Chester Bennington’s mother expresses deep emotional hurt towards Linkin Park, revealing ongoing tension between the family and the band after his passing.
Several years have passed since the tragic death of the beloved Linkin Park vocalist Chester Bennington back in July 2017, and his fans have struggled to deal with grief, nostalgia, and the feeling that something is lost. His powerful voice, channeling emotional pain into the music, still excites a huge global audience. For his family, though—especially his mom, Susan Eubanks—the story of Chester’s life and death is not just one of artistic legacy but of complex grief and unresolved feelings, particularly as it relates to the band that Bennington gave so much to.
In a string of candid interviews recently, Susan spoke her mind on Linkin Park, her son’s legacy, and what she has made of the direction the band has taken in these years since Chester’s passing. Susan speaks with words laced deeply in betrayal, frustration, and hurt sentiments that brought conversations amongst fans and those closest to Bennington. “I feel betrayed by them Linkin Park, Susan said in a recent interview, speaking about how her son’s memory is being handled. Her voice breaks when talking about the years she spent seeing Chester give his heart to the music and the band and how his contributions are not respected.
Susan’s words capture a dynamic rarely, if ever, discussed: the emotional toll taken on family members who lose someone in the public eye, but particularly when that person had been part of such a tight-knit group like Linkin Park. For Susan, the wound cuts particularly deep. “It’s like Chester’s voice has been silenced all over again, and it’s not just because he’s no longer here,” she lamented. The feeling tends towards a more serious emotional conflict—a kind of feeling that the band has moved on too fast or in ways she didn’t quite agree with.
Linkin Park formed back in 1996 and went on to become one of the most successful rock bands during the 2000s, for which Chester Bennington’s unmistakable vocals and emotionally charged lyrics were a key component. Their crossover sound with rock, nu-metal, and electronic elements gave them mainstream success, mostly with albums such as Hybrid Theory and Meteora. Bennington joined the band in 1999 and quickly became the face and voice of the band for millions of fans. His tragic suicide in 2017 left the band—and its fanbase—reeling.
The band Linkin Park has been quiet on the music side of things since Chester’s passing, but remaining band members kept releasing special editions of past albums and charity undertakings, paying homage to Chester in concerts and with various tributes. Touching—most would say this is—but a necessary move by fans to keep the memory of their fallen frontman alive. To Susan, these moves were not quite what she had hoped for. “I don’t think they’re doing enough to keep his memory alive in the right way,” she said. “They have an obligation to the fans and to Chester, but I feel like it’s been botched.”
Among specific complaints, Susan has expressed discontent with the band’s work with singer Emily Armstrong, lead vocalist of the rock band Dead Sara. Armstrong had appeared on stage with the band for their 2022 tribute concert to Bennington and was one of several musicians who’d been rumored for future projects with Linkin Park. While Armstrong herself has certainly spoken highly of and shown deep respect for Bennington’s memory, Susan is less convinced that her son’s shoes will ever be filled. “No one can replace Chester,” she said point-blank. “I understand that they want to go ahead with the concert, but without my son, it’s just off. They should understand how it feels on my end.”
This emotional turmoil has left some fans divided. Although many share Susan’s pain and her desire to have her son remembered, others proclaim that the band members—who in their own right were family to Chester—deserve to move forward with the music in tribute to their memories of their late friend. Mike Shinoda, who fronts the band vocally and is the co-creative force behind it, has spoken many times of the difficulty in carrying on without Chester. In an emotional interview following Bennington’s passing, Shinoda said, “There’s no replacing Chester, and we don’t want to. But we also don’t want to stop making music. It’s what we do, and Chester would want us to keep going.”
To Susan, this sounds like an empty excuse. “I know they were close, but at the end of the day, Chester was my son. I raised him, I saw him struggle, and I don’t want him to be forgotten or replaced by anyone else.” The comment catches one vital point of the disconnect between the feelings of family members and the public personas bands adopt, especially when they have lost such a part of their identity.
She also said she felt betrayed by what she perceived as a lack of direct words from the band since her son died. “It’s like I’ve been shut out,” she said. They’ve moved on, but for me, it’s still raw.” While the band hasn’t publicly responded to these specific allegations, to its credit, Linkin Park has mostly remained respectfully silent on such personal issues regarding Chester’s family since the death of Bennington and has focused on mental health awareness drives and paying tribute to the late band member.
As the chasm between Chester’s mother and Linkin Park grows wider, how best to honor his legacy remains rife with personal and professional tensions. To Susan, the loss of her son was a continuing open wound, with all of Linkin Park’s well-intentioned actions simply reopening it rather than helping it to heal. Her emotional pronouncements also underlined the now complexities of public grief, in which a son was not only a member of a family but a cultural icon.
Susan Eubanks’s feelings may never find resolution; her sentiments may never rest parallel with the decisions of the remaining band members of Linkin Park. But her words put into perspective the human toll behind headlines and personal grief that can be skipped in the process of moving on.
The legacy of Chester Bennington may live on in the hearts of millions, but to his mother, how that legacy is handled will forever be deeply personal. As she put it so poignantly, “He’s not just a rock star. He’s my son. And I don’t want him to ever be forgotten for who he really was.”
