MUSIC INTERVIEW: CHESTER BENNINGTON

Linkin Park Vocalist Talks New Album, Acting in 'Saw 3D'

By: Team Buzzine

October 28, 2010

Chester Bennington sat down with Buzzine in Los Angeles, California to discuss his role in the new movie, Saw 3D, and also about the new Linkin Park album, A Thousand Suns. Renaissance man Chester tells how he came to be involved in the latest installment of the Saw franchise, why he thinks Saw is the best modern horror film, the concept behind the new Linkin Park album, and why anybody who doesn't know Public Enemy will never be a true fan of hip hop.

Stefan Goldby: We’re here to talk about the seventh installment in the Saw franchise; your band [Dead By Sunrise] has a song on the soundtrack, and you are actually acting in the movie itself… Can you tell us how you came to be involved in this film?

Chester Bennington: I’ve always been a huge fan of the Saw films since the very first movie, so whether or not I was in this film, I’d definitely be watching it when it came out. Interestingly enough, Mark Burg--producer of the films--lives next door to one of my band-mates in Linkin Park, and when they met, they exchanged “Hello’s…This is what I do, what do you do…?” And it’s funny because my wife and I are huge fans of the Saw films, so when my band-mate found out what Mark does, he was like, “Oh, Chester is going to be so excited. I’ve got to introduce you guys because he loves the Saw movies. This is so awesome.” Instantly, the reaction was “Really? Oh, cool. Do you think he’d want to be in one of the movies?” And the obvious answer is yes. Are you kidding?!! It was very exciting for me to get the opportunity to do this.

SG: What is it about the Saw films? What has made them into such a phenomenon?

CB: I think, initially, the first Saw film is, in my opinion, the best horror/suspense film of all time. It was perfectly executed. It was very simple. The story was gripping, and the motive of the killer, of Jigsaw, was something that was almost admirable in a weird way. There was some kind of honor or something there--some kind of moral lesson. It was just a strange play on trying to do the right thing, and I think that is intriguing to people because I think a lot of people try to do the right thing in the wrong way.

SG: Also, partly it’s in the timing--it’s become part of Halloween season. What do you usually do for Halloween? What’s the Bennington Halloween like?

CB: I’ve got about a thousand children, so my Halloween typically revolves around painting up a bunch of kids, passing out candy, and trying to get out and walk around the neighborhood. Ten years ago, it would have been going to parties, dressing up, and trying to get laid…and watching a good horror movie.

SG: From what we’ve seen in the trailer, you have a bit of car trouble in the movie. What can you tell us about it?

CB: What I like about this particular scene and what got me excited is it’s a more elaborate trap than ever before. Jigsaw typically focuses his traps on one person: Every once in a while, more than one person might get snarled in a trap, but the intention was really for one or two people to battle it out. This has a number of people in it--really elaborate, very interesting in the sense that it’s never been done before in any of the Saw films, so that was a cool thing for me to be involved in.

SG: How was walking onto the movie set different from walking onto a music video set?

CB: Not much difference. Each scene is set up the same as the way you would set up for a video, so in that sense, it was not foreign to me. It really wasn’t much different than doing a music video, honestly, other than I was being somebody else other than myself. But I don’t even know who I am, so it’s like acting…[laughs].

SG: You were also just on a music video set making a new clip for the first single from the latest Linkin Park album [A Thousand Suns], whichcame out and went straight to #1 number one—congratulations! What moment stands out most in your mind when recording this album?

CB: We talked about doing a concept record early on, spoke with the press about it a bit, got ourselves excited. I think that, with this record in particular, there was a moment a little over a year into making the album where we started talking about what we wanted to achieve in the studio musically, and we realized that what we wanted to do was be really free in the studio, not confine ourselves to writing songs that have a very specific type of arrangement that is good for radio or whatever, and just be more open in letting music evolve and change--maybe not follow the typical kind of Linkin Park arrangement that we put on it, and also not falling back on things that are comfortable for us--really getting out of our comfort zones of writing or the sounds we have. So we had that philosophy that really didn’t work well with, “Well, let’s premeditate an idea and write a record about it.” So we went from “Oh, this is going to be a concept record,” to “Never mind….”

But there was something that was sexy about the idea of doing a conceptual record, so what we did do was work on the art work right away--we started working on the idea that we wanted to make an album that had a lot of musical segues that had a lot of things that maybe might not be songs but helped deliver the emotional impact of the next song or tie the two songs together and really make an album that is meant to be listened to from beginning to end. So that was the concept: deliver an artistic record that feels good from beginning to end.

About the time that I’m talking about--about a year into the process, maybe a little longer--we started noticing that all the themes of these different songs we were writing actually worked really well together when you listened to this song next to this track. We’d do listenings every week, so we’d end up pairing songs in certain ways. It would feel really special, almost like it was meant to be this song segueing into this track. We noticed that it was happening a lot with the songs that we were working on. When we realized that we had stumbled upon writing that concept record without really intending to do it and telling a story--a very human story about war and loss and regret and hope and government, religion, all that kind of stuff--this view of the world, in a very interpersonal way, was being told. That was a moment where I was like, “We may have a concept record.”

SG: Within the record as a whole, there is a track [“Wretches & Kings”] that is impossible to listen to and not think of a particular rap group. Why now, and what is it about Public Enemy that made you want to hold them up as an influence?

CB: I’m not going to speak for the band, but I do know Mike (Shinoda) feels this way too: Public Enemy is very inspirational to us. Those guys were in your face, so punk rock and so politically driven. A lot of what Chuck D was saying was meant to piss you off and meant to make you think about what you were doing, and I think that was something special in hip-hop. There has been so much great hip-hop, and Public Enemy, for me, has always been at the top of that list of hip-hop groups that surpassed just being good and became icons and actually required listening. If you’re into hip-hop at all and you don’t know who Public Enemy is, then you’re not into hip-hop. Lyrically, I don’t know what inspired Mike to draw those or pull from that particular song or use it. I can assume that the intention of the song is to really gnaw at people and point fingers and really call some shit out that we’ve been thinking about in our own little way for a long time. This is one of those songs that we felt we could do that with, and referencing Public Enemy and Lauryn Hill and Big Daddy Kane, I think, helped drive that “Fuck you and the horse you rode in on” kind of vibe.

SG: In 1991, I was in the front row to see Public Enemy at the Reading Festival in the UK, and I remember turning around and seeing a field full of people who all felt the same way - it was one of my defining music fan moments... But now you’re in a similar music position as an artist. You play to arenas and to fields full of people; you’ve worked very hard to achieve that. What’s the best thing about the position you’re in today as an artist?

CB: I’ll give you the most self-centered answer and then I’ll give you a less self-centered answer. When you’re on stage and you’re playing at, like, Rock Am Ring or something like that, and there are tens of thousands if not a hundred thousand people out there, the first time we played the Rock Am Ring, we played in the middle of the afternoon. I had no idea if there were 3,000 kids who liked Linkin Park or none. Well…I knew there were some because I had seen some Linkin Park shirts, but really, I had no idea. We came out and started playing, and the entire crowd was jumping in unison and singing out the songs. It was this crazy energy, like holy shit, they are paying attention and truly they like the music. It’s not just a phenomenon—this isn’t fake - People are really connecting…they’re seeing what we’re doing and they like it. That was amazing. That’s a good feeling. That’s the best acknowledgement, when you play live and everyone in the crowd knows every song you’re singing.

That’s a good feeling, but there’s a moment, like when I’m out like signing autographs outside a hotel or venue or something, that I can get complacent with it sometimes. But then someone stops me and tells me this incredibly horrifying story about their life, about something that happened to them that changed their view of the world in a way that was scary for them and put them in a place that wasn’t a good place to be; but then they say, “Your music got me out of that,” or, “Your music helped me through that, and if it wasn’t for you guys, I don’t know if I’d be alive today.”

It’s a lot of responsibility to put on somebody, but I appreciate that very much. It’s not something I set out to do, like “I’m going to go write this inspiration song that is going save someone’s life--that’s how awesome we are…” That would be so ridiculous. But to hear someone, honestly, from the bottom of their heart, to tell you that something you have done unintentionally has helped them through a horrible moment in their life or made a special moment even more special, that’s the coolest thing.    

Interview conducted at the SLS Hotel in Beverly Hills, California.