Chester

Let's go back to the year 2002.

I was in 5th standard back then - a "devoted" learner of Indian Classical Music. A few months prior to that I was handed a copy of the album "Millennium"  by Backstreet Boys. That was my first copy of music which had lyrics in English and I loved it. It was an asset for me to show off before my friends who were not yet exposed to this type of music. I thoroughly enjoyed this music and within a month I could sing "Larger than Life", "Show me the Meaning" or "I  want it that way" pretty good. It was then that a realization dawned upon me - I was not very much inclined towards the music that I was learning and I was more attracted to the music that I was listening to.

A few months later I was handed a copy of record by a band I had never heard of, a genre which sounded odd and the music gave me shudders (mind you I was still in 5th standard, so this music was very loud for me). I was handed a copy of "Hybrid Theory" by the band "Linkin Park".  Little did I know back then that this band would be one of the biggest inspirations behind me starting to write lyrics and compose music.

On the back of the cassette, I  saw the photo of 5 guys (the picture was taken before Phoenix had joined the band) with serious faces and the guy in front had flame tattoo on his wrist. I turned on the cassette and started listening. The first song was "Papercut". The beats started and it was building up. As soon as it reached the intro riff, I turned the player off. I was like "What is this!!!", "Is this music??", "Is it supposed to relax me??". For the next couple of days I didn’t dare to go back to listen to it. One day I heard my elder brother humming the intro of Crawling. I asked him about the tune and he stated that it was there on the cassette he had handed me over. He didn’t tell me the name of the song and asked me to find it out by myself. I was so intrigued by the music that I wanted to know the song. I thought that maybe all the songs didn’t sound like the first one and I was wrong to have judged the entire cassette based on the first song.

And so it began. Crawling was the fifth song on the record so I had to listen to four songs in order to reach that. At that point I listened to Papercut and I didn’t enjoy it much. The next song was "One Step Closer" - God was it aggressive. But I didn’t stray away from it. I kind of liked it. The next song was "With you" which I didn’t find all that bad It had a soft underlying layer which attracted me. Following that was "Points Of Authority". I must say that was a straight forward rock song and left mixed feelings inside of me.

"Crawling" - the fifth song finally started and the intro sample itself was good enough to glue me to it. To this very day, I have no regret to tell that Crawling is my favorite song for the last 15 fucking years!!!! I mean, the song has this pain, aggression, silver lining - all packed into 3 minutes of blistering vocals by Chester Bennington.

From that moment on, there was no turning back. I listened to all the songs till Pushing Me Away and within a week, I loved each of the  song on the record. Since then, I became a fan of LP. Whether it be Meteora or Minutes to Midnight or A Thousand Suns or Living Things or The Hunting Party or One More Light, I made sure that I listened to each song and for some reason, each of their song really found a place deep inside my heart and I couldn’t get enough of LP. I just loved the effort they put into each record and brought out tracks to which you could relate to on an everyday basis.

The one thing that held me was Chester's voice. I mean, that guy could scream and be the most aggressive person on a song like "No More Sorrow" and less than a minute later his very voice on the song "Not Alone" (it’s a single released separately and not a part of any record" would bring you to tears.

When the album One More Light was released, my favorite song was "Nobody Can Save Me" because I couldn’t listen to the song "One More Light" initially. I too have lost people in the past and listening to that song just brought back memories of the past back up.  I mean, the vibe of that song would literally bring tears down my eyes and I couldn’t listen to it till the end and so I would click on the next button to avoid it.

The day I got the news of Chester's demise, I didn’t know how to react for the first couple of hours. I was flipping through news articles to find any article saying that this news was a hoax and all is well in the world. But that didn’t happen. Once I confirmed myself that the Voice of  a Generation was no longer among us, it left a void deep inside of me. I couldn’t come to terms that there will not be another LP record with Chester's vocals, that there will not be those LPTV episodes where Chester's wit and funny side will make you laughing for the next couple of minutes.

It has been couple of months now and I finally gathered the courage to pay my tribute to him.

His voice inspired me to make my voice as versatile as possible. To be able to scream and sing simultaneously. His funny moments shown on the LPTV episodes did always make me laugh.

It is very hard to accept that all of this is just a memory now.

But as they say - LEGENDS NEVER DIE…

Chester will always sing and scream on my playlist….

I don’t know how to end this but i do think there will be another post coming soon with more memories I hold of Linkin Park and especially Chester Bennington as an inspiration to me.

Ciao for now…