Chi Cheng (July 15, 1970 – April 13, 2013)

Chi Ling Dai Cheng (July 15, 1970 – April 13, 2013) was an American musician and poet, best known as the bassist and backing vocalist for the alternative metal band Deftones. He joined the band in 1990, and stayed with them until his career ended in 2008, when he was involved in a serious automobile crash in Santa Clara, California. Afterwards, he remained in a semi-comatose state before dying of cardiac arrest in April 2013. Following Cheng's hospitalization, a friend of the band, Sergio Vega, became the band's full-time bassist, having previously filled in for Cheng.

 

Cheng was an acclaimed bass player; however, his approach to bass in Deftones sometimes caused slight conflict. In the August 2003 edition of Bass Guitar magazine, he told writer Joel McIver: "I get a lot of grief from Stephen anyway – he says, why don't you just play along with my guitar riff? And I'm like, why don't you fuckin' piss off? Haha. He's like, can’t you just play along? ... I remember on our song 'Change (In The House Of Flies)', him and Terry Date said, oh no, you're not gonna play that goofy dub-reggae bass-line, are you? And I was like, yes, that's exactly what I'm gonna play! And then it became a really big song for us, so I was like, okay, now let me write the fuckin' way I write."In 2022, Carpenter said that he hated how Cheng would intentionally play a different tune than him "just on principle," which eventually became a common practice within the band - to merge different styles of music into Deftones. Cheng cited bassists Cliff Burton, Geezer Butler, and Steve Harris as the fundamental influences on his bass playing

The Bamboo Parachute is the debut solo spoken-word poetry album by Chi Cheng, the late bassist of the alternative metal band Deftones. Released in September 2000, it stands as the only solo project distributed during his lifetime before his tragic car accident in 2008 and subsequent passing in 2013.