R.I.P. CHESTER BENNINGTON – Suicídio do vocalista do Linkin Park e Stone Temple Pilots pouco tempo depois de Chris Cornell

R.I.P. CHESTER BENNINGTON (Nascimento: 20 de março de 1976, Falecimento: 20 de julho de 2017)

 

“Even if you are able to make a map out of your grief and trauma with the chart of a generous mapmaker, it doesn’t mean the mapmaker has figured their own way out of whatever maze their trauma has trapped them in. There is a difference between the work of not wanting others to die and the work that comes with keeping yourself alive.” – Hanif Abdurraqib

 

---

Nestes últimos tempos, dois suicídios por enforcamento foram praticados por duas das vozes mais impressionantes que atuavam no Rock global: Chris Cornell (Soundgarden, Audioslave, Temple Of The Dog) e Chester Bennington. (Linkin Park, Stone Temple Pilots).

Em biografia escrita para a AllMusic, Corey Apar lembra que Chester Bennington foi uma “vítima de abuso sexual e que teve uma infância que esteve longe da perfeição”; “quando seus pais divorciaram-se quando ele tinha 11 anos, ele apelou para as drogas para suportar seu sofrimento. Chegando à adolescência, Bennington tinha caído fundo na cocaína e nas meta-anfetaminas, alimentando seu vício com um trampo no Burger King…” (Leia a bio completa)

Em 20 de Julho de 2017, o vocalista do Linkin Park seguiu a trilha fatal aberta por Cornell e encerrou sua estadia entre os vivos. Calou-se aquela voz potente e arrebatada, capaz de atingir notas agudas e sustentá-las com gritos impressionantes. Uma voz que no Linkin Park, com sua melodiosidade e emocionalidade, contrastava com os vocais rappeados de Mike Shinoda. F

enômeno de público que despontou no ano 2000 e que foi um dos principais representantes do cenário de metal alternativo e pós-grunge neste jovem século XXI, o Linkin Park, em 2000, despontou com o álbum de estréia “Hybrid Theory” e hits como “Numb”. Explodiu nos EUA e vendeu milhões de cópias com seu som híbrido, mescla de rap, metal e grunge. Se não era nada imensamente original, já que esta senda já havia sido muito explorada pelo Rage Against The Machine e por outras bandas do new-metal (como Korn e Slipknot), o Linkin Park se distinguiu da manada principalmente pela exuberância das performances vocais de Bennington – que se tornariam também uma referência para tudo o que se faria depois no emocore.

Entre 2000 e 2017, a banda lançou uma vasta discografia que soma 11 álbuns, entre os de estúdio e os ao vivo (acesse discografia). Os inúmeros fãs da banda – que somam bem mais de um milhão! – fazem circular na Internet um mega-torrent com 69 lançamentos do Linkin Part reunidos do período entre 1997 e 2013 – é tudo o que você precisa baixar se quer conhecer a carreira da banda principal do falecido Chester. Após a morte de Scott Weiland, vocalista do Stone Temple Pilots, Bennington assumiu os vocais também do STP por um tempo e lançou com a banda um interessante EP ,”High Rise”, que serve como sua principal incursão na história do Grunge.

Chester Bennington tinha 41 anos de idade.

---

 Na sequência, trechos do texto de Hanif Abdurraqib para Buzzfeed:

“I’ve been thinking a lot lately about the artist who chooses to make themselves a mirror. It is brave work, and it should be hailed as such. The work of allowing people to see bits of their pain in your own pain is often thankless but needed labor — labor that takes on a heavier weight as the platform of an artist grows. But even if you are able to make a map out of your grief and trauma with the chart of a generous mapmaker, it doesn’t mean the mapmaker has figured their own way out of whatever maze their trauma has trapped them in. There is a difference between the work of not wanting others to die and the work that comes with keeping yourself alive.

I want to say that I hate the thing we do where we talk about suicide in terms of winning and losing: a person either beating their demons or losing to them. It boils down an ongoing struggle into a simple binary, to be celebrated and mourned — as if every day survived on the edge of anything isn’t simply gearing up for another day to survive and another day after that. And Chester Bennington was a survivor, of many things: sexual abuse as a child, violent bullying as a skinny high school student — things that he said pushed him to years of drug and alcohol addiction. And I believe survival of this — no matter how long — is a type of heroism.

I believe that any of us who faces trauma and still survives is heroic, even if we aren’t keeping anyone else alive but ourselves. But I don’t like to think of anyone who gives in to whatever they imagine waits on the other side of suffering as someone who has lost. We have lost them, sure. But who does it serve to create a narrative where there is a scoreboard for our pain and how we navigate the vastness of it? Death is the action — the end result, of course. But I have known people who didn’t want to die as much as they wanted to stop feeling a desire for death. A world without that always-hovering cloud. And I don’t think of those who are departed as people who lost, and when we frame these grand and nuanced battles as absolutes — with the “strong” people surviving and sometimes suffering and the “weak” people falling into the arms of absence — it does an injustice to the true machinery of the brain, of the body, of the heart, of anything responsible for keeping us here on the days we don’t want to be.

Chester Bennington is gone and I’m really fucked up about it because I could have been gone. Because people I love could have been gone if not for what he offered up about himself and his survival. There is no good way to talk about a person who kept you alive dying from what they could no longer endure. I have not wanted to die for a long time, but years ago, when I did, I looked for anyone who could offer me a lifeline out, and Bennington was one of the many arms reaching into that dark well, not to pull me out, but perhaps to hold my hand for a while.

I was alerted to the news because suicide hotline numbers were filling social media again. That’s how I knew something was wrong. I understand this action: Someone dies of something and people want to prevent it in their own corners of the world. After a high-profile suicide, I have, in my own circles, promised people that I would be there to talk to them if they needed to talk, or be there for them in the yawning mouth of their own darkness. And I don’t doubt that this helps, and is needed. But I am also thinking about how there is no one thing that will keep a person alive when they no longer want to be. Whatever engine pushes a person towards death is made up of a lot of parts that are not always singing to each other, or not always singing at the same pitch or volume. Chester Bennington was a whole, brilliant, successful person and a survivor. But that which he survived still sat on top of and underneath his skin. There is no fix for that, no matter how many of us want to see one…” – READ ON

 

Relembre alguns dos destaques de seu legado:

>>> Video-clipes:

* “Numb”

* “In The End”:

* “Crawling”:

* “Somewhere I Belong”:

* “Castle of Glass”:

>>> Álbuns

Stone Temple Pilots, “High Rise”:

Linkin Park, “Hybrid Theory” (2000)

“The Hunting Party”:

“Living Things”:

“Meteora”:

“One More Light” (2017):