Radio.com have posted a previously unreleased interview conducted on May 19th with Linkin Park’s Mike Shinoda where he discussed Chester Bennington’s reaction to Chris Cornell’s suicide. Bennington himself committed suicide on Thursday morning.
“We were booked to play the show so that we could promote our new single ‘Heavy’ and then we heard the news about Chris Cornell and had had a little pow-wow in the dressing room before we went on and we said, ya know, the things that good for the band to do is play ‘Heavy,’ but the right thing to do is play ‘One More Light’ because it’s about the loss of a friend,’ said Shinoda. “It’s one of the most important songs on the record, and it may never be a single, but it’s just an important song and it’s the right song to play so that’s what we ended up doing.”
Shinoda then discussed Bennington tearing up during a sound check.
“When we were doing a sound check Chester couldn’t even make it through the song, he was getting halfway through and getting choked up. And even when we did play the whole song, and it was live on TV, or taped for film for TV, he kind of just stopped like towards the end like he missed the last couple lines, just couldn’t finish the song.”
Watch the full video below, which features comments from Shinoda about how to deal with mental health issues.
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=CgwL14IDDJY
