It’s really difficult to wrap my head around the fact that we lost both Chris Cornell and Chester Bennington so close together, and that the cause of both deaths was suicide. It’s a difficult pill to swallow—most of us grew up with the music of Soundgarden and Linkin Park in our ears. They were there for us in our most formative years, providing us with lyrics at a time when we maybe didn’t have so many words to describe our feelings or life or whatever. You add suicide on top of it and it’s an even tougher, sadder situation.

The Linkin Park frontman battled addiction and depression throughout his life, an obvious fact if you paid attention to his lyrics, but the father of six seemed to be doing better. Linkin Park was even about to launch a U.S. stadium tour with Blink-182, Wu-Tang Clan and Machine Gun Kelly. Though their music had softened over the years, they were still doing their thing and still selling a ton of tickets.

Rolling Stone writes:

Bennington was extremely close friends with Chris Cornell. He was the godfather to his children and sang Leonard Cohen’s “Hallelujah” at his funeral in May. “You have inspired me in many ways you could never have known,” Bennington wrote to him in an open letter after his death. “Your talent was pure and unrivaled. Your voice was joy and pain, anger and forgiveness, love and heartache all wrapped up into one. I suppose that’s what we all are. You helped me understand that.” We can only speculate why Bennington decided to commit suicide today, but it would have been Cornell’s 53rd birthday.

We’ve been losing so many heroes and icons in music lately and it’s so disheartening. I revisited Hybrid Theory and Meteora yesterday, and even though I lost touch with the band shortly after that, those albums still remain a straight up time machine. I felt like a teenager—emo feels and all. I felt the rage and frustrations of youth that I felt then, the feelings that seemed to dominate my entire world at the time. Linkin Park was a huge part of my life then. I’m sure many people my age could relate.

I didn’t mean to write so much. Check out Bennington and Cornell singing together…RIP to both of ’em.

Chris Cornell {feat. Chester Bennington} – Hunger Strike HD

Chris Cornell {feat. Chester Bennington} – Hunger Strike HD