‘Time Stopped’: Linkin Park’s Dave On Chester Bennington’s Death

Linkin Park returned to India after a gap of almost 20 years for two performances on their ‘From Zero World Tour’. In an interview with Zoom, bassist Dave Farrell discussed his deep ties with the band

members and reflected on the tragic loss of Chester Bennington in 2017.

He reminisced about the band’s most memorable moments, the highs and lows they navigated together, and described the group as a “family,” united through every twist and turn of their career.

“A band is, in its best and worst forms, is like a version of a family. You’ve got all the ups and downs, of what comes with that. And you end up living, eating, enjoying, playing, your families get intertwined, everything like that,” Dave said.

‘Brutally Difficult’

He termed Chester’s death as ‘brutally difficult’ and said “It was hard to go through. And with that, it was also really, really important to me to figure out some way to kind of move forward. Obviously, even in the family analogy, when you lose a loved one, it feels like your world stops, time feels like it stops for that period of time. But everything else around you actually keeps going, life moves forward and you’ve got to figure out a way.”

“I had to figure out a way to like on-ramp back into that. Like, how do you figure out now how to live differently? Obviously it’s a big change and everything from that point moving forward is always going to be different,” he added.

Moving on From Chester Bennington

Dave said the band was forced to confront the challenge of finding a way ahead after what he described as a ‘big, traumatic disaster’ in Linkin Park’s history.

“We’ve had small victories, big victories, we’ve had small struggles and we’ve had huge tragedies in the band. It is that version of family where you either figure out how to navigate it or you don’t. Like with the band, you either figure out how you move forward or you just fold it up, wrap it up, and don’t be a band anymore,” he said.

Wrapping up, he noted that their current position is largely the result of how the group learned to steer through a time of immense difficulty.

After staging a standalone performance in Bengaluru on Jan. 23, the band is set to take the stage at Lollapalooza India 2026 in Mumbai on Jan 25, with the festival scheduled at the Mahalaxmi Racecourse.