At home, Bennington found solace in
his six kids. He’d become a father for the
first time at age 20, and first got married in
- That relationship ended in a tumul-
tuous divorce, marked by a relapse where “I
drank myself to the point where I couldn’t
leave the house and I couldn’t function,” he
recalled. “I wanted to kill myself.” He mar-
ried Talinda in 2005, and the couple had a
son and twin daughters. Leto remembers
going to Bennington’s house for dinner one
night. “I walk in and it’s just jampacked
with the biggest family you’ve ever seen,” he
says. “I couldn’t believe he had such a beau-
tiful and thriving family life, especially for
someone so young. I hadn’t seen so much of
that [in him], spending time on the road.”
“He always had enjoyable tales of his six
kids, which he always referred to with a
beaming smile, no matter what kind of pa-
rental woe might have had him do a dou-
ble take,” says ZZ Top’s Billy Gibbons, who
toured with Bennington in Kings of Chaos
within the past year. “His tattoo-parlour
business was another highlight; he had me
designing silver jewellery for the Las Vegas
shop where we whiled away the hours talk-
ing shop. He was really an engaging soul.”
In late July, Shuck paid tribute to Ben-
nington at a private service in Los Angeles,
where he read a eulogy alongside Linkin
Park’s Joe Hahn and Shinoda. (The mem-
bers of Linkin Park, as well as Talinda Ben-
nington, declined to be interviewed for
this story.) Bennington’s death is still res-
onating among his fans, who experienced
a shock wave when the news reached the
public. In the U.S. the National Suicide Pre-
vention Lifeline received a 14 per cent spike
in calls on the day after the news broke.
Ten days after Bennington’s death, the
singer’s home was encircled with a tempo-
rary six-foot fence. A police cruiser sat out-
side as fans left flowers, drawings, signs,
guitar picks and crosses on its perimeter.
“When I found out, I was at a museum, and
I just bawled my eyes out,” said 19-year-old
Briana Yah-Diaz. “It was like a piece of my
childhood went away. The little-girl part
of me needs to come up and pay my re-
spects.... I could always count on them.”
Outside his home, one note read, “Fly
free now! With love all the way from Texas.”
Another said, “Dear Chester Bennington,
It hurts all of us to know that you saved
so many lives, yet we couldn’t save you... .”
Additional reporting by Steve Appleford
“I have a hard time with
life,” Bennington once said.
“I just am uncomfortable
all the time.”NEW ALBUM
The last time the mass pub-
lic got a glimpse of Beck, it
was at the end of the 2015
Grammys and Prince was
handing him an Album of
the Year award for his LP
Morning Phase. Before Beck
could even open his mouth
to register his shock, Kanye
West walked onstage briefly
to protest Beyoncé’s loss.
“I’ve had some trippy things
happen in my life,” Beck
says today. “But that was up
there, for sure.”
Few people knew, but at
the time Beck was already
two years into work on his
follow-up album, Colors, a
euphoric blast of experi-
mental pop he crafted with
producer Greg Kurstin, best
known for his work with
Adele, Kelly Clarkson and
Sia. Colors is finally coming
out in October, after one of
the longest gestation peri-
ods of his recording career.
“I suppose the record could
have come out a year or
two ago,” says Beck, sitting
in a conference room of a
trendy downtown New York
boutique hotel. “But these
are complex songs all trying
to do two or three things at
once. It’s not retro and not
modern. To get everything
to sit together so it doesn’t
sound like a huge mess was
quite an undertaking.”
Kurstin has become
one of the industry’s most
in-demand producers over
the past few years (while
working on Colors, he was
juggling albums by Halsey
and the Foo Fighters, along
with film soundtracks). But
he got an early break as
Beck’s touring keyboardist
on 2002’s Sea Change tour,
and he was happy to reunite
with his old friend. They
recorded in Kurstin’s L.A.
home studio, playing nearly
every instrument them-
selves. “Between the two of
us, we can play everything,
and we don’t have to go
through the filter of other
people,” says Beck. Kurstin’sheavy workload forced
them to work as efficiently
as possible: “It’s almost
like the 1960s, where you
have a morning block [of
recording] and an afternoon
block,” Beck adds. Unlike
the meditative, mostly
acoustic Morning Phase,
Colors is relentlessly upbeat,
reflecting Beck’s happiness
with his wife, Marissa Ribisi
(twin sister of actor Giovanni
Ribisi), and their two young
children.
“The best songs make
you glad to be alive,” says
Beck. “It doesn’t matter
if it’s Beethoven or the
Monkees. That’s what I was
thinking about a lot.” On
“Fix Me”, Beck sings about
how love can make dark
times easier (“I don’t mind
if the sea washes over the
city tonight/I’m set free”),
and on the dance-y “Up All
Night”, Beck sings, “Justwanna stay up all night with
you.”
During months of down-
time, Beck toured as much
as he could. In September,
he’s booked to open for U2
in a run of stadium shows.
He has no problem play-
ing to an audience likely
unfamiliar with most of his
work outside of Nineties
hits like “Loser” and “Devil’s
Haircut”. “I’ve done a lot of
opening slots where you’re
just playing to empty seats,”
he says. “You can’t take it
personally.” His Album of
the Year victory aside, Beck
has generally been comfort-
able existing slightly outside
the mainstream. “I’ve always
been doing my thing,” he
says. “I feel like more and
more I have a sort of open
passport where I just go in
and go out, away from the
eye of the hurricane. It’s
interesting.” ANDY GREENEBeck’s Hard Road
to Happy Songs
After years of delays, the singer finally
finishes follow-up to ‘Morning Phase’30 | Rolling Stone | RollingStoneAus.com October, 2017