SCOTT WEILAND: 'I'm Not Quite So Sure That It Was All AXL's Fault'

Evan Serpick of RollingStone.com recently conducted an in-depth interview with STONE TEMPLE PILOTS/ex-VELVET REVOLVER singer Scott Weiland. An excerpt from the chat follows:

RollingStone.com: [STONE TEMPLE PILOTS guitarist] Dean [DeLeo] said that he has a ton of material that he has written over the last five years with you and the band in mind. Do you have any idea what direction a new album would take?

Weiland: I don't have any idea because Dean and Robert [DeLeo] played together consistently, and I haven't played with them in a long time. I played in VELVET REVOLVER, which is a raw, bombastic blues band with a punk rock edge to it. It's like everything is based around the blues, no matter what the groove is. And the melodies that I write, the lyrics that I write are inspired from a different place. I've also been writing my second solo album, and that's coming out in November, and that comes from a completely different place. That's sort of a no-holds barred experiment where I'm not afraid to use any sort of production, whether it's acoustic sounding, interesting sounding or bad sound. However I really don't have a great passion or a great desire in moving backwards or in staying stagnant. I'm 40 years old, and I feel like there are only a limited amount of years where you can wear those tight jeans. There comes a point where whether you can wear them or not, you shouldn't wear them. And at a certain point, bands that have the ability to mature musically should mature musically in a graceful manner, and I see the STONE TEMPLE PILOTS as being a band that has that capacity.

RollingStone.com: Did that call from Dean come at a time when things were already falling apart with VELVET REVOLVER?

Weiland: No, things at that time were working quite well with VELVET REVOLVER and I didn't want to mention it to them until there was a plan and a couple gigs that were actually booked. Slash and I were usually the ones who talked to each other first about things, then we'd go to the rest of the guys. And, unfortunately because of certain people's egos, it I walked into a situation where there was a lot of baggage. I had a lot of baggage walking into my situation. I was in a band where at the end, it was pretty much three against one. And so I'm pretty sure that it felt that way to Axl [Rose, GUNS N' ROSES singer] as well. I have to say this, and I'm not just saying this now because of my situation I went through, but I heard a lot of great GUNS N' ROSES stories you guys in the press will never hear. Everyone has made Axl out to be this horrendously crazy person, this bad guy, and I don't know him very well at all. He and I for whatever reason got almost tricked into this little media spat for a moment because one of our band members happened to run into him and said that he said something. So, my point being that having been in a band with VELVET REVOLVER now for five and a half years, I'm not quite so sure that it was all Axl's fault. It's like, why does it always have to be the lead singer. Matt Sorum in front of my face, he was the sweetest guy in the world. But there were some times, out of the blue, the guy just randomly hated me. We all carried our own baggage in that band. In a sense, that's why people were intrigued, you know, especially for the first couple of years. Because they were kind of waiting on the trainwreck to happen. They just thought it would happen a lot sooner.

Read the entire interview at RollingStone.com.