Meltdown of Detroit’s WRIF 101.1 FM radio station recently interviewed Stone Temple Pilots singer Jeff Gutt.
“I never met Scott. I was friends with Chester, I knew him since 2001. I never had a chance to meet Scott, but the artist that he was really affected me, and really inspired me. It’s kind of the epitome of what a frontman is, is Scott Weiland. There’s Robert Plant, there’s Scott Weiland, Jim Morrison, people like that, they’re all up there.”
Asked what he took away from the experience of working with the DeLeo brothers (Dean and Robert) during the making of the band’s latest, self-titled album, Jeff said: “Oh, man. Their musical vocabulary is beyond imagination; it’s incredible. I got to show them what my abilities were at the very beginning of the writing process, ’cause I just walked in — they had some stuff recorded, and I just kind of did some scat tracks over that and came up with the melodies that actually ended up being on the record after I wrote the lyrics. And I felt like they were impressed with that. So then we got into just writing songs together, from the start, and ‘The Art Of Letting Go’ is one of those.
It was set up differently, and I got really excited ’cause I could hear what I could do with it and how I saw it going and where I felt the melody could lie. So we kind of split it up and changed it up, and they trusted me in where I was going with it. And I feel like that song kind of encapsulates all of that — my writing ability and getting involved and not being afraid to [say], ‘Hey, we should do this or that.’ [I was] wide-eyed and just excited to be there and doing it. I’ve done that all my life with friends and going to their mom’s house to record in the basement or something. So now I get to do it with them. And it’s very natural and organic, and it felt right.”
