In a new interview with Mike Shinoda of Linkin Park, Shinoda has paid tribute to the band’s late frontman Chester Bennington in a new interview with Kroq. “He was such a happy guy, he was such a fun guy,” Shinoda said. “When he’d walk in the room, there was such a positive, funny, upbeat energy, and that’s what we wanna get out of this show… I know it’s gonna be a roller coaster of emotion. But when we talk about this and when we’re focusing on the show, it’s really about, like we say, celebrating life.”
“I had gone to Rick Rubin [their producer] as a source of guidance,” Shinoda explained. “He had said, “‘I think you guys need to get on stage. I think that’ll be the thing that’ll feel good. It’ll be super, super hard.’ We haven’t gone out together in public, we haven’t played — we haven’t gone on stage. He said, ‘The fans want to see you. Not because they want to see a show, there’s a cathartic experience that needs to happen and it’ll inform what you guys are doing.’ And I thought it over and I know that for some of the guys in the band, getting on stage is more scary than other guys in the band, but I will say that for all of us, it’s definitely the thing that we want to do. It feels like the right way to celebrate Chester.”
“With something like this, and it was the same at his funeral… I know that the circumstances of his passing were really dark, and as we said at the time, the darkness that he had was always there and was kind of part of the package, but what was so unique and special about this guy is that he used it as fuel to do so many positive things.” Shinoda continued to thank their fans for the support during this really difficult time. “The fans have been incredible. I don’t think we could have ever expected such an outpouring of love and all these tributes,” He also explained where their new music video for their single “One More Light“: “Fans everywhere were making these montages of images of Chester, images of themselves to and so we realized it struck a chord with them and we wanted to let them know we see that, we hear that so we made an official video for that.” Listen to the full interview below.
The post Mike Shinoda Remembers Chester Bennington in Kroq Interview, “He was such a happy guy, he was such a fun guy” appeared first on Music Mayhem Magazine.