Linkin Park’s Chester Bennington Faced ‘Hour-by-Hour’ Addiction Battle Before Death, Friend Reveals in New Book (Exclusive)

Before Chester Bennington died by suicide in 2017, the Linkin Park frontman spent months fighting his urge to drink.

In It Starts With One: The Legend and Legacy of Linkin Park, out Oct. 1 from Hachette Books, author Jason Lipshutz offers an in-depth look at the 20-year career of the rock band, including the tragic death of their frontman.

Bennington died on July 20, 2017 at age 41. The band held a tribute concert in October of that year and largely went on hiatus after that. Earlier this month, the band announced they added Emily Armstrong of Dead Sara as co-vocalist and Colin Brittain as drummer. They join the lineup of Mike Shinoda, Brad Delson, Phoenix and Joe Hahn.

Days after his death, the band shared a letter dedicated to the late singer on social media expressing their grief and heartbreak.

“Our hearts are broken. The shockwaves of grief and denial are still sweeping through our family as we come to grips with what has happened,” the letter began. “We’re trying to remind ourselves that the demons who took you away from us were always part of the deal. After all, it was the way you sang about those demons that made everyone fall in love with you in the first place.”

In the book, the author describes what the months — and days — leading up to Bennington’s death were like with anecdotes from family and friends.

Read more in an exclusive excerpt from It Starts With One shared with PEOPLE below.

In the spring of 2017, as Mike was sitting next to Chester on a couch, he asked for the microphone that they had been sharing so that he could explain what kind of guy Chester was.

They were in Berlin conducting an interview together during the One More Light promotional run, and Chester was talking about how he had to dig deep to overcome his struggles during the album’s creation — about having “just enough things to keep me wanting to go,” he said. Mike wanted to give an example of what his friend was talking about. So when Chester passed him the mic and leaned back on the couch, Mike told the story of the time Chester broke his wrist onstage, back before the shoulder that required surgery in 2011, and way before the busted ankle in 2015.

This was in Melbourne in October 2007, while Linkin Park were touring Australia in support of Minutes to Midnight, with Chris Cornell as their opening act. That night, Chester jumped off the top of the stage as the guitars kicked in on “Papercut.” His foot got caught, he landed awkwardly, and his whole body slammed hard into the stage — but two and a half seconds later, Chester sprang up like nothing had happened. By the time Mike started rapping the song’s opening verse, Chester was bouncing around in front of the crowd.

The band huddled minutes later. They were only five songs into a 20-song set, and Chester was pretty certain that his wrist was broken. Mike and the guys presumed that they’d cancel the rest of the set, but Chester did not. “He’s like, ‘Well … it’s gonna be as broken in an hour as it is right now,’” Mike recalled. “And we were like, ‘What?!’ He’s like, ‘Yeah, I mean, let’s just play! It f—ing hurts, but let’s just play.’”

That’s simply who Chester is, was Mike’s point. He was not going to let something as pesky as a broken wrist push him off that stage. He was going to overcome every new hurdle because that’s what he had done his entire life. “He’s the kind of guy,”Mike concluded, “that’s gonna just power through anything.”

To the ones who knew him best, and to the world that had embraced his voice, Chester Bennington seemed indestructible. And then, somehow, he was gone.

On the morning of July 20, 2017, Chester died of suicide by hanging in his Palo Verdes Estates home in Los Angeles County. The news felt incomprehensible when it broke online that afternoon, as if the thread of reality had unspooled. Chester was only 41 years old, and his spirit was the size of a skyscraper; he should have been halfway through his life, if even that. When the unconfirmed rumors became verified fact, the loss felt like a total, unfathomable gut punch.

“Shocked and heartbroken,” Mike posted at 3:03 p.m. Eastern time that day, “but it’s true.”

Chester’s death stunned and shattered those closest to him, including his bandmates. “The shockwaves of grief and denial are still sweeping through our family as we come to grips with what has happened,” Linkin Park said in a joint statement a few days after Chester’s passing. The individual messages in the immediate aftermath were considerably more raw. “Heartbroken,” Dave wrote on Twitter, while on Instagram, Joe posted a performance shot of Chester, a warm glow of light around his head. “Always shining,” Joe wrote. “I miss my friend.”

Mike had just seen Chester a few days earlier at a recording studio: Chester had introduced him to the indie rapper and poet Watsky, after hyping up the artist for a while. Watsky and some of his friends left the studio, but Chester and Mike lingered together — spending a few hours talking, kicking around song ideas, game-planning their upcoming shows. It was nothing special or notable; it was just what they had always done.

In the days before his death, Chester had been in Arizona with Talinda and the kids, taking a family vacation at their cabin inSedona ahead of what was to be Linkin Park’s sprawling NorthAmerican tour in support of One More Light later that month. Chester traveled back to Los Angeles by himself — he said that he needed to work, and the band had a photo shoot scheduled for the morning of the twentieth — but before he left, Talinda snapped a photo of Chester and their children gazing into the woods off their deck, grinning from ear to ear.

“He was happy,” she said in an early 2018 interview. “He gave me a kiss goodbye, he gave the kids a kiss goodbye and I never saw him again.”

Chester had been candid about his substance abuse issues during the making of One More Light, including an extended period of drinking in the second half of 2016. According to Talinda, Chester “had been sober for almost six months” prior to his death. In his final months, however, while publicly discussing his general difficulties with life during the One More Light press run, he was privately telling loved ones about a specific problem: the urge to drink had consumed his thoughts once again. “He was describing an hour-by-hour battle with addiction,” said Ryan Shuck, Chester’s close friend who had helped turn one of his bleakest periods during the 2000s into the lone Dead by Sunrise album and who had been texting with him about his alcoholism in the weeks leading up to his death.

When an autopsy and toxicology report later confirmed that Chester had a trace amount of alcohol in his system at the time of his death — he had been discovered with an empty bottle of Stella Artois in the room as well as a glass of Corona that was less than half full — Talinda was not surprised. She had immediately understood that those beer bottles represented are lapse. “I knew instantly that that drink triggered that shame,” she said, “triggered a lifetime of unhealthy neural pathways.”

The timing and nature of Chester’s death also led to widespread speculation that the recent passing of Chris Cornell, who had died by suicide two months earlier, was connected, as some sort of tragic catalyst. Both artists hanged themselves, and July 20 would have been Chris’s fifty-third birthday.

Chris’s death in May 2017 devastated Chester, who had lost a childhood hero turned close companion. “You have inspired me in many ways you could never have known,” Chester wrote to Chris in an open letter posted online after learning of his passing. “I can’t imagine a world without you in it.” The day after Chris’s death happened to be the release date of One More Light, and Linkin Park were scheduled to perform a short set on Jimmy Kimmel Live! that evening. Instead of opening with lead single “Heavy,” however, the band played “One More Light,” and a visibly shaken Chester — seated on a stool in a black suit, black shades covering his eyes — dedicated the song to the friend he had lost less than forty-eight hours earlier.

“We love you, Chris,” he said into the microphone to begin the remarkably raw TV performance: Chester gasped out some of the lyrics, screamed in a song that contained no screams, and repeated with purpose, “Who cares if one more light goes out? /Well, I do.” Mike later revealed that Chester couldn’t make it through the song during the Kimmel soundcheck earlier that day, too overcome with grief over Chris’s passing. And although the One More Light title track had been written in memory of their friend Amy Zaret, fans quickly adopted the just-released song asa Chris Cornell tribute.

A week later, Chester sang a tender version of “Hallelujah” at Chris’s funeral at the Hollywood Forever Cemetery in late May 2017, urged on by Vicky Cornell and with Brad accompanying him on guitar. The Kimmel performance of “One More Light” had been so cathartic that Chester felt more prepared to sing in front of Chris’s family and friends; “Hallelujah” was Chester’s all-time favorite song, and Chris had been friends with Jeff Buckley, so the performance felt like a fitting tribute. Afterward,Chester spoke with Chris’s daughter, Lily, who told him that she, her half-sister Toni, and their father would all regularly sing “Hallelujah” together. “I didn’t know that until after I’d performed it,” Chester said, “but it turned out to be a very special moment.”

Following Chris’s funeral, Chester seemingly moved forward. One More Light debuted at No. 1 on the Billboard 200 — the negative reviews and fan response hadn’t dulled the commercial power of the band’s catchiest album in years — and Linkin Park headed toEurope in early June for a month-long victory lap. “The fact that it debuted even beyond what we predicted is a great starting point,” Brad said at the time, “and now we get to bring those songs on the road and share them every night.”

At that point, Linkin Park were a well-oiled arena machine: they knew how to make years-old hits sound exciting to crowds that had heard them live several times over, whether through a somber piano version of “Crawling,” an extended guitar solo on“What I’ve Done,” or a fans-only second half of the “In the End” bridge. Meanwhile, some of the One More Light songs had been bulked up for the concerts, with Brad’s guitar work foregrounded more than it had been in the studio on songs like“Battle Symphony” and “Heavy.” Those European performances showcased the most sonically diverse setlist in the fired-up veteran group’s history; according to a band statement from later that year, “Chester shared with us that he felt this was the best tour we had ever done.”

Sounding invigorated during the European leg of the tour, Chester began to make plans for the rest of 2017, both within and outside of Linkin Park. The One More Light North American tour was scheduled to last for three months and would kick off with a pair of stadium dates alongside Blink-182 in late July, so both bands made a Funny or Die comedy video as “Blinkin Park” to promote the shows in advance.

In June, Chester announced that Grey Daze would be getting back together that fall for a twentieth-anniversary reunion show. He and Sean Dowdell had remained close over the years — Chester was even a co-owner of Sean’s tattoo parlor, ClubTattoo, which had expanded beyond its Tempe location into a multi-state chain — and Chester, Sean, Mace Beyers and Cristin Davis had reunited earlier in 2017 to record some of the early Grey Daze tunes for a planned rerelease. Meanwhile, Chester had also been in touch with Guns N’ Roses’ Matt Sorum about rejoining Kings of Chaos, the covers-only supergroup that had been active with a rotating lineup since 2012, which Chester had joined for a few spot shows at the end of 2016.

Linkin Park’s European tour ended on July 6, 2017, at Barclaycard Arena in Birmingham, England. The show was actually supposed to be the next-to-last stop of that leg of the tour: the band was originally scheduled to wrap up inManchester, England, the following night, but the Manchester Arena bombing — a terrorist attack following an Ariana Grande concert in May 2017 — closed down the arena for months, and Linkin Park couldn’t find a replacement venue for that particular tour stop.

In Birmingham, Chester’s voice sounded as sturdy as ever, ripping through the pre-encore run of “Somewhere I Belong,” “What I’ve Done,” “In the End” and “Faint” with precision and poignancy in front of thousands of fans. Midway through the show, Chester dedicated “One More Light” to the victims of the Manchester bombing, which had claimed 22 lives, and got off the stage and right up to the audience to perform the song.

“The one thing that can’t be defeated is love,” Chester declared, clutching the microphone as fiercely as he always had. He began walking up to the barricades and shaking hands, hugging people between lines of “One More Light,” letting fans grip his arm and pat his shoulder as he sang the chorus. No one knew then that the performance would be Chester’s last.

In the aftermath of Chester’s death, multiple blog posts and message-board threads tried to construe One More Light as a cry for help that had fallen on deaf ears. Many of the interviews that Chester had given leading up to the release described his constant battles with depression and difficulties with day-to-day life. But then again, those same interviews often portrayed the most fraught moments in the past tense, tempered by professional aid and the support of those around him. “At the end of the process, I was surprised I was ever in this place,” he said in April 2017. “I was like, ‘Wow, I can’t see myself getting in that place again because I have such good friends.’”

One More Light was certainly filled with lyrical documents of Chester’s struggle, from “Nobody Can Save Me” to “Battle Symphony” to “Heavy.” The latter was a pop-radio hit at the time of Chester’s death, his voice cracking on the hook “I’m holding on / Why is everything so heavy?” Yet Chester had always turned his personal pain into lyrical inspiration. He turned crushing admissions — from “Crawling in my skin / These wounds, they will not heal,” to “I’ve become so numb / I can’t feel you there,” to “Sometimes solutions aren’t so simple /Sometimes goodbye’s the only way,” to “I’ve tried so hard and got so far / But in the end, it doesn’t even matter” — into widespread catharsis over the course of dozens of songs, long before One More Light. He had never tried to hide the reality his words were steeped in.

“We’re trying to remind ourselves,” the band wrote to Chester following his death, “that the demons who took you away from us were always part of the deal. After all, it was the way you sang about those demons that made everyone fall in love with you in the first place.”

No one will ever really know why the darkness Chester battled his entire life consumed him on July 20, 2017. The light that Chester exhibited in the prior weeks around family and friends, the strength that he demonstrated onstage, the musical endeavors that he was plotting, the answers he seemed to have found — they all waged war against years of deep-seated trauma, struggles with addiction, physical injury, severe depression. The belief that certain factors definitively contributed to his death or that musical decisions served as warning signs suggests an unrealistic cause and effect, a logic that didn’t exist. There are no easy answers, and there never will be.

What is clear, however, is that Chester’s world was not defined by that darkness at the end of his life.

Excerpted from IT STARTS WITH ONE by Jason Lipshutz. Copyright © 2024. Available from Hachette Books, an imprint of Hachette Book Group, Inc.

It Starts With One by Jason Lipshutz is on sale Oct. 1 and available for preorder now, wherever books are sold.