A new interview with azcentral.com doesn’t find ousted Stone Temple Pilots frontman Scott Weiland pulling many punches regarding his former bandmates and the events that led up to their ongoing legal dispute.
When asked why he is focusing on material from early Stone Temple Pilots on his current solo tour, he offered:
“Well, originally, before the whole STP thing blew up, I said, “Look, we need to take a break. We need to make an album. We’ve been playing the same (expletive) set for four years. Without a change.
We’ve been watching ourselves go from playing 20,000-seat arenas to county fairs and 2,000-seat casinos.” I said, “I will not sit around and destroy the brand of this band. I will not do it. Will not do it. We have to get in the studio and make new music.” That’s what we loved to do in the first place. We were artists. We were creators.
They didn’t see things the same way. They had different management. Their managers, who are just basically booking agents, to put it lightly, they have no problem with STP and its legacy being destroyed.
A 22-year band who sold more than 40 million records and had numerous No. 1 hits, numerous No. 2 hits, top 5, top 10. Two Grammys. They don’t give a (expletive). As a matter of fact, I think they’re getting paid per hour. So I wouldn’t (expletive) do it. And they can’t do it without me.”
He continued:
“So they can say Guys From STP. But they’ve already done two bands and failed. The whole thing is, I came up with this idea because I’d seen a couple other bands do it. And it worked. You bring back your first album or your first two albums that were hugely successful back in ’91, ’92, ’93, ’94, when the biggest bands were selling 6 to 7 million records, like we were.
You take the first two records and you put those records on the set list….We were supposed to do “Core” because it was the 20th anniversary of “Core.” There was supposed to be a new greatest-hits album, a boxed set, everything, which (guitarist) Dean (DeLeo) had originally agreed to and backed out. And I was giving all this press, saying we were doing this. We were booked into all these huge places.
As soon as promoters found out that’s what we were not going to do, everything got pushed in, shut in. We were playing theaters. Now, is that how I want to see STP now? Not at all. Not the band that I started. Not the band that I named. Not the band that when I was in Huntington Beach, took a shot and called Robert DeLeo at his apartment, doing nothing in music, living with his girlfriend, and said, “Hey man, would you like to do a band?”
It was with me and Corey (Hicock) at the time, my best friend. And eventually, he said yes. Then, we got (drummer Eric) Kretz and the whole evolution of it. We went into Mighty Joe Young, then STP. But do I want to see that, everything that we grew turn into a circus sideshow? No (expletive) way.
So the whole idea of Scott Weiland and the Wildabouts, us doing this, is because it was something I wanted to do. And our fans heard we were going to do it. And fans of STP were so sick of hearing the same songs over and over, the same set list.
The Wildabouts making a new record, which is more of a rock-and-roll record, as opposed to an artsy record like my other two solo albums were. But why don’t we do the hits from “Purple” and “Core?” Why don’t we do that?”
Aside from their ongoing legal battles, the remaining members of Stone Temple Pilots have moved on without Weiland, enlisting Linkin Park frontman Chester Bennington on vocals for the time being.
