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Linkin Park’s reunion is now in full swing. With new vocalist Emily Armstrong filling in for the late Chester Bennington, the nu-metal act kicked off their tour last week. They were on Fallon this week. I’m sure plenty of people are stoked about it all, but plenty others are not. Bennington’s family falls into the latter category.
After the Mars Volta/At The Drive-In’s Cedric Bixler-Zavala called Armstrong out for having previously supported her fellow Scientologist Danny Masterson, Armstrong made a statement distancing herself from the That ’70s Show actor, who’s currently in prison for rape. But that statement was insufficient to Bixler-Zavala’s wife, Chrissie Carnell-Bixler, who’s one of the women pursuing charges against Masterson. A few days later, Bennington’s oldest son Jaime accused Linkin Park’s Mike Shinoda of “quietly [erasing] my father’s life and legacy.” Bennington’s mother Susan Eubanks feels similarly.
In an essay published on Rolling Stone today, Eubanks said that she felt “betrayed” by Linkin Park’s decision to hire Armstrong. She told the magazine that the band promised to notify her if they reunited, but she found out the news online, just like everyone else. She wrote that she felt the members of Linkin Park were “trying very hard to erase the past,” and that hearing Armstrong singing her song’s songs was “hurtful.” Additionally, she said that Bennington’s first wife and the son they had together also weren’t notified by the band.
Eubanks’ essay continues, in part:
I actually thought maybe the band was going back out, but that Mike would be the singer; Chester did teach Mike how to sing. He sang a song on [2017’s] One More Light that I thought was beautiful until Chester died, then I couldn’t listen to it anymore. I thought if they were to go back out, it would just be the band not adding a singer…
Mike told Chester one time that he thought singing these songs would be better with a girl, because he often put Chester down. And Chester called me and said, “He thinks that they’re going to replace me with a girl.” And I said, “What do you mean?” And he said Mike told him at rehearsal that, “If you decide you’re leaving, we’re going to replace you with a girl.” And Chester was dumbfounded and hurt.
And the fact is that now they did it. So, of course, all that comes right back into my mind. I had a talk with my son about this. I didn’t think they’d probably do it.
Like I said, I thought Mike would go out and sing the songs, and they just wouldn’t sound the same. They wouldn’t be as high or as loud, and it would just be very different. And I would’ve been OK with that, but I’m not OK with this, to have somebody replace him and try to do what he did. I don’t think that there’s anybody in the world that has the same voice. And when I heard that, I was just so repelled that no, they’re trying to do exactly what Chester did, but they’re not succeeding at it.
If I could tell the band members anything it’s that I feel betrayed. You made a promise to me that you would let us know and you didn’t. If you were going to do this, this is the wrong way to do it. Don’t put her out there to sing Chester’s songs and then act like this was always the way it should have been. It’s like making him go away, erasing the past. You don’t have to worry about going through the old songs and finding new ones, new Chester songs to put out. Now you can just put out new songs. But don’t bother to put out Chester’s songs with Emily singing them.
Linkin Park with Armstrong will continue their tour with shows in Hamburg, London, Seoul, and Bogota this fall.