Linkin Park

Background:

American musician, singer and songwriter Chester Bennington is most famous as the lead vocalist of the Grammy Award-winning rock band Linkin Park. Starting out with the now defunct post-grunge group Grey Daze, the Arizona native, whose nickname is The Chemist, came to the attention of mainstream audiences with Linkin Park's best-selling album, “Hybrid Theory” (2000). The album spawned the Grammy winning song “Crawling.” Bennington and his band members continued to score success with the albums “Meteora” (2003) and “Minutes to Midnight” (2007). In between, Bennington penned the song “Numb/Encore,” which won Linkin Park and Jay-Z a Grammy Award for Best Rap/Sung Collaboration.

Outside Linkin Park, Bennington, who was ranked No. 46h on Hit Paraders list of “Heavy Metal's All-Time Top 100 Vocalists,” has worked with Dead by Sunrise since 2005. He has also collaborated with various artists like DJ Lethal of Limp Bizkit, Jonathan Davis of Korn and rapper Young Buck.

Bennington is a fan of tattoos and many appear on his body. He stated, “Tattoos exude pain and pleasure all at the same time.” He added, “Tattoos are permanent and a lifelong commitment, the same as marriage.”

In May 2003, Bennington was hospitalized with abdominal and back pain. Almost a year later, in March 2004, he underwent laser eye surgery.

Bennington owns a 6,000-square-foot house in Newport Beach Orange County, in which he resides with his wife, Talinda Bentley, and their son, Tyler Lee. Bennington also has one son with first wife Samantha, whom he was married to from 1996 to 2005, and two more children from a previous relationship.

Rocky Upbringing

Childhood and Family:

Chester Charles Bennington was born on March 20, 1976, in Phoenix, Arizona. His parents divorced when he was 11 years old. He has two half sisters and a half brother named Brian.

“I was an athletic kid, but I just stopped caring about it and I stopped doing well in school. I started smoking weed and going to parties. I think I was 11 when I started smoking pot.” Chester Bennington

A product of a broken home, Chester, nicknamed Chaz, became involved with cocaine and methamphetamine as a teenager, but later emerged as a drug use critic after being able to overcome his addictions. He was also a victim of a sexual abuse. He attended Centennial High School and Greenway High School before graduating from Washington High School in 1994.

On October 31, 1996, Chaz married Samantha Bennington, whom he met while he was working at a Burger King. They welcomed a son, Draven Sebastian Bennington, on April 19, 2002. The couple's relationship, however, gradually floundered after Chaz joined Linkin Park and eventually ended in divorce on May 2, 2005. He married his second wife, Talinda Bentley, an ex-Playboy model, on December 31, 2005. Their son, Tyler Lee, was born on March 16, 2006, in Los Angeles. Chaz also has two children from a previous relationship, Isiah and Jaime.

Numb/Encore

Career:

A huge fan of Depeche Mode and Stone Temple Pilots, Chester Bennington discovered music at a very young age. An employee at a Burger King restaurant, Bennington began his professional career in 1993 by joining the Phoenix, Arizona-based post-grunge band Grey Daze as their lead singer. Although the group collected an ample fan base around the Phoenix area, Bennington soon grew bored with the band and finally quit in 1998, citing creative differences.

After the departure, Bennington's career suffered a setback. He had difficulty finding another band to play with and almost gave up. It was Jeff Blue, then the vice president of A&R of Zomba Music in Los Angeles, who offered Bennington an audition with the upcoming members of Linkin Park. Subsequently, he left his day job and brought his family to California.

Thanks to his unique singing style, Bennington enjoyed success at the audition and joined the group, which was then known as Xero. Following his recruitment, the group changed their name to Hybrid Theory and eventually the now popular Linkin Park. Along with Mike Shinoda, the band's other vocalist, he helped revive the band, although they were not signed to a record label. It was Jeff Blue (again), now a vice president of Warner Bros Records, who helped the group sign with the company in 1999.

Within a year, Bennington and Linkin Park had scored their commercial and critical breakthrough with the debut album “Hybrid Theory,” which was released on October 24, 2000. The album sold more than 10 million copies in the U.S. and was certified diamond by RIAA in 2005. It debuted at No. 16 on Billboard's Hot 200 charts and quickly rose to No. 2. “Hybrid Theory” also earned Bennington and his band mates three nominations at the Grammy Awards, including Best New Artist, Best Rock Album, and Best Hard Rock Performance (for the single “Crawling”), which they eventually won. The Grammy win subsequently launched Linkin Park to mainstream territory.

During the height of the album's success, Bennington and Linkin Park performed in a number of high-profile tours and concerts, among them the Family Values Tour, Ozzfest and KROQ Almost Acoustic Christmas. The group also headlined the Projekt Revolution tour, whose guest stars included Snoop Dogg, Cypress Hill and Adema.

Bennington and his band resurfaced on March 25, 2003, with their second studio album, “Meteora.” Spawning popular singles like “Somewhere I Belong,” “Breaking the Habit,” “Numb” and “Faint”, the album was an immediate hit worldwide. It reached No. 1 in both the United States and the United Kingdom and No. 2 in Australia. Lured by its success, Linkin Park embarked on their next “Projekt Revolution” tour, which now featured bands and artists like Mudvayne, Blindside, and Xzibit, and started a world tour in early 2004 called “The Meteora World Tour.” The group also appeared alongside Metallica, Limp Bizkit, Mudvayne and Deftones on the Summer Sanitarium Tour 2003.

Back to the recording studio after a long hiatus, Bennington and Linkin Park released the album “Minutes to Midnight” in May 2007. Released under a Parental Advisory label, the album debuted at No. 1 in the United States. As of November 2008, “Minutes to Midnight” has sold over 6 million pieces worldwide. Some singles released from the album include “What I've Done,” “Bleed It Out,” “Shadow of the Day,” “Given Up” and “Leave Out All the Rest.”

In 2006, Bennington and Linkin Park took home their second Grammy Award thanks to their collaboration with Jay-Z on the song “Numb/Encore.” He wrote the song for the film “Miami Vice” (2006).

Bennington has also worked solo. He provided vocals on the song “Karma Killer,” which was included on the 2002 album “Crave” by alternative rock band Cyclefly, and recorded the song “System,” which was written by Jonathan Davis of Korn for the motion picture “Queen of the Damned” (2002). He also collaborated with Stone Temple Pilots on the song “Wonderful” for the Family Values tour 2001 album, as well as appeared on DJ Lethal’s “State of the Art” (2004), DJ Z-Trip's “Walking Dead” (2005), Mötley Crüe's “Home Sweet Home” (2005) and Young Buck's “Slow Ya Roll” (2007).

Apart from lending his vocals for other artists' work, Bennington also founded a rock group in 2005 called Dead by Sunrise, whose members include Amir Derakh and Ryan Shuck of the band Orgy. The Dead by Sunrise album, in which Bennington performs guitar and keyboard and sings, has been completed a few years ago, but due to his commitments to Linkin Park, Bennington has put the release on delay until early 2009.

Awards:

• Grammy: Best Rap/Sung Collaboration, “Numb/Encore,” 2006

• Grammy: Best Hard Rock Performance, “Crawling,” 2002