religious than POD, less morbid than Nine Inch Nails and less weird than Korn. And as a result, the band sold millions upon millions of records.
           
I had lost track of Linkin Park and Bennington for the most part in recent years, except when I heard that he was filling in for (also recently deceased) Scott Weiland as the lead singer of Stone Temple Pilots, one of his favorite bands growing up. But of course, whenever you see a famous musician’s name trending on Twitter these days, it’s safe to assume that it isn’t for a good reason. And just two months after Chris Cornell—Bennington’s close friend and one of his musical heroes—was found hanging in a Detroit hotel room, it was déjà vu all over again.
           
Bennington was painfully honest and often bitterly angry throughout his career—in songs like “Crawling,” “Numb,” “Somewhere I Belong,” and “Breaking the Habit,” he reflected on a turbulent childhood and the substance abuse struggles that are all-too-familiar in the music business. And once again, a life that, from the outside looking in, seemed to have everything, ended tragically without an explanation or even a note.
           
Suicide always feels like something that’s impossible for the rest of us to understand. It isn’t to be glorified—as some accused the recent Netflix series “13 Reasons Why” of doing—but is there any sense in angrily condemning it? It’s happened now, and there’s no reversing it. We can reflect on the beauty of a life lived without supporting the way it ended while simultaneously doing everything we can to help the next person on the edge decide that theirs is still worth living.
 
It’s a problem that cuts across social class and demographics—it was an epidemic during the 1980’s farm crisis, mostly for economic reasons, but incredibly wealthy celebrities have fallen victim to the same fate: now that Cornell passed, four of the five major grunge singers have died of either an overdose, suicide or some combination of the two. Eddie Vedder is the last one we have left.
 
My personal literary and journalistic idol, Hunter S. Thompson, took his own life at the age of 67 upon the realization that football season was over and he had become “boring,” “no fun for anybody” and “17 years past 50,” in his own words. Thompson’s hero, Ernest Hemingway, did the same thing 44 years earlier. Both men were immensely talented substance abusers who never could quite reckon with the reality of the world as opposed to the vision they had for it. I sure wish they were around to write about the state of affairs we find ourselves in today.
 
As I drove to the fair on Saturday morning, I turned on a Linkin Park song that I had thought about upon hearing of Bennington’s passing, and it resonated with me like never before. “Shadow of the Day” is aesthetically similar to U2’s “With or Without You” and felt especially poignant in light of recent events, showcasing the fact that Bennington was far more than an angry scream singer capable of nothing more than a guttural moan. He would’ve been a superstar in any era.
 
The National Suicide Prevention Lifeline number is 1 (800) 273-8255. Someone is always there to talk.