chester bennington
[Photo by: Tom Preston]

Grey Daze open up on Chester Bennington's passing, re-recording process

Chester Bennington, most famously of Linkin Park tragically passed away on July 20, 2017 at the age of 41. Since then, thousand have shared their sentiments regarding his untimely passing. Now, his former band Grey Daze, while re-recording and releasing their past album have shared their thoughts on the tragic event.

In the YouTube series titled Grey Daze: Making Amends (Revival) Bennington’s former bandmates and friends divulge their thoughts on his passing and what drove them to release the upcoming LP Amends.

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Three years ago, Bennington took to Instagram to say that he had reunited Grey Daze. His intention was to revisit and rerecord tracks from the band’s first two albums, Wake Me and no sun today to take advantage of new technology and the budget considerations. However, this never fully came to fruition due to Bennington’s death.

Bennington’s widow, Talinda Bennington, posted a statement to her social media in December saying, “One of Chester’s greatest gifts was music. The only thing he took more pride in was being a father to his children. Given how much he cared, he wanted fans to hear everything that he did, and his musical journey started with Grey Daze.

“In February 2017, Chester and his bandmates began re-recording their music for a planned re-release of the band’s early music. By June, he announced that Grey Daze was reuniting and would be playing a 20th anniversary reunion show later that fall.”

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Grey Daze have been slowly releasing tracks from Amends as they gear up for the big release. In the series of mini docs on YouTube, the band has previously discussed forming Grey Daze  and gearing up for reformation.

In this critical third video, Grey Daze open up about the fateful day they learned of Chester Bennington’s passing.

Grey Daze bassist Mace Beyers describes his publicist calling him and telling him to go online. That’s how Beyers found out about Chester’s passing. “I went online and sure enough, it was everywhere.” “I immediately called Sean [Dowdell].

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“I immediately called Talinda and said ‘Hey, I know you don’t want to tell me details and I don’t care about any of that. I just want to know what you guys need, how can I help you?’ And she just said ‘Come out to L.A. and help me just, get here,” Grey Daze drummer Sean Dowdell says.

“He [Chester] was on top of the world two days before it happened,” Dowdell explains. “So, I didn’t see it coming. At all. In any way, shape or form when it happened. I just didn’t.”

Dowdell elaborates saying through all the grief, he was also upset that they didn’t get to finish what they started together.

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“Initially, the intent was just to finish it and put it out on my own. And, not to worry about it. But, as the process started moving forward and we started working with different engineers and studios, we came to the realization that this music was really important.”

The band used Alesis Digital Audio Tape or ADAT’s to originally record Chester’s vocals. Then, Jason Barnes, former guitarist for Grey Daze miraculously found all 12 of Chester’s original ADAT vocal recordings. He was in his garage looking for a particular lightbulb.

From there, the Grey Daze record got its wheels spinning.

Watch the full video below.

Amends will feature performances by a number of modern-rock luminaries including Bennington’s son Jaime who rerecorded his father’s old vocals earlier this year. Korn’s Brian “Head” Welch and James “Munky” Shaffer, P.O.D.’s Marcos Curiel, Bush’s Chris Traynor and Ryan Shuck, the Orgy/Julien-K guitarist who also played with Bennington in Dead By Sunrise, also appear on the pending LP.

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Grey Daze issued an open letter discussing the meaning behind remastering the past work.

“We all wanted to fulfill Chester’s dream of people hearing Grey Daze music as he always envisioned it,” the letter says.  “The fact that we got to retrack and rewrite the music around his vocals was an amazing experience. This is what our good friend wanted. He wanted the music to feel fresh and relevant, so people who knew his music but not his original band, could relate to it.”

“That’s what we’ve tried to do with this Grey Daze record now. We cannot wait for his fans and the world to hear this new album, we hope we made him, and you, proud.”

Amends by Grey Daze releases April 10 and can be pre-ordered here.

See more: In memoriam: Musicians we lost in 2019

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