Chester Bennington

Chester Bennington, 2014

Chester Bennington, 2009

Chester Charles Bennington (born March 20, 1976 in Phoenix , Arizona - † July 20, 2017 in Palos Verdes Estates , California ) was an American rock singer with the bands Linkin Park , Dead by Sunrise , Stone Temple Pilots and Gray Daze .

Life

Chester Charles Bennington was born in Phoenix in 1976 to police officer Lee Russell Bennington and nurse Susan Elaine Johnson, and had a brother thirteen years older and two half-sisters. After his parents divorced in 1987, the father took over custody of him, but hardly looked after his son; he also felt abandoned by his mother. The disturbed relationship Bennington developed with his family culminated in the thought of killing his family members and running away. In his childhood and adolescence he was also exposed to sexual abuse , which he said began at the age of seven or eight and only ended at the age of 13. Out of shame and fear of being ridiculed as homosexual , Bennington confided in someone late.

With a strong creativity he painted pictures of his experiences and wrote songs in which he described his feelings. Bennington dreamed of becoming a musician. His idols included bands like Depeche Mode , of which he envisioned the fifth band member, and the Stone Temple Pilots , of which he was a member from 2013 to 2015. With his childhood friend Sean Dowdell he founded the band Sean Dowdell and his Friends? . Even before that, he had been using drugs and drinking large amounts of alcohol in order to cope with his traumatic childhood and adolescence. The spectrum of drugs consumed ranged from LSD to opiates and benzodiazepines to cocaine and crystal meth . He quickly became addicted to the latter two drugs. In 1994 he moved back to live with his mother and moved from Greenway High School to Washington High School. Despite drug abuse, he graduated from school there in 1994. He then worked for a real estate company and the Burger King restaurant chain to finance his drug addiction. At the age of 18, he was sentenced to community service by a court and was placed under house arrest by his mother when she discovered his drug addiction.

Together with Sean Dowdell, he founded a tattoo studio in Phoenix in 1995 and built up a chain of tattoo studios in the following years. Bennington had a relationship with Elka Brand during this time. Their son was born in 1996. Even after the relationship ended, they remained on friendly terms, so that he also adopted Brand's son from a previous relationship. He married his first wife, Samantha Olit, on October 31, 1996. Due to limited financial resources, Bennington replaced the wedding ring with a tattoo. The success of Bennington's and Dowdells band, now called Gray Daze , was rather modest. After two albums, the end came in 1998. On March 20, 1999, on his 23rd birthday, Bennington received a call from Jeff Blue, a former manager of Zomba Music. At that time, Blue looked after the band Xero , which was looking for a new singer. Blue asked Bennington to sing his vocals over xero demos. Bennington completed all of the demos within three days. He then played the demos to Blue over the phone and was then invited to Xero in Augora Hills. After an application music session, Xero found a new singer in Chester Bennington. Then the band called itself Hybrid Theory . After five weeks, on May 1st, 1999, the first EP was released on their own, but it did not sell well. Finally, with the help of Jeff Blue, who was now vice-president there, the band found a publisher in Warner Music Group and released their first album on October 24, 2000 under the name Linkin Park , which sold over 24 million times.

Despite the musical success with Linkin Park, Bennington did not feel part of the band at the beginning and intensified the consumption of alcohol and marijuana. In the next two years he felt sick all the time and often went to the hospital. His relationship with Samantha Olit broke up as a result and ended with the divorce in 2005. On December 31, 2005, the musician married Talinda Bentley. Both marriages and his previous relationship resulted in a total of six children. Bennington said he stopped his alcohol abuse at the time. In order not to burden the band Linkin Park with his personal problems any further, Bennington founded a solo project together with members of Julien-K in 2005 under the name Snow White Tan . The band Dead by Sunrise emerged from this solo project, which took a longer time than expected for the release of their debut album, so that it was only released in autumn 2009. In the meantime Bennington had finished thematizing and processing experiences from his life in songs by the band Linkin Park, which contributed to a change in style of their music that was controversially discussed among fans.

Chester Bennington was close friends with Chris Cornell , who committed suicide in May 2017, and sang at his funeral. A few weeks later he was found dead by suicide at the age of 41 on July 20, 2017 (Cornell's birthday) in his villa in Palos Verdes Estates . He was buried near Los Angeles .

music

Bennington played guitar and piano, and sang. His favorite bands included Depeche Mode , Arcade Fire , The Naked & Famous , Deftones , Descendents , Alice in Chains , Soundgarden , Skinny Puppy , Metallica , Nine Inch Nails , Nirvana and the Stone Temple Pilots . He worked on other music projects, including singing the song Yesterday at the 2006 Grammy Awards with Paul McCartney and Jay-Z . In addition to his position as lead singer for Linkin Park and Dead by Sunrise, Bennington was also lead singer for the Stone Temple Pilots from 2013 to 2015.

