What Linkin Park thought when they first heard Chester Bennington's voice

20 July 2022, 15:31 | Updated: 19 July 2023, 12:33

We tragically lost the Linkin Park frontman five years ago... here's what his bandmates had to say about him.

Chester at the opening of his new Club Tattoo in March 2009. Picture: ZUMA Press, Inc. / Alamy Stock Photo

Released on 24 October 2000, Linkin Park's Hybrid Theory album featured singles such as Papercut, One Step Closer, Crawling and In The End, helping it become one of the stand-out albums of the era and putting the band at the forefront of the nu-metal genre.

Sadly, the band's founding member and lead singer Chester Bennington took his own life on 20 July 2017, aged just 41 years old. Since Chester's death. the band have done their utmost to keep the memory of the their late frontman alive, reminiscing about his character and his immense talent.

Linkin Park in 2001. Picture: Mick Hutson/Redferns/Getty Images

What did Linkin Park think of Chester Bennington's voice?

As reported by Louder Sound, the band's guitarist Brad Delson recalled first hearing Bennington's voice on the band's rare demo track back when they were were still called Xero.

"I think Pictureboard was the first thing I heard Chester’s voice on,” he recalled. “I remember getting that, and being like, ‘Hey, what do you think of this guy?

"He just sent us this recording…’ and being like, not crying with joy, but like, almost crying, just like, ‘Wow! I don’t even know what that is.’"

Chester Bennington performing live in August 2014. Picture: ZUMA Press, Inc. / Alamy Stock Photo

He continued: "He’s tiny and vulnerable on the verse and you could hear all these timbres and harmonics, like overtones, in his voice on the heavy part. It just blew my hat off my head, and we’re like, ‘We gotta meet this guy!"

Talking about the band's early rehearsals with the late singer, Mike Shinoda said: "When we were making demos together and doing stuff for the first time, he was still discovering who he wanted to be as a vocalist as well, and it was partially like, how he could express himself in a unique way, but then also what would fit this style of music, what would fit this band the best".

Chester Bennington and Mike Shinoda perform one of their final shows together at London's O2 Arena on 3 July 2017. Picture: Burak Cingi/Redferns/Getty Images

He added: "So it was doing both of those things at the same time, and I was like the first point of contact: it’d be me recording him, and he’d do a thing and I’d respond to that, and so it was like a slow progression into that identity.

"It wasn’t like there was one moment where he sang a thing and I went, ‘Wow! That’s it!’ It was like all these little steps.