Bush frontman Gavin Rossdale discussed performing with Linkin Park at their Chester Bennington tribute show in a new FM96 interview. Alternative Nation transcribed his comments.
“Very painful because I care so much about, feel for anyone, anyone’s family, any people that are going through someone’s suicide. Chester was a great great guy, huge family, extremely successful, very very talented musician, great singer. He’s one of our own, it’s a community, so I just feel for him so much, the same way I felt for Chris Cornell, contemporaries who I know and respect.
I can’t say [I was] best friends with them, but I certainly respected and loved their bands. To go into that show and sing ‘Leave Out All The Rest,’ which is a very beautiful and poignant song, it’s almost an ode to suicide. That was just an intense experience, I didn’t want to mess it up. I wanted to get it right for Talinda and his family.”
He later added, “It was a great honor to go sing at that Linkin Park show, but very sad. As I was explaining, there’s something fun about singing with a great band like that, but you don’t like to sing under those circumstances. It actually turned out to be a very beautiful night, a lot of people played, a lot of people sang. It was as it should be, a real celebration of Chester, rather than too maudlin, because it was fun. The band sounded on fire, everyone who played with them was really good, it was a great selection of people.
Just very sad overall. Now you feel a weird empty sadness, that’s what happens with suicide and any death, but especially suicide, because it’s clearly avoidable. Obviously Chester had extreme depression to do that. You know that someone is very unwell, because he had a beautiful family, a beautiful wife, an incredible career, he’s very successful. It’s not the same as committing suicide alone in a motel room off of highway nowhere.”
