STONE TEMPLE PILOTS Guitarist Talks New Album

ARTISTdirect.com editor Rick Florino recently conducted an interview with STONE TEMPLE PILOTS guitarist Dean DeLeo. A couple of excerpts from the chat follow below.

ARTISTdirect.com: "Stone Temple Pilots" seamlessly combines your classic raw riffage with the psychedelic experimentation of "Shangri-la Dee Da". Do you feel like this album is the perfect middle ground between those two extremes?

Dean DeLeo: It's hard for me to say, man. I don't put that much thought into it. I simply come into the session with some songs. To me, there wasn't a lot of experimentation. We don't want to get too far outside what people would come to expect from us and, for us, we definitely don't want to keep doing the same thing over and over. It starts with the song for Robert [DeLeo, bass] and I, and Scott [Weiland, vocals] embellishes upon it. When I have to compete with songs written by Robert, I have to be on my game if I'm going to have any songs on the record [Laughs]. It's a pretty healthy relationship in that respect. With that said, we bring out the best in each other. I don't envy Scott, when it comes to making an STP record because that guy gets a lot of material thrown at him very quickly. I'm sure it's pretty overwhelming [Laughs]. The first CD that we sent to Scott had nine songs on it!

ARTISTdirect.com: Once you started writing and recording again, was it just like old times or was it better?

Dean DeLeo: It was a little bit of both. It was better because we had the luxury of working out of Eric Kretz's [drums] gorgeous studio, Bomb Shelter, and we had no producer. Robert and I took on the chore of producing this record. We actually made this record in between going in and out of tour. We didn't have this time constraint, and we didn't have to appease a producer and work under his time constraint. We've had the luxury of working with Brendan O'Brien on all of our records, and he's a busy guