Linkin Parks Mike Shinoda Attacks Media Over Suicide Coverage One Year After Chester Bennigton’s Death
In a recent live stream, Linkin Park’s Mike Shinoda expressed his dissatisfaction with the way media covered suicides of celebrities. He not only criticized the coverage of his bandmate Chester Bennington but other famous people as well, like Kurt Cobain, Chris Cornell, Kate Spade, and Anthony Bourdain.
Shinoda said that if people don’t like the way these deaths are being covered that they should avoid using social media, arguing that this “is an awesome way to take care of yourself.” You can read an excerpt from the live stream below
“Just because you’re curious? Is that a good reason? When they talk about addiction, it’s often been described as having a demon on your shoulder, or a monkey on your back, and the reason that it’s talked about that way is often times it feels like a voice that is telling you to do something. Sometimes that voice is convincing. That little voice doesn’t say, ‘Go buy a bunch of a meth.’ It says, ‘Man, you haven’t talked to Johnny in awhile, you should call Johnny. I wonder how he is doing, he was doing pretty bad last time you talked to him, you should really call him.’ That voice is actually being sneaky in telling you, ‘You need to get in touch with Johnny, because Johnny has the meth.’ That’s the same thing that is going on for a lot of us. For me I’ve never been a drug addict, so that hasn’t happened to me.
“What does happen to me and happens to most of us is the very simple and subtle sneaky version of it. You read something and you go, ‘Oh, I’m so curious about that, let me click on it.’ You click on it just so you can get revved up about the information in there. That information in there is telling you the story about Anthony Bourdain, it’s telling you Kate Spade, it told you Chester, it told you Chris Cornell, it told you Kurt Cobain, it told you Lil Peep, it told you all these people. Over and over we go through this. Don’t go for that man. Your attention is a commodity. It’s like money, and you’ve got to be just aware. I want you to be aware of where you spend it.
“Right now, honestly, the thing I’m most excited about and I’m focused on most is getting the [solo] live show together and making it the best it can be,” he continued. “It’s at a good place, and I’m basically doing… I’ve been doing a one-man show, but I think there’s a lot of room to grow and develop it, and I’m excited about continuing to do that.
“Part of this is gauging the fanbase and the shows themselves — seeing how this goes, and if it goes well, or we learn anything about how to do the shows, then going forward, that’ll be good information to have,” Mike added. “Like, for example, right now, some of the shows are during the day, some are at night, some are indoor, some are outdoor, some are really big, some are small, so there’s a lot of variety. And as we go, I’m figuring out the best presentation and everything. It’s nice, because, having played onstage for so long, I already know a lot about how I like to do things onstage, but the amount of variety and types of shows that I’m doing makes me really excited to get out there and do this.”
Back in March, Shinoda told Vulture that he still talked to the other guys from LINKIN PARK“pretty regularly. We check in all the time,” he said. “We’ve gotten together and hung out a lot. Once in a while, we play a little bit of music, but there’s also a lot of uncertainty there about what to do.”
Shinoda played his first solo shows since the death of LINKIN PARK singer Chester Bennington on May 12 at the KROQ Weenie Roast in Los Angeles and May 13 at the Identity LA festival, also in L.A. Shinoda mashed up some LINKIN PARK songs along with his solo material, singing some of Chester Bennington‘s parts from songs like “Bleed It Out”. He played “In The End” on piano and let the fans sing most of Chester‘s vocal parts, though at times he came in and sang his parts.
