Name: Chester Bennington
Date of birth: 20 March 1976
Place of birth: Phoenix, Arizona, USA
Birth name: Chester Charles Bennington
Nickname: Chaz
Height: 5' 10"
Chester Bennington Trivia -
* One of the lead singers to the band Linkin Park
* First Band: Grey Daze in 1993
* Siblings: Two half sisters and one half brother, Brian
* Hair: Brown.
* Zodiac (star sign): Pisces
* Hiswife, Samantha, gave birth to a boy, Draven Sebastian
Bennington. [April 19, 2002]
* [May 2003] Chester was admitted to an L.A. hospital after
suffering an attack of severe back and abdominal pains.
* Recently had the laser eye surgery procedure done (March
2004)
* Before Grey Daze, when Chester was 15 he played in a band called
"Sean Dowdell and Friends" in which he was the lead singer.
Currently the only existing evidence of this band is a 3 song tape
that includes the following songs: "Painted Pictures", "Kill The
Flies" and "God's Afraid".
* Before Linkin Park, when Chester was 16 he played in a band
called 'Grey Daze' which recorded two albums, 'No Sun Today' and
'Wake Me' until later breaking-up.
*Chester has designed some clothing for a company called Replicant,
owned by Korn's Head and Orgy's Ryan Shuck
* Chester's siblings are children from one of his step-parent's
previous marriage. Chester's biological parents got divorced when
he was 11.
Chester Bennington Detailed Biography -
Born in Phoenix, Arizona into less-than-ideal circumstances,
Chester Bennington's life followed a steady decline into confusion
and misery throughout his childhood. At age 11 he made the jarring
discovery that his parents and siblings were not in fact his blood
relatives; this difficult reality was to be compounded over the
next seven years by peer ridicule, sexual abuse and the untimely
deaths of several of his friends. Like many who have had to deal
with such issues, he turned to drugs and alcohol as a means of
coping, becoming addicted to cocaine by the age of 18. An escape
from this doomed course was finally made in 1996, when, with the
help of a supportive partner (whom he married that same year),
Bennington managed to overcome his chemical dependencies and began
to turn his longtime musical ambitions into a working concern. Over
the next two years his first band, Grey Daze, established a sizable
local following around the Phoenix area, but eventually Bennington
made the decision to move on to other projects.
In 1997 Bennington was informed by his brother that the group Xero
were in need of a singer; introductions were made, and by the
following year the two parties had joined forces under the new name
of Hybrid Theory. After releasing a 6-song EP, Hybrid Theory became
Linkin Park, under which name they quickly became a popular
favorite in L.A. venues such as The Whiskey on Sunset Boulevard.
Major label interest did not come quite as easily, and the band's
material was rejected several times before a Zomba Music
representative arranged a deal with corporate monstrosity Warner
Brothers in the final months of the decade. After a year of work,
the band's debut Hybrid Theory was released to considerable success
in the fall of 2000. The album put the band at the forefront of the
rapidly expanding genre of commercially-oriented rap/metal hybrids
(an area established by acts such as Limp Bizkit and Cypress Hill
in the mid 90s), and wasted little time climbing high in the
mainstream and 'alternative' (another increasingly popular
corporate music category) charts. Later in the year the band would
earn a Grammy award in the Hard Rock Performance category for their
single Crawling.
After the arrival of his first child in 2002, Bennington took a
short hiatus from Linkin Park in order to spend time with his wife
and son. During this lull in activity the remix album Reanimation
was issued, featuring mixes by members of Korn, Staind, The Roots
and Jurassic 5, with contributions from rappers such as Motion Man
and Pharoahe Monch. A second full-length surfaced in 2003, Meteora
remaining firmly in the spirit of the first album, and surpassing
its commercial success by achieving the #1 position on the
mainstream charts. All five of the release's singles (Faint,
Somewhere I Belong, Breaking The Habit, Lying From You and Numb)
would top the 'Modern Rock' charts in their turn. At the end of the
year the live album Live In Texas was released, documenting the
band's 2003 tour with the Summer Sanitarium festival. The
band-sponsored 'mash-up' EP Collision Course, combining Linkin Park
songs with vocals lifted from Jay-Z tracks, followed in 2004.
Pictures of Chester Bennington