Chester Bennington Bio - Biography

Name Chester Bennington
Height
Naionality American
Date of Birth 20-March-1976
Place of Birth Phoenix, Arizona, U.S.
Famous for Singing
Chester Bennington is an American musician, singer-songwriter and actor. He is best known as the co-lyricist and one of the two vocalists of the rock band Linkin Park and the vocalist of Dead by Sunrise. Bennington became known as a vocalist with Linkin Park's debut album, Hybrid Theory, in 2000, which was a massive commercial success. The album was certified Diamond by the RIAA in 2005, making it the best-selling debut album of the decade, as well as one of the few albums to ever hit that many sales.

Linkin Park's following studio albums, Meteora, Minutes To Midnight, A Thousand Suns, and Living Things, released in 2003, 2007, 2010, and 2012 respectively, continued the band's success. Bennington formed his own band, Dead by Sunrise as a side-project in 2005. The band's debut album, Out of Ashes was released on October 13, 2009. Chester Charles Bennington was born on March 20, 1976 to a nurse and a Phoenix police detective who worked with child sex abuse cases and took double shifts. Bennington took interest in music at a young age, citing Depeche Mode and Stone Temple Pilots as early inspirations and dreamed of becoming a member of Stone Temple Pilots. Bennington's parents divorced when he was eleven years old and his father gained custody of him. As a result of the divorce, Bennington started abusing marijuana, alcohol, opium, cocaine, methamphetamine and LSD. Bennington eventually overcame his drug addiction, and would go on to denounce drug use in future interviews. During a Linkin Park tour, he started heavily drinking but claimed to have quit in 2011 noting "I just don't want to be that person anymore". In an interview, Bennington revealed that he suffered sexual abuse from an older male friend when he was seven years old. He was afraid to ask for help because he did not want people to think he was gay or lying and the abuse continued until age thirteen. The abuse and situation at home affected him so much that he felt the urge to kill and run away.

To comfort himself, he drew pictures and wrote poetry and songs. Later, he revealed the abuser's identity to his father but Bennington chose not to continue the case after he realized the abuser was a victim himself. At the age of seventeen, he moved in with his mother and was banned from leaving the house when his mother discovered his drug activity. He worked at a Burger King restaurant and used his money for cocaine and crystal meth before starting his career as a professional musician. Bennington’s first band was Sean Dowdell and His Friends? Before he and Sean Dowdell moved to form the band Grey Daze, a post-grunge band from Phoenix, Arizona to record Wake Me in 1994 and ...No Sun Today in 1997.

He left Grey Daze in 1998, but struggled to find another band to sing in. After nearly quitting his musical career altogether, Jeff Blue, the vice president of A&R at Zomba Music in Los Angeles, offered Bennington an audition with the future members of Linkin Park. Bennington quit his day job at a digital services firm, and took his family to California, where he had a successful audition with Linkin Park, who were then called "Xero". Bennington and Mike Shinoda, the band’s other vocalist, made significant progress together, but failed to find a record deal. After facing numerous rejections, Jeff Blue, now a vice president of A&R at Warner Bros., intervened again to help the band sign with Warner Bros. Records.

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