The recently announced Linkin Park reunion has not been without its detractors. There first was controversy over new singer Emily Armstrong’s connections to Scientology and her past support of disgraced actor Danny Masterson. The son of late frontman Chester Bennington also blasted band co-founder Mike Shinoda for “quietly erasing my father’s life and legacy in real time.”
Now, Bennington’s mother Susan Eubanks says she feels “betrayed” by the reunion. Eubanks told Rolling Stone that the surviving members of Linkin Park told her they would discuss any potential reunion prior to making any decision. That apparently did not happen.
“I feel like they’re trying very hard to erase the past,” she said. “They’re performing songs that Chester sang. And I don’t know how the fans are taking it, but I know how I take it. And having Armstrong singing my son’s songs is hurtful.”
She continued: “I found out about Emily Armstrong joining the band on Google. I actually thought maybe the band was going back out, but that Mike would be the singer; Chester did teach Mike how to sing. He sang a song on ‘One More Light’ that I thought was beautiful until Chester died, then I couldn’t listen to it anymore. I thought if they were to go back out, it would just be the band not adding a singer.”
Eubanks tuned in very briefly to Linkin Park’s livestream concert that was held Sept. 5 in Los Angeles. “But it was her, I’m just going to say it, screeching her way through a very high note. And I got out of there as fast as I could,” she said. “I cried.”
Eubanks said that Shinoda allegedly told her son that their songs would sound better if a woman sang them.
“Chester called me and said, ‘He thinks that they’re going to replace me with a girl.’ And I said, ‘What do you mean?’ And he said Mike told him at rehearsal that, ‘If you decide you’re leaving, we’re going to replace you with a girl.’ And Chester was dumbfounded and hurt.”
