Chester Bennington dedicated a song to Chris Cornell in one of his final performances

The Linkin Park singer was godfather to the lead Soundgarden vocalist's 11-year-old son

(Owen Sweeney/Invision/AP)

Chester Bennington dedicated a song to his late friend Chris Cornell in one of the Linkin Park frontman’s final performances.

Word of the 41-year-old's suicide in his Los Angeles home came on the day Soundgarden singer Chris Cornell would have turned 53.

Cornell took his own life in May this year, and Bennington was among those who paid tribute at the time, in a live performance on Jimmy Kimmel.

Introducing a song from Linkin Park’s new album, Bennington said: “We were going to come out and play ‘Have You’ first, but in light of our dear friend Chris Cornell passing away we decided to play One More Light in honour of him, to start this off: we love you Chris.”

Lyrics from the song include: “Should've stayed, were there signs, I ignored? Can I help you, not to hurt, anymore?”

Vicky Cornell, Chris Cornell’s wife, was one of the first to express shock and sympathy after hearing the news of Bennington’s death.

Bennington and Cornell struck up a friendship during a tour of Australia in 2007, during which Cornell opened for Linkin Park.

Cornell was introduced to video games like Rock Band and Guitar Hero by Bennington, he said in a 2011 interview with Collider.

After Cornell’s death in May, Bennington wrote an open letter describing his grief and saying his friend's talent was "pure and unrivalled."

​He later performed Leonard Cohen’s Hallelujah at Cornell's funeral.

Bennington had struggled with alcohol and drug addictions and was a victim of child abuse.

He rose to fame in the late 1990s with the nu-metal group Linkin Park.

The band’s debut album Hybrid Theory, released in 2000, sold almost 5 million copies.

Its stand-out single, 'Crawling', won a Grammy award for Best Hard Rock Performance.

After the band’s second album, Meteora, cemented the band's fame, three albums released between 2007 and 2013 all reached number one in the United States.

Bennington’s last gig with Linkin Park was at the Barclaycard Arena in Birmingham in the UK on 6 July.

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