Before he was in Linkin Park, Chester Bennington was in Grey Daze, and his former bandmate Sean Dowdell recently spoke to the KaaosTV YouTube channel about his departed friend. He specifically spoke about Bennington’s mental health, and how he was bothered by negative feedback that “One More Light” received.
I don’t understand what makes somebody be a fan of Chester’s, and you love everything he did or most everything he did, and then he does a song that you don’t like, that you feel like you have to badmouth him or tell him he sucks and all this kind of crap. And that stuff really weighed on him. So I think that really contributed to part of his head spot.
He had some sexual abuse as a child, and that always weighed on him, and that kind of culminated into this thought process where Chester never felt good enough or never felt appreciated or never felt like he was worth it. He had this emptiness inside that I don’t think he could really explain to a lot of people. I got to know this side of him quite well.
He could have a thousand people, after a show, wanting to meet him and tell him how great he is and how much he touched their life in a profoundly emotionally positive way, gave them an outlet for their own pain and their own distress, and internally, Chester would not hear that. Sean Dowdell
Sean Dowdell and Chester Bennington became friends in 1993 after being introduced by a mutual friend. Originally under the name Sean Dowdell and His Friends? The band released a 3-track cassette, before changing their name to Grey Daze. They’d release two full albums between 1994 and 1997; however, Bennington opted to leave the band to join Hybrid Theory, who later became Linkin Park.
In June 2020, Grey Daze would release the album “Amends,” which takes the best of their previous songs, and reworked them with Bennington’s original recordings. In doing so, they created a collection that would appeal to both their, and Bennington’s fans.
