The mother of late Linkin Park frontman Chester Bennington says she feels hurt and betrayed by the rap-rock band for releasing their latest release without telling her.
“I feel betrayed. They told me that if they were ever going to do anything, they would let me know. They didn’t let me know, and they probably knew that I [wasn’t] “I'm going to be very happy. I'm very sad about it,” Susan Eubanks said in an interview with Rolling Stone published Thursday.
Linkin Park was co-founded in Agoura Hills in 1996 by Bennington and returning Linkin Park members rapper and producer Mike Shinoda, guitarist Brad Delson, DJ Joe Hahn and Phoenix. The influential group, which was known as Xero before Bennington joined its ranks, announced it would reunite earlier this month, seven years after its lead singer's death by suicide in 2017.
The re-release notably includes new vocalist Emily Armstrong (formerly of Los Angeles rock band Dead Sara) who will take over Bennington's role and new drummer Colin Brittain. The band will release the new studio album “From Zero” on November 15 and launch a corresponding tour to present the new line-up.
In a statement on Sept. 5, the four surviving founders said they had begun getting together in recent years in an attempt to “reconnect with the creativity and camaraderie” of their early days. Shinoda said the album title “From Zero” refers “to both this humble beginning and the journey we are currently on. Sonically and emotionally, it is about the past, present, and future, embracing our signature yet new and lively sound. It was made with deep appreciation for our new and old bandmates, our friends, our family, and our fans.”
During the band’s concert on September 11 at the Kia Forum, Shinoda told the audience that the band was “delighted” to be back: “It’s not about erasing the past. It’s about starting this new chapter towards the future.”
Linkin Park's Mike Shinoda and Emily Armstrong performed at the Kia Forum in Inglewood in early September.
(Jordan Strauss/Invision/Associated Press)
But none of that sat well with Bennington's mother.
“I feel like they're trying so hard to erase the past,” Eubanks told Rolling Stone. “They're playing songs that Chester sang. And I don't know how the fans are taking it, but I know how I'm taking it. And having [Armstrong] “Singing my son’s songs hurts me.”
Bennington helped propel the group to stardom with their 2000 debut, “Hybrid Theory,” which combined heavy metal and hip-hop with angsty, melodic choruses on songs like “Crawling” and “In the End.” The group became instant superstars in that decade and a rock music powerhouse throughout their career, winning Grammy Awards for “Crawling” and “Numb/Encore.”
Eubanks added that she accidentally overheard the band's livestream announcement in early September and briefly heard Armstrong singing Bennington's parts. Her assessment: Armstrong was “screeching his way to a very high note.” She couldn't stand to listen any longer, walked off the stream and began crying. She claimed that her son once told her that Shinoda thought Linkin Park songs would be better sung by a woman “because he often put Chester down” and that he would be replaced by a woman if he ever decided to leave the group.
“Chester was stunned and hurt,” Eubanks said of the comments. “And the fact is that they did it now. So of course all of that comes back to me.” He said he might have been okay with Shinoda singing Bennington’s parts, though they wouldn’t be as high-pitched or as loud, but he didn’t agree with someone else replacing him entirely, “trying to do exactly what Chester did, but they’re not quite getting it done.”
He also said that neither Bennington's first wife, Samantha, nor his son, Draven, knew about the relaunch “until they told the world.”
“I had the same thing happen to me and it hurt me,” she said, noting that Hahn, whom she saw four or five years ago, promised her that she would tell her if they got back together and did not tell her that she intended to get the band back on track. She also said Shinoda made a similar promise to her and Samantha Bennington.
But Samantha Bennington told the outlet that she had not spoken to Shinoda since she married Chester, nor had she seen Shinoda since before their divorce in 2005.
“I think my mother-in-law is mixing bands between Linkin Park and [Bennington’s earlier band] “Grey Daze. Grief and sadness affect your memory,” he told Rolling Stone after Eubanks' reaction was published.
A Linkin Park spokesman declined to comment Friday when contacted by The Times.
“I think the important thing for us is that we never set out to please [say] “Let's bring the band back. Or something like, 'Let's find a singer.' That was never our intention or our goal,” Shinoda said Tuesday on “The Tonight Show With Jimmy Fallon.”
“It was more like there was a moment where our DJ Joe… said [we] “We should get together a little bit more often, could we get together and be creative?” Shinoda said. “One thing led to another, and it was almost like [for] “We wrote this new record ourselves, we came up with the music while we were creating the new band. When we started making music we didn't have a band and everything just kind of came together as the music was coming together, I guess.”
Times staff writers August Brown and Mikael Wood and freelance journalist Steve Appleford contributed to this report.
