Mike Shinoda - 19.08.2018 @ Summer Sonic, Tokyo, Japan
In the end, it does matter
“Sometimes you don’t say goodbye once, you say it over and over and over again.”
How do you grieve for a stranger? How do you find closure around someone you’ve never met, yet who has been there for you when nobody else could have?
At the time of Chester’s death, I hadn’t listened to Linkin Park in a while. I’d moved on to different genres, I’d left home and changed countries, and, when you’re 20, the rest of the world happens far away from the tight explosive ball that is growing up and figuring yourself out.
So I hadn’t understood or stopped to ask even what the news of his death meant to me.
Not until this one random somewhat life-changing concert.
I’d been in Japan 4 weeks already and the humidity was no longer evaporating me. I had only two weekends left, so I’d bought myself a ticket to Summer Sonic to see one of my favourite Japanese bands, The Oral Cigarettes. Equipped with a fan and soon in possession of a towel (like the locals), I raced down to Chiba and the Zozo Marine Stadium complex.
An hour later, I felt sparkling. It was my first festival experience on my own and I was shaking with the adventure and exhilaration of being in such a huge sound with The Oral Cigarettes, of navigating it all, and following curiosity and musical wisps on the wind, listening to Nulbarich on the Pacific beach and jumping to My First Story in one of the most supportive crowds I’ve ever been in.
By sheer luck, Mike was playing right after.
Mike Shinoda, frontman and the vocalist/rapper of Linkin Park, walked on stage to the cheers of the mostly Japanese crowd on a hot August day. I didn’t know it yet, but I was about to get my first ever glimpse into that wisdom shamans know and heavy metal moshpitters hint at: that music is often the only way to express the inexpressible.
I’d last seen Mike on a stage when I was 15, the first concert I’d ever asked my parents to drive me to. The 6 year gap was a gulf.
Neither of us was who we’d been back then.
What struck me even before he started singing were his eyes. Maybe I’d never been that close to the stage or paid that much attention, but his eyes were so kind. Sparkling with playfulness, a lifetime was playing under the surface. With one look, he enveloped us all, a small crowd compared to what he’s played in 20 years of career, and he was there, 100% for us, as we were, as he was. And together with his back-up band, they got to work cracking open the unspeakable.
Post Traumatic is the journey of a man through tragedy, both personal and global. He’d written this incredible album, this treasure trove of lyricism, and was touring it, knowing that what he held in hand was more than just a good show. He was holding our hearts, with all its secrets, with all its growing-up scars. And we were also holding him up. The wonderful Japanese habit of keeping one arm in the air at concerts made it look like we were all throwing good will and good wishes at the stage and he was catching that energy and channelling it right back at us.
"Before I even decided to go on tour, I had to prepare myself, I had to ask myself: Are you ready to go out into the world and see everybody and face other people’s emotions? And so far, so good, so far so good. Rather than making me sad, I’m happy to let you express yourselves. If you feel that you simply miss Chester, that you loved Chester, I want you to be ok with expressing that. That it’s more than relatable.”
He played In The End, an old Linkin Park ballad, and I and everybody in that crowd were given permission to grieve for a stranger who once upon a time, when we were all 15 and angry at our parents and the world, and had no words for what was happening in our heads, sang “I tried so hard and got so far / But in the end, it doesn’t even matter”. Sang “I'm tired of being what you want me to be / Feeling so faithless, lost under the surface / Don’t know what you’re expecting of me / Caught under the pressure of walking in your shoes“.
Screamed “Shut up when I’m talking to you“
Made space with that huge unmissable inescapable voice of his.
Just like a good shaman, once we’d all had the emotional release, Mike pulled us back up, we were not left to wallow, we were made to jump and shout and let it all out to About You and Papercut (I could sing those lyrics in my sleep). It’s a delight to watch a professional at work: his charisma filled the whole stadium. He built up the energy masterfully, taking us from the heart-wrenching Over Again to his incredible Fort Minor hit Remember the Name, all the time undergoing the catharsis, the relief of finally finally having that feeling out in the open. Someone threw him a Pikachu cape and he put it on for Bleed it Out without missing a beat. Is this what they mean by shared grief? Is this shared joy?
Looking back, can I trace everything I now search for in a concert to that day? The transcendence, the communal experience, the human connection, seeing the human behind the music, the human on stage doing their job, doing it so well, reaching out to us, us to reaching out to them? There was something so truthful in his eyes, in how he watched his audience, in his joyful running around the rail, high-fiving everybody.
Maybe.
He ended the set with Running from my Shadow, stepping into the crowd and holding the many outstretched hands reaching for him. Never before and never since have I been a part of such intense communal grief transformed into joy. It was music that saved Mike. It was music that saved us. Music that brought us together. Music that spoke what we couldn’t begin to say.
And in the end, that matters.
Chester Bennington was the vocalist of Linkin Park for almost 20 years. His birthday is on the 20th of March.
Mike Shinoda is the founder of Linkin Park, an incredible rapper as Fort Minor, and an in-demand producer. He has released a 3-volume album in 2020 - Dropped Frames. Go support his solo work!
Summer Sonic is a yearly rock and electronic music festival taking place in Chiba (a suburb of Tokyo) and Osaka, with a rotating lineup between the two festivals. One of the coolest experiences of my trip there, I highly recommend it if you’re in Japan in August. Check it out here!