Chester Bennington is someone you'd have thought would want to pour a lot of heart into his lyrics. The last couple of years of his life have been difficult. He's talking, unwillingly, about how he recently divorced his first wife Samantha, a woman he reportedly met while working in a Burger King and married when he was just 20 years old. He's also talking, equally grudgingly, about how, shortly after his divorce, he remarried new wife Talinda Bentley. When he speaks, he peppers his sentences with endless "You knows" and "likes", as though unsure of what it is he actually wants to say.
"If we were a tabloid band then we wouldn't have to talk about this as you'd already know all this kind of stuff" he says, resignedly. "I got divorced. That's always fun. That's always a good time. I felt like someone, like, came up to me and said, 'Here's a big pile of sh**. Eat it'. I also got remarried, so I had, you know, end the other one. I lost all my money in the divorce and that sucks. That was something that was very difficult to deal with. All these things make you feel hung, drawn and quartered.
It was a process that on and on, Bennington getting ever wearier by the divorce proceedings.
"There are certain things that you'd like to let go and you can't because they've got their claws in you, you know." he continues. "It's like you get shot by a Taser and all these little hooks grab into your skin. After those shock you and drop you to the ground, you think, 'Thank God that's over'. Then all the person has to do is stand there and wait to zap you again. That's what my life has been like for the last couple of years. I'll et my ass kicked and then, when I'm feeling relief and trying to let things go. I'll realize this thing is still stuck in me. Then, every once in a while, I'll get zapped and reminded of what I was going through. That's a pretty hard place to live."
Thanks Agnes.
