In a new San Diego Tribune Review interview, Stone Temple Pilots guitarist Dean DeLeo revealed had the band not clicked with new singer Jeff Gutt during the lengthy audition process — STP was ready to throw in the towel for good.
“If we didn’t find the person we felt we could move forward with, we ultimately would have put a fork in it,” DeLeo said by phone from Los Angeles.
“There was no room for error. That’s why we spent nearly a year together with Jeff before we invited him to join the band. We wanted to make sure it was the right decision. But we did find somebody who could not ony do the catalog of our previous songs justice, but someone we could write new songs with, too.”
“Vision was a pre-requisite,” the veteran guitarist said. “Because Jeff’s ability to move the band forward with more music and more records was very important to Robert, Eric and I. Jeff has a really great sense of what a song needs. It’s just so important to really allow the song to dictate what it needs, and Jeff had a great sensibility about that — not to mention he’s such a great singer.”
