Canada's The Metal Voice spoke to Grim Reaper guitarist and co-founder Nick Bowcott last year about the passing of his bandmate and friend Steve Grimmett in August 2022
In the chat, Bowcott told The Metal Voice how he planned to assist the Grimmett family with the funeral and aftermath expenses.
Nick Bowcott: "I'll let something out of the bag now. One of the blessings Covid gave me and I mean this sincerely was it enabled me to do some quarantine jams. I did it with a mutual friend of (Steve Grimmett) and mine called Steve Stein. He's a great guitar player, great YouTuber and him and Steve (Grimmett) did an album called Grimstein way back when, maybe about 10 years ago. When Covid first hit and the lockdown started Steve Stein phoned me up and said hey I'm going to do a quarantine jam. He said would you like to be involved and I went I would love to be involved. What's the song? He said in 'Heaven And Hell' and my brain immediately started to make excuses as to why I couldn't do it if it's going to be an okay singer. I was thinking 'God, if he tells me someone who I don't think can match the vocals I'm gonna have to be busy that day painting. So then he said 'Steve Grimmett,' I said 'I'm in!'"
Bowcott continued: "Yeah Steve crushed it. I don't know if you've ever seen that but it got to like six hundred thousand views, which is quite ridiculous. Then we went on to do 'Still Of The Night' (Whitesnake), then we did 'The Number Of The Beast' (Iron Maiden), which was a lot of fun, and actually Russ Grimmett (Steve's son) made the video; he actually edited. We did a few more and I wanted to finish it off with 'See You In Hell' (Grim Reaper) but we never got a chance to do that, unfortunately. So I was talking to Steve Stein after I heard the dreadful news, and we were talking about stuff on what we could do to help the family because the funeral is extremely extremely expensive, and as Jimmy correctly pointed out, there will be an aftermath of expenses. Do you know, Steve and I never made any money from Grim Reaper? What I'm trying to say here is that everyone might look at Spotify and go 'Wow, Grim Reaper's got a million streams...' and Steve hasn't seen a penny from that yet. So myself and Steve Stein were talking on how to boost up the GoFundMe page for Steve Grimmett's family. The problem arose of who would we get to sing 'See You In Hell' My first choice was Ripper Owens because he'd done stuff with Steve (Grimmett) recently just prior to Covid had a very similar voice to Steve (Grimmett)."
"The first time I heard this man open his voice on a stage when I was playing guitar, I did the exact same thing I told you about when I first heard Steve Grimmett's voice when we played. I stopped playing and went 'Wow!' And at the risk of name dropping, which I'm now going to shamelessly do it, was I think 2000 maybe 2010 or little bit earlier. We did a Dime Bash at NAMM. I turned up early for soundcheck and it was myself, Jason Bittner from Shadows Fall, now in Overkill was playing drums. On guitar was this little guy with the goatee, Scott Ian. We were playing, I think it was a KISS song or something, and then Ripper showed up and grabbed the mic and started singing. I stopped playing and I'm pretty sure Scott did as well cause it was like 'Holy Mother.... where did that come from?' So I phoned up Ripper and said, 'Hey, you know we want to do this tribute and hopefully to help raise funds and awareness.' And Ripper, god bless him, agreed. So yeah, Ripper said yes and we've already recorded my parts. We've dropped the song down to E flat and myself, Steve (Stein) and the drum have already recorded their parts. Russ (Grimmett) is going to edit the video so we'll do that obviously post funeral but just to keep the celebration of life moving forward. I think that's really important now to celebrate the life. Yes it is sad ,it's extremely sad we're all still grieving."
The tribute cover / video for "See You In Hell" has now been released along with the following message and can be viewed below.
"This video is tribute to an amazing son, father, grandfather, brother, husband, bandmate, and friend. Thank you for blessing us with your talents, your smile, your laugh, and your kindness, and your music. We forever love you and miss you, Steve."
Vocals - Tim "Ripper" Owens
Guitars - Nick Bowcott
Guitars/Audio Production - Steve Stine
Drums - Joel Stevenett
Bass - Brian "HBK" Hollenbeck
Background Vocals - Russ and Sami Grimmett
Video Production - Ryan Sanders
Steve Grimmett fronted the NWOBHM metallers from 1982-1989 and then resurrected the name as Steve Grimmett’s Grim Reaper in 2006. Steve Grimmett’s Grim Reaper released two full-length albums, and a live album, Reaping The Whirlwind in March 2022.
Grimmett passed away on August 15th, 2022 at the age of 62. Cause of death has not been revealed.
