Linkin Park cancels tour following death of singer

July 21, 2017 6:20 PM PT

Linkin Park has canceled its summer and fall “One More Light” North American concert tour, which was scheduled to begin Thursday in Boston and would have included an Oct. 20 show with Snoop Dogg at San Diego’s Mattress Firm Amphitheatre.

The decision comes one day after the band’s singer, Chester Bennington, fatally hung himself at his Los Angeles home. He was 41. His survivors include his wife, Talinda Bennington, and his six children.

The cancellation was announced Friday afternoon by Live Nation, the tour’s promoter and the owner of Mattress Firm Amphitheatre.

“We are incredibly saddened to hear about the passing of Chester Bennington,” Live Nation said in a statement.

“The Linkin Park ‘One More Light’ North American tour has been canceled and refunds are available at point of purchase. Our thoughts go out to all those affected.”

Bennington’s death calls into questions the future of Linkin Park. It remains to be seen if the band will call it a day, or if the group tries to replace Bennington with another singer.

Bennington himself replaced Scott Weiland as the singer in Stone Temple Pilots. Weiland was found dead on his tour bus in late 2015. The former Coronado resident was 48 and - like Bennington - had a history of substance abuse. Weiland had been fired by Stone Temple Pilots in 2013 and subsequently headed the band Scott Weiland & The Wildabouts.

Linkin Park’s most recent performance with Bennington was July 6 in Birmingham, England, where the band concluded its 2017 European Tour. The hard-rocking rap-metal band had also performed this year in South America, Japan, Canada and a few cities in this country.

The band performed twice in San Diego in 2014 - first at Petco Park during Comic-Con,then two months later at Mattress Firm Amphitheatre, which was then known as Sleep Train Amphitheatre. Linkin Park DJ Joe Hahn did double-duty in 2014, performing with the band at its MTV-sponsored Petco Park concert and screening “Mall,” his debut work as a feature film director.

Music

George Varga

San Diego Union-Tribune music critic George Varga began drumming in rock bands at 12 and writing professionally about music at 15. A Louisiana native who grew up mostly in Germany, Varga has earned three Pulitzer Prize nominations for his writing at the U-T and is a voting member of the Rock and Roll Hall of Fame. In addition to providing live coverage of the Grammy Awards and festivals from Coachella and KAABOO to the 1994 edition of Woodstock, he has interviewed everyone from Miles Davis, Britney Spears and (over a game of chess) Ray Charles to Willie Nelson, Kanye West and Pulitzer Prize-winning composer Anthony Davis. A triple first prize-winner for criticism and arts writing at the 2022 San Diego Press Club awards and a first prize-winner at the 2022 San Diego Society of Professional Journalists awards, Varga is also a contributing writer for Jazz Times magazine and has written for Billboard, Spin and other publications. After attending San Diego City College and San Diego State University, he created and taught the 2002 UC San Diego Extension course, “Jazz in a Post-Ken-Burns World.” Varga has written liner notes for more than a dozen albums, including by jazz sax greats James Moody and Michael Brecker, and contributed two chapters to the book, “Dylan: Disc By Disc.”