Jeff Gutt says his own Stone Temple Pilots songs are too hard on his voice live, and that he would be fine if the band never made another album.
Most singers push to get their own material into the set. Jeff Gutt does the opposite, and he says the band usually lets him.
Nearly nine years into fronting Stone Temple Pilots, Gutt told Remzi “Jam Man“ Yates on “Rocking With Jam Man” that entire shows go by without a single song he wrote and recorded with the band and that it is often his call.
“You know what? Half the time, that’s my idea, just because… Like that song ‘Meadow‘, it’s really hard to sing that live, because there’s nowhere to breathe, and it’s hitting this register which is at a point where, if you hit that too many times, you’re gonna blow your throat out. So I’ve actually done it hundreds, if not more, times. So sometimes when they get to those and they’re, like, ‘Hey, you wanna do this?’, I’m, like, ‘You know what? I’d rather do ‘Crackerman‘ or something,’ cause it’s just not as taxing. I should have thought about that before I recorded them in the studio. But it’s fine. We used to do that ‘Six Eight‘ song and ‘Roll Me Under’ and stuff like that. It’s just, if I have the choice not to do that, half the time I’d rather not do that. STP songs are STP songs, you know what I mean?” he said (as transcribed by Blabbermouth).
All three of the songs he named as his own, “Meadow“, “Six Eight” and “Roll Me Under“, come from the 2018 self-titled album, his recording debut with the group. “Crackerman” is from Core, released in 1992, when Gutt was a teenager in Marine City, Michigan.
Asked whether newer songs can ever become classics if crowds rarely hear them, he pointed at how people consume records now rather than at setlists.
“Well, I think it’s a different bag than it used to be. People used to go and buy — they’d save their money, and then they’d go to the store, and they’d buy music, and they’d have it in their hand, and they’d take it home,” he replied. “And whether it’s a vinyl or a CD or a cassette or whatever it was, take it and open it up, look at the artwork, look what the band’s vibe is, and read along the lyrics to the songs and do all [that]. People don’t do that anymore. So it’s a completely different thing now. Back in the day, people took more ownership of things, because they had to work for it. They bought it with their money. They spent the time going through it and really looking at every aspect of what the band was trying to do or the artist was trying to do or say, through the artwork, through the lyrics, through everything. And today you get three seconds on Spotify, and that’s about it. [Laughs] So it’s a different world than it was back then.”
Put to him directly that Stone Temple Pilots might tour the back catalogue for the rest of their run without recording again, Gutt did not flinch.
“I would be fine with that, yeah. I always have to make music,” he said. “I write pretty much every day. And I have other things that I put energy into. I do a lot of writing with — just working with younger bands that are working with producers that are friends of mine, and I’ll go in and work with them and do that. So to me, it’s not about my glory or my fame or whatever it is. To me, it’s just about the music and the songs that connect and the songs that people love. If someone’s gonna yell a song at you every time you play a gig, eventually you’re just gonna play that song.”
He does think another record will come, but nothing is booked.
“You know what? I believe so,” Gutt added. “I’m gonna give you the honest answer. I believe so. When these things happen and they say, ‘Hey, let’s make a record,’ it happens organically. So it’s not, like, ‘Hey, in March we’re gonna make a record.’ They don’t really work like that. Robert [DeLeo] has put out a solo record, and Dean‘s [DeLeo] put out a couple records on their own, so they have their musical outlets and the things that they do to express their creativity. And we talk about it, and things happen and we work on things at certain times. But as of right now, we’re not, ‘Hey, we’re making this record.’ So as of now, there’s not, but that could change tomorrow literally.”
His own outlet has a name and a drummer. Gutt is returning to a project he abandoned in 2017, when he could not tell his bandmates he was auditioning for Stone Temple Pilots.
“Yeah. My band that I started that I never finished because I had to drop it, and I couldn’t tell them why I was basically MIA at a certain point, because they’re, like, ‘This dude’s lost his mind.’ And then they found out, ‘Oh, he’s in STP, but he couldn’t tell anyone.’ So to go back and finish that record — ’cause I have OCD really bad, and I hate leaving things unfinished. It gives me this crazy, creepy feeling inside, so I have to literally finish things. And so, yeah, that band’s gonna be called We Are Not Machines, and it’s with [Evanescence drummer] Will Hunt. And, yeah, I’m going to [producer] Bob Marlette to go finish the rest of that record soon. So, yeah, looking forward to that. So, yeah, I write a lot of stuff. And I’m always writing. That’s a true statement.”
Stone Temple Pilots opened online auditions in early 2016 and worked through roughly 15,000 submissions before Gutt was announced on November 14, 2017, playing his first show with the band that same night at the Troubadour in West Hollywood. The self-titled album followed on March 16, 2018, and Perdida, the band’s first fully acoustic record, arrived in February 2020. There has been no studio album since.
The three original members, guitarist Dean DeLeo, bassist Robert DeLeo and drummer Eric Kretz, rebuilt the band after losing two frontmen. Scott Weiland, who co-founded the group and returned in 2010 before being dismissed in 2013, died of an accidental overdose on December 3, 2015. Chester Bennington fronted the band from 2013 until November 2015, leaving to concentrate on Linkin Park. He died by suicide in July 2017.
