You’ve got to have a healthy disregard for your own comfort to become the third lead singer of Stone Temple Pilots. Most wouldn’t touch it with a barge pole. Jeff Gutt? He dove in headfirst with a mix of humility, reverence, and the kind of delusional optimism usually reserved for teenagers and drunk poets.
“It’s been a long journey,” Gutt says, like a man who just climbed Everest using only a Sherpa’s mixtape and a harmonica. “It’s the first time I’ve had a record come out on a major label… and it happens to be with Stone Temple Pilots.” A quiet, stunned laugh follows. One imagines that hasn’t fully sunk in even now.
Coming into a band whose frontmen both burned bright and flamed out spectacularly—Scott Weiland and Chester Bennington aren’t just ghosts in the machine, they’re fixtures—could’ve gone full Titanic. But Gutt didn’t try to outshine their memory. He simply wanted to keep the ship sailing. “I just wanted to continue their journey… they deserved it.”
And to his credit, he understands the arched eyebrows. “I’d be one of those people with my arms crossed too,” he admits. “I get it.” But instead of shrinking under the weight of history, Gutt built a new chapter from it. His lyrics on songs like “Meadow” and “Guilty” eerily double as metaphors for his own STP origin story. “Sing a song, make it long / All I need is a chance…” If that’s not autobiography disguised as arena rock, nothing is.
The album, Stone Temple Pilots (yep, they went with the self-titled move three decades in), is a peculiar beast. Equal parts homage and evolution, it’s not so much a reboot as it is a soft reset—classic enough to fit in the playlist shuffle, new enough to justify the Spotify algorithm. “There really wasn’t a conversation around the name,” Gutt shrugs. “We probably just ran out of ideas.” Fair.
Still, the band wasn’t looking for a tribute act. Gutt was thrown into a year-long audition meat grinder that went beyond karaoke. “They had a few songs already recorded and asked me to write over them,” he explains. “Some of those melodies are the same ones on the record.” In short: STP made him earn it. And earn it he did.
He even brought his own bag of vocal tricks. On “Red & Blues,” a rare acoustic turn, he decided less was more. “I thought there should be something going on there at the end, but... no. Just let Dean [DeLeo] take the wheel.” That’s the kind of ego-shedding move that gets you invited back to the next album.
As for the older material, he doesn’t treat it like sacred text—but he’s not rewriting the gospel either. “In my mind I was doing it just like the record. But I went back and listened... and I was like, man, I don’t sound anything like that,” he laughs. “And that’s cool.” His favorite deep cut to sing? “Still Remains.” Because of the falsetto. And because apparently he enjoys suffering.
There’s a documentary maybe happening. Or not. He hasn’t been told. “I’ve heard about it, but I don’t know what’s up with it,” he says like a man not entirely convinced it isn’t just a rumor someone started on Reddit.
In the end, Gutt comes across not like a guy desperately trying to be Scott Weiland, but rather someone determined to make sure the music doesn’t stop. “At the end of the day I’m just trying to feel the music and be as free as possible,” he says. “That’s what I learned from Scott.”
That and: don’t screw up the falsetto.
Listen to the interview above and then check out "Meadow" and "Roll Me Under" below!
