After more than a year on the charts with the triple-platinum album Purple,
Stone Temple Pilots' Scott Weiland learns to live with his monstrous success and the naysaying of the rock press.
by Michael Azerrad
As mainstream rock bands continue to emulate indie ways, they become lightning rods for ridicule. "Poseurs!" cry the righteous arbiters of indie. But shouldn't we
encourage the mainstreaming of indie values? While you may not like their music, you can at least commend the way some of these bands, including Stone Temple
Pilots, conduct their business. STP keep ticket prices low, are trying to dump TicketMaster from their next tour, and have taken deserving bands on the road with
them.
And besides, Stone Temple Pilots' latest album, Purple, boasts more than a few good songs. While it's not the Second Coming, it's such a quantum leap from the
cookie-cutter alternative sounds of their debut, Core, that their next one might just be an unqualified critical success.
Further hope for redemption lies in lead singer Scott Weiland's new side project, the Magnificent (or is that "Elegant"?) Bastards, and the buoyantly catchy
"Mockingbird Girl," written for the Tank Girl soundtrack. It's only one song, but it's so unlike anything STP has ever done it portends an imminent shift in the
balance or songwriting power -- away from the, shall we say, uninventive tendencies emanating from cover band veterans the DeLeo brothers and toward a more
original music voice.
Weiland's particular voice was on the phone to plug "Mockingbird Girl" and Stone Temple Pilots' mostly unplugged version of "Dancing Days" on Encomium, the
dubious new Led Zeppelin tribute album. During his first conversation with SPIN since a review of Purple sympathized with the notion of "a just God wiping
Weiland from the face of the earth," the often fiery frontman was surprisingly mellow, waxing philosophical about his own celebrity, and ever gingerly acknowledging
some of his band's shortcomings.
(This interview took place a couple of weeks prior to Weiland's May 15 arrest for possession of cocaine and heroin.)
SPIN: I'm surprised you're talking to SPIN again.
Scott Weiland: Why wouldn't I? It's not like I have a personal relationship with the magazine. I've never masturbated to it, although PJ Harvey looks pretty amazing
on the cover of the May issue.
But you're talking to the magazine that stopped just short of calling for your death.
That's probably one of the most ridiculous reviews I've ever read of any band. It wasn't really about the band or the music. It was about me as a person, and that
guy doesn't know anything about me. That was definitely something that affected me. But shit, that was then, this is now.
Why do you think there was so much antagonism between the alternative rock press and your band?
Pearl Jam had the same problem at first, being compared as a cheap Nirvana or a fake alternative band, which is ridiculous in the first place. We kind of
skyrocketed to success at a level that really hadn't happened in a while and we bypassed channels like alternative press and college radio, so I don't think those
groups felt like they had much to do with our success.
Now that some time has passed, are there things that you now kind of agree with the press about?
As far as trying to intentionally rip people off, no. Hopefully, I'm growing as an artist and if there were reviews that marked me as being green or lacking originality,
that's a situation that a lot of bands, from the Rolling Stones on, have been put in. Led Zeppelin got compared to Cream. That happens. I'm sure there are some
things that were said that were true, but it was more in the way the negative attacks were stated that bothered me. If you're a music critic, then talk about music. It's
not your responsibility or your right to develop an opinion about people you know nothing about.
Let's talk about the music, then. How did "Mockingbird Girl" come about?
It's a song I wrote a while ago. I got together with some friends to learn a John Lennon song, "How Do You Sleep?" for a tribute album. So we were jamming with
that, and then we found out that that was postponed for a while. I had a couple of songs I had written and Jeff Nolan and Zander Schloss helped me complete the
song. We just went in and recorded it in about a day and a half. Courtney [Love, executive music coordinator of the Tank Girl soundtrack] had called me up a
couple of days earlier, asking if I was interested in contributing a song to the movie.
Were you surprised to hear from Courtney?
She and I talk to each other fairly frequently. She'll write a new song and she'll call me up and play it over the phone. She asked me to cowrite and coproduce a
tune with her in the studio about a month ago but I was pretty, uh, hung up at that time. I couldn't really get away. But we've gotten to be friends over the past year.
She's a very smart person and she definitely knows what she wants, careerwise. She's a friend, and she's not the evil bitch that people make her out to be.
Is there going to be more Magnificent Bastards?
We're going to make an album this summer and probably do some touring. It's things at a different level again -- the motivation is a little bit different. I get that feeling
I used to get when I played for free beer.
What about the next Stone Temple Pilots record?
I really don't know. There's not rally a timetable for the STP record. We're writing songs. Actually, the rest of the band is in a studio right now, jamming. They do
that -- they get together and play stuff just for the hell of it. In the last few months, everyone has tried to get some semblance of a personal life back together and live
as normal human beings, and so we haven't jammed together in a while.
How are you getting your personal life together?
Well, for one thing, I got married and I've been spending time with my wife. Trying to deal with problems as they come, trying to make the best out of the time that I
do have right now.
What do you do when you're not wrapped up with your music?
Go crazy, pretty much.
Do you go out to clubs and see bands?
Not really, I'm not that much of a clubgoer. There are a few bars I go to, but I'm actually in the process of getting sober, and the bar world brings me closer to
temptation to the other, more dangerous worlds. I'm in the process of getting clean and bettering myself, trying to grow as a human being. The bar thing really isn't
too conducive to that. I went and spent some time with my folks in Colorado to try to chill for a while, that kind of thing.
Is being drug-free a big concern for your band?
Being in a state of mind where everybody is able to work with one another is a main concern, really.
I guess drugs don't help that.
They can definitely fuck things up.
Has that happened in your band?
Drugs, sex with our wives, and masturbation techniques are things we don't really talk about in interviews.
You seem to enjoy being a rock star, while your peers often complain about it.
I don't think anyone who is in the situation where they are a rock star would be there if they didn't dream of it as a kid, listening to Rolling Stones or Led Zeppelin or
Kiss records. There were things that really bothered me about it for a while because a lot of it is set up as a lie -- it's not really as it seems, the picture that's painted.
Like the whole myth of sex, drugs, and rock'n'roll -- it isn't this beautiful picture. But it's kind of hip today to complain about success.
Do you feel compelled, like so many performers, to regularly reinvent yourself?
On a daily basis. I feel very akin to Madonna. With Magnificent Bastards, I'm exploring different avenues in the studio, using loops and samples, exploring
technology without forsaking rock. You've go to keep the headbangers happy, but I'd be pretty bored recording "Sex Type Thing" over and over again. We're not a
heavy metal band, we're not a punk rock band, and we're not a doom-gloom band. We're a rock'n'roll band.