On May 19, 2013, he appeared as a surprise guest at a concert by the Stone Temple Pilots, who announced on February 28 that they had split up with their singer Scott Weiland . The new song Out of Time presented there was released for download on the website the next day. It was then confirmed that Bennington would replace Weiland as lead singer permanently, and a new album with tour was in prospect. According to Bennington, joining the Stone Temple Pilots had no effect on his remaining with Linkin Park, who were also working on new song material at the same time. He would be the lead singer of both bands in the future. The first and last EP of the Stone Temple Pilots with Bennington as lead singer, High Rise , was released on October 8, 2013. In early November 2015, Bennington left the band. Both he and the band said the split was amicable. Bennington gave appointments with Linkin Park and family reasons that prevented him from continuing his role as the singer of STP.

Discography

with Linkin Park

→ Main article : Linkin Park / Discography

with Gray Daze

→ Main article : "Discography" in the article Gray Daze

Others

• 2009: Out of Ashes ( Dead by Sunrise , studio album)
• 2013: High Rise ( Stone Temple Pilots , EP)
• 2014: Mall (Music from the Motion Picture) (with Dave Farrell, Joe Hahn, Mike Shinoda & Alec Puro , soundtrack)

Participation in other music projects

• 2001: Stone Temple Pilots feat. Chester Bennington - Wonderful (on The Family Values ​​2001 Tour )
• 2002: Chester Bennington System (on Queen of the Damned EAST )
• 2002: Cyclefly feat. Chester Bennington - Karma Killer (on Crave )
• 2002: DJ Lethal feat. Chester Bennington - State of the Art
• 2004: Handsome Boy Modeling School feat. Chester Bennington & Mike Shinoda - Rock 'N' Roll (Could Never Hip-Hop Like This) Part 2 (on White People )
• 2005: Z-Trip feat. Chester Bennington - Walking Dead (on Shifting Gears )
• 2005: Mötley Crüe feat. Chester Bennington - Home Sweet Home ( Remake )
• 2006: Chester Bennington vs. Julien-K - Morning After (on Underworld: Evolution OST ) ¹
• 2007: Young Buck feat. Chester Bennington - Slow Ya Role (on Buck the World )
• 2010: Carlos Santana feat. Chester Bennington & Ray Manzarek - Riders on the Storm ( The Doors Cover; on Guitar Heaven: The Greatest Guitar Classics of All Time )
• 2019: Mark Morton feat. Chester Bennington - Cross Off (on Anesthetic ) ²

¹2009 also as a Dead-by-Sunrise bonus track on Out of Ashes

² published posthumously

Movie

Bennington made an appearance in the film Crank (2006). There he embodied the figure of the clerk in a pharmacy. He also made a brief appearance in the sequel Crank 2: High Voltage from 2009; he was seen in it as a spectator of a horse race. In 2010 Bennington played a supporting role in the movie Saw 3D Completion , in which he played "Evan", the victim of a Jigsaw murder.

Web links

Commons : Chester Bennington  - Collection of Images

• Chester Bennington in theInternet Movie Database(English)

Individual evidence

1. ↑ Death certificate Chester Bennington (PDF)
2. ↑ ^{a b c d e f g} Chester Bennington. ( Memento of the original from January 3, 2011 in the Internet Archive ) Info: The archive link was inserted automatically and has not yet been checked. Please check the original and archive link according to the instructions and then remove this notice. In: Linkinpark.de , 2001, accessed on August 29, 2014 
3. ↑ Stephanie Dube Dwilson: Chester Bennington's Family: 5 Fast Facts You Need to Know. In: heavy.com. July 20, 2017. Retrieved July 21, 2017 . 
4. ↑ ^{a b c d e f} Biography: Chester Bennington. ( Memento of the original from February 15, 2014 in the Internet Archive ) Info: The archive link was inserted automatically and has not yet been checked. Please check the original and archive link according to the instructions and then remove this notice. In: LPtimes.com , 2007, accessed August 29, 2014.  
5. ↑ ^{a b c d e f g h i j k l m n o} Tom Byrant: Linkin Park Kerrang! 2010, accessed September 1, 2014.
6. ↑ Memorial for Chester Bennington planned on deutschlandfunkkultur.de, 23 August 2017, accessed on 23 August 2017
7. ↑ Mourning Linkin Park Rocker: Chester Bennington leaves six children behind. In: derwesten.de. Retrieved June 5, 2018 . 
8. ↑ Michael Edele: A Thousand Suns. In: Laut.de , September 10, 2010, accessed on September 2, 2014.
9. ↑ Chester Bennington: Linkin Park singer is dead. In: Spiegel Online . Retrieved February 18, 2020 . 
10. ↑ David Farrier: Chester Bennington talks Linkin Park's The Hunting Party. ( Memento of the original from October 23, 2014 in the Internet Archive ) Info: The  archive link was automatically inserted and not yet checked. Please check the original and archive link according to the instructions and then remove this notice. In: 3News , April 28, 2014, accessed October 31, 2014
11. ^ Paul McCartney's collaboration with Jay-Z and Chester Bennington is the worst thing ever. In: entertainment.ie , accessed October 31, 2014
12. ↑ Chester Bennington leaves the Stone Temple Pilots. In: musikexpress.de , November 9, 2015, accessed on November 14, 2015