Previously Unheard Slash + Chester Bennington Collaboration Leaks
A previously unheard recording of “Crazy,” a collaborative track between Guns N’ Roses legend Slash and Linkin Park’s Chester Bennington, has emerged.
The joint effort was intended to be released as part of Slash’s eponymous 2010 solo album, which featured a myriad of guests, such as Ozzy Osbourne, Myles Kennedy, Chris Cornell, Kid Rock, M. Shadows and more.
Ultimately, “Crazy” was turned into “Doctor Alibi” for the album, for which Slash recruited Motorhead’s Lemmy Kilmister to handle vocals instead.
“When I was doing my first solo record, I worked with a lot of different people, some of whom, for whatever reason, didn’t end up on the record. One was with Chester,” said Slash of the song in a 2018 interview with Variety.
“We did a song and Linkin Park at the time didn’t allow it to happen, so I did it with Lemmy,” he continued, noting, “The guy who engineered my demos sent it to me and I sent it to Chester’s family. But it was a trip cause the song [“Doctor Alibi”] really speaks to his state of mind.”
Regarding the possibility of the complete recording surfacing, Slash commented at the time, “His family has got it so it would be totally up to them. It was really good. He was awesome. It would be fine with me if they wanted to [release] it. Musically it’s basically the same as the Lemmy song, but the lyrics are really poignant.”
The one-minute leak, heard below, was shared by producer Big Chris Flores, who worked on the GN’R legend’s 2010 solo album. Flores was featured as the latest guest on the Guns N’ Roses-themed podcast ‘Appetite for Distortion,’ which can be heard below as well.
“We sent him the demo and set up a session. Chester came in for literally probably a few hours, recorded it and was like, ‘Hey, can I hang out for a little bit?’ and that was the last of it,” Flores said of the collaboration. “It was one or two takes when he got here. There was nothing really to it,” he went on and stated he felt the song had the potential to be “huge” but it wound up getting shelved.
Offering more insight into why the recording has been kept under wraps and why now was the time to share a piece of it, Flores explained, “I think part of the reason it got shelved for so long was out of respect, just waiting for Linkin Park to release whatever they were going to release with Chester and then give [Bennington’s widow] Talinda and his mom time to figure out if they wanted to do anything with it. Slash hadn’t heard anything from them and it just was forgotten about I feel like, so it was just perfect timing [to leak the snippet].”