Music That Moved My Muse #linkinpark

Well, this wasn't the post I expected to be writing...

2016 was a bad year. So many of us lost icons that had meant so much to us. I still haven't got over some of them. But 2017 isn't shaping up all that well either. On Thursday, just as we began the long school summer holiday, I saw a tweet about Linkin Park, and my heart sank. Then shattered. Chester Bennington had been found dead, probably suicide. He was five years younger than me.

I only became a fan recently, and quite by accident. One of my many internet friends came over to meet me for real and suggested a trip to the cinema. We went to see Transformers: Revenge of the Fallen. I'm not a huge fan, but it was action packed and entertaining if not particularly challenging mentally. It had something else though.  A song called New Divide by Linkin Park.

I loved the sound of it and the lyrics, and played it endlessly after downloading it. After watching a few of their videos on Scuzz, most of which had a scifi look and sound to me, I went looking for more of their music and found they'd done a track for The Matrix. They went on to have another song featured in the third Transformer film - Iridescent.

Chester's voice and music inspired and transform two of my books. Thanks to the album Living Things, the chaotic, scattered mess that became When Dark Falls gained an identity and a darkly industrial feel, as well as turning into a superhero romance with a coherent story.

Chester's lesser known band Dead by Sunrise became the sound track to the hardest book I've written so far - my Louisiana zombie story, Restless In Peaceville - along with an LP track called The Little Things Give You Away.

I even had one of their songs picked out to be played at my funeral (morbid, I know, but I'm conscious every day of the fact my mum passed away at 43 and I'm just about to turn 47, so it preys on my mind a bit. Oh, and watch the video. You'll see why I find them so scifi-y).

I haven't loved everything they've done. I'm sorry to say it but I couldn't even sit through the entirety of their two latest singles. They'd gone in a direction I didn't like, but their ever evolving sound and willingness to experiment might well have brought me back to the next album. But that will never happen now. I'm just glad that I found them when I did and at least got to see them play live once. I will treasure that.

RIP Chester Bennington. I hope you've finally found peace.