Musical gold has popped up online this week in the form of a track titled ‘Crazy’; a previously unreleased collab between Guns N’ Roses lead guitarist Slash and the late Chester Bennington of Linkin Park.
Sixty seconds of the track was shared by producer Big Chris Flores, who worked on Slash’s 2010 self-titled debut solo album. The story goes that Linkin’ Park camp prevented the song’s release at the time, so Slash turned the song into ‘Doctor Alibi’ which featured Lemmy Kilmister’s vocals and was released as a part of the 2010 album.
While the clip was yet to be heard until now, Slash hinted at the collab with Bennington, who also fronted Stone Temple Pilots from 2013 to 2015, in a 2018 interview with Variety.
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 the interview.
“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.”
During the same interview Slash was asked about the possibility of the release of the song featuring Bennington.
“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,” Slash said.
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On the Appetite for Distortion podcast, Flores revealed why he waited until now to release the snippet.
“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 release the snippet].”
Linkin’ Park are yet to address the leak. Bennington tragically passed away from suicide in 2017 at age 41.
Listen to the leaked snippet of ‘Crazy’ by Chester Bennington and Slash:
