Linkin Park singer Chester Bennington dead at 41; suicide suspected

Singer Chester Bennington, whose nü-metal band Linkin Park was ubiquitous in the 2000s, has died at 41, the Los Angeles County Medical Examiner's office confirms.

Brian Elias, the agency's chief of operations, said the case is being investigated as a possible suicide but could not provide details other than that the coroner was called to a private home in Palos Verdes Estates in the southern part of the county shortly after 9 a.m. PT Thursday.  

His bandmate, Mike Shinoda, provided confirmation via Twitter: "Shocked and heartbroken, but it's true." He didn't go into specifics but promised an official statement was forthcoming.

Linkin Park released a new album, One More Light, on May 19, just one day after the suicide of Bennington's friend and role model, Chris Cornell. Bennington performed at the May funeral for Cornell, who would have turned 53 on Thursday.

The Arizona native, known for his raw, raging vocals, endured an on-and-off battle with addiction to drugs and alcohol, a subject he discussed candidly in many interviews and mined with his music in hits like 2000's Crawling: "Crawling in my skin / These wounds they will not heal / Fear is how I fall / Confusing what is real."

That song, from their debut album Hybrid Theory, won a Grammy for best hard-rock performance in 2001. The band added a second trophy in 2005 for their Jay-Z collaboration Numb/Encore. They earned four other nominations, including one for What I've Done from the 2007 film Transformers.

He also talked about the long-term emotional fallout of being sexually abused by an older male friend as a child.

“If I think back to when I was really young, to when I was being molested, to when all these horrible things were going on around me, I shudder,” he told the metal magazine Kerrang! in 2011. 

In a 2009 interview with Spin, Bennington, who once described himself as a former "full-blown, raging alcoholic," discussed how his feelings about drinking and drugs had evolved.

“It’s not cool to be an alcoholic — it’s not cool to go drink and be an (expletive)” he explained. “It’s cool to be a part of recovery. This is just who I am, this is what I write about, what I do, and most of my work has been a reflection of what I’ve been going through in one way or another.”

Another song, My Suffering, from his side project Dead By Sunrise, crystallized Bennington's realization that without all the bad things in his life, he wouldn't have the good things.

“(It’s) literally about (how) being an alcoholic and a drug addict has paid off for me in many ways,” he explained to Spin. “I have been able to tap into all the negative things that can happen to me throughout my life by numbing myself to the pain so to speak and kind of being able to vent it through my music.”

Remembering Linkin Park's Chester Bennington, a Chris Cornell for the nu-metal generation

He circled back to the mindset an addict in Heavy, a new song from One More Light: "I don't like my mind right now / Stacking up problems that are so unnecessary."

Bennington expanded on the song's meaning in a comment posted to lyric site Genius.com in May: "There’s a pattern of thoughts. There’s this compulsion, this obsessive thing that happens in my brain and I can’t get out of it. And that leads to a lie. And that leads to isolation and that leads to all these other things that mess with my life." 

Linkin Park enjoyed nearly two decades of crossover success, powering many a workout playlist and attracting fans from outside their core genre with quieter, thoughtful numbers like Shadow of the Day and My December.

"My December has pulled me through many times," tweeted Gabourey Sidibe, who earned an Oscar nomination for Precious and currently stars on Fox's Empire. 

Celebrities react to death of Linkin Park's Chester Bennington

In addition to Dead by Sunrise, Bennington spent two years fronting Stone Temple Pilots after the 2013 departure of Scott Weiland, who later died in 2015 from a toxic mix of drugs.

Bennington was married twice: first to Samantha Marie Olit (1996 to 2005), with whom he had one son; and Talinda Ann Bentley, whom he wed in 2011. They had three children, a son and twin daughters. He also had two other children from a previous relationship.

Cameron Strang, the CEO and chairman of Warner Brothers Records, remembered Bennington as "an artist of extraordinary talent and charisma, and a human being with a huge heart and a caring soul. Our thoughts and prayers are with his beautiful family, his bandmates and his many friends.  All of us at WBR join with millions of grieving fans around the world in saying: we love you, Chester, and you will be forever missed.”

Recording Academy president Neil Portnow also paid tribute to him in a statement: "As the cutting-edge lead vocalist of Linkin Park, Chester’s powerful range, paired with his impressive songwriting skills, made him a bona fide hard rock hero. His riveting stage presence made every live performance magnetic, earning him millions of fans around the globe."

Portnow added, "We were honored to pay tribute to him at our 2013 MusiCares MAP Fund^® benefit concert, where he lent his time and talents to help raise money to assist members of the music community with the addiction treatment process. We have lost a truly dynamic member of the music community and our sincerest condolences go out to Chester’s family, friends, collaborators, and all who have been impacted by his work."

Contributing: The Associated Press