Disturbed frontman David Draiman opened up about the emotional impact of the band’s iconic cover of Simon & Garfunkel’s “The Sound Of Silence.” He shared a personal story about the late Chester Bennington in an interview on the Detours & Destinations podcast.
Draiman recalled how Bennington was caught off guard by the vocal performance and encouraged him to explore that softer, more melodic side of his voice more often.
“I’ll tell you an interesting story about a dearly departed friend of mine that will illustrate your point very, very succinctly. Chester Bennington from Linkin Park. We were friends for years. I miss him very much,” Draiman said.
“I’ll never forget, after I had sung our cover of ‘The Sound Of Silence’ on ‘Conan’, a live version for the first time, and I got all the responses from it. There was [a message] from Paul Simon himself and many others. But I remember Chester called me and he’s, like, ‘Dude, I had no idea you could sound like that. You need to do more of that.’ He was, like, ‘That needs to be your thing.'”
Draiman explained that Bennington’s reaction resonated deeply with him, as he himself had been surprised by the performance upon hearing it back.
“He was so captivated by it and so caught off guard that he didn’t realize that I could go there. It really struck him. It struck me, to be honest, the first time listening back to it at the mixing console,” he continued.
Draiman went on to explain why he had stayed away from that style of delivery for so long, citing the expectations that came with Disturbed’s heavier sound.
“For a long, long time, I had immersed myself in the more guttural side of delivery and the more distorted side, because that’s a style that just goes hand in hand with what Disturbed is and what rock is, and so on and so forth. So it sometimes doesn’t feel right not to lean into it that way. So when I first did that, I hadn’t done anything so purely sung vocally since the second record.”
“On the second record, there’s a track called ‘Darkness’, and if you have a second, give it a listen. It’s a beautiful song, completely acoustic, very purely and classically delivered. But during that period of time, when we put out the ‘Believe’ record, which was circa 2001, 2002, it was met with a lot of backlash.”
He noted that fan resistance to anything non-heavy had made him reluctant to show that side of himself for years, until producer Kevin Churko stepped in.
“People didn’t want us to do anything that wasn’t heavy. And so I was very, very concerned about showing that side of me for years. It took our producer, Kevin Churko, at the time for the ‘Immortalized’ record when we did the cover to kind of give me the courage to go there and encourage me,” Draiman said.
“We tried so many different variations of the delivery of the vocal for every specific section of that song. It was Kevin’s idea to do the octave drop. It was Kevin’s idea to do the low whispering sort of delivery to… He’s brilliant. He doesn’t get enough of the credit that he truly, truly does deserve. I truly do owe him a debt of gratitude. We owe him a debt of gratitude. I’ve been saying this for a long time about Kevin — he was a big part of how that song came about, more than people realize.”
Draiman’s comments offer a rare look at the personal and creative forces behind one of rock’s most celebrated vocal performances in recent memory. The full weight of that statement becomes clearer when the cover’s extraordinary commercial legacy is taken into account.
Disturbed’s rendition of “The Sound Of Silence” has become one of the most enduring songs in modern rock history. The track reached its 400th week on Billboard’s Alternative Digital Song Sales chart. That milestone cemented its status as the long-distance champion of hard rock songs, with over 2.15 million in sales — a figure few rock covers in the streaming era have come close to matching.
The cover’s chart dominance was evident almost immediately after its live television debut. Following the Conan performance — which marked the first time Draiman had sung the track live — the song surged on rock charts, gaining 17 percent in plays the following week. It climbed to number one on both Billboard’s Hard Rock Digital Songs and Mainstream Rock charts. The performance introduced the cover to a massive new audience and signaled that the song had a life far beyond the album it appeared on.
The cover has remained at or near the top of rock digital sales charts consistently since 2015. Its staying power is a testament not only to Draiman’s vocal performance but also to the creative decisions made in the studio. The octave drop, the whispering delivery, and the careful layering that Churko engineered gave the track a cinematic quality that continues to resonate with listeners.
Bennington’s encouragement was part of a broader pattern of mutual respect between the two frontmen. The Linkin Park singer was known among peers for his genuine enthusiasm for vocal craft. His private reaction to the Conan performance reflected how deeply the cover had landed even within the rock community itself. Bennington passed away in July 2017, making Draiman’s recollection of their conversation all the more poignant.
The story also sheds new light on how close Draiman came to never fully committing to that style of delivery. Without Churko’s persistence in the studio and Bennington’s personal encouragement after the fact, the softer dimension of Draiman’s voice might have remained largely unexplored. One of rock’s defining moments of the past decade might never have taken the shape it did.
