Metal Anarchy

Papa Roach’s Jacoby Shaddix was recently interviewed by Meltdown on Detroit’s WRIF radio station, and he talked a bit about the late Chester Bennington (Linkin Park). You can read what he had to say below.

Shaddix [transcribed by Blabbermouth]:

“I knew him quite well. I went out to dinner with him about a month before all that went down. He just had great advice to give me and was just super friendly and I just thought everything was cool. But the reality is I’ve struggled with a lot of the same demons he’s struggled with, and I understand the darkness.

“For anybody out there that’s walking through that themselves or has somebody in their lives that are in that dark place, my heart goes out to ’em, ’cause it’s not easy,” he continued. “And sometimes it just feels like everything is just way too heavy and you just can’t handle life. And it’s tough sometimes. I’m just glad I’m still breathing, ’cause that really just hit me hard. It made me go, ‘Ugh. That’s just too heavy.’ We lost some good ones in this last year, for real.”

He also added the following when asked if sobriety and his family helped him get through the dark times:

“It’s definitely an anchor for me — 100 percent. First off, my sobriety is very important to me. That’s what really kind of roots me in sanity. Because the insanity, I can get lost in it. And it could be the drugs… whatever. And my family definitely — my wife and my kids — the idea of losing them or not being part of their lives is terrifying to me. So they’re definitely something to fight for, and I love ’em dearly. And so every day I’m grateful for my relationship with my wife, I’m grateful for my positive relationship with my kids. And so I wanna keep that — those relationships. ‘Cause at the end of the day in life, that’s all we’ve got — all our relationships and our experiences with other people. And I value those.”