Credit: Michelle ShiersThis spring, Stone Temple Pilots will release their first album with new lead singer Jeff Gutt. The band introduced Gutt last fall, nearly two years after they announced they’d be holding auditions to find a new vocalist. If things didn’t work out with Gutt, though, STP may have called it quits.
“If we didn’t find the person we felt we could move forward with, we ultimately would have put a fork in it,” guitarist Dean DeLeo tells The San Diego Union-Tribune.
“There was no room for error,” DeLeo adds. “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 only do the catalog of our previous songs justice, but someone we could write new songs with, too.”
Gutt is the third person to take up the lead singer mantle for Stone Temple Pilots, following the late Scott Weiland and Chester Bennington. While he gained some fame during his time on The X Factor, Gutt doesn’t have nearly the star power Bennington had when he fronted STP from 2013 to 2015.
“I wanted a person I knew we could write songs with,” DeLeo says. “And, look, Scott laid down a pretty strong foundation, and that is what our template was. So I didn’t give a s*** if Jeff was well-known or not. I just wanted a guy who could do the gig.”
Stone Temple Pilots’ self-titled album will be released March 16. The band will embark on their first tour with Gutt March 2 in Santa Clarita, California.
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