Chester Bennington
He’s always been the black sheep of the family.
Well, considering my sister is a principal, my brother has been a police officer for many years and now flies a helicopter for the Phoenix PD, and my other sister has been in the administrative part of the Phoenix PD for 20-plus years, I think what I do isn’t really a shock to my parents because I live life by my own rules.
Indeed, his dad set him down the path to rock stardom.
My dad pretty much raised me on his own, and he always told me: ‘I know you’re going to be something special one day, you’re not like everybody else. I want you to find something you’re passionate about and do that thing, because you’re going to be important in that world.’ And, for some reason, I always believed him. So when I discovered I could actually sing, I was like: I am going to become a rock star –that’s my goal. Not to become a rock star for the ‘star’ part of it, but I wanna write great music that people love.
He was a high-school poet.
One of the great elements of being young is that we are all driven, most of us, to write poetry, to express ourselves. So I wrote tons of poetry, and then I transitioned into writing more lyric-like things. There’s a big difference between poetry and lyrics – you’d never want to be too poetic with your words in a song. It makes the song really boring.
He’s been attacked by an animal.
I have. It was a fierce animal. It was intentional, but I was attacked. I had the honour of going to Luke Air Force Base in Arizona as a guest, and they showed me all the cool stuff, like the bomb suit, and my wife put the bomb suit on, and we saw the cool bomb robot. But I love German shepherds, and they were like, ‘Hey, you wanna get attacked by a dog?’ And so I put the big padded arm thing on, and they introduced me to this super-awesome dog, really friendly, then the guy gave a command word and I put my arm up and the dog’s eyes went from this happy look to laser-locked on to me, and he turned into an animal and attacked me! It was amazing! German shepherds can bite down with more than 2,500lbs per square inch of pressure, and he just locked on to my arm, and wouldn’t take his eyes off my eyes. Then they said the stop word and he stopped and started licking my face.
He’s intermittently clairvoyant.
I’ve had many premonitions. I think many people do. I wholeheartedly knew I was going to be doing what I’m doing right now, throughout my whole life. And last night, I was watching a football game, and the Giants threw a pass, and I was like, ‘Oh, this is going to get intercepted now, watch this.’ And the Patriots intercepted it. And the night before, on the last hand of poker I was playing, I had a pair of eights and I needed another eight to beat Dave, and as the card was being turned I said, ‘That’s an eight.’ And it was an eight. So… every once in a while I can tap in to the universe.
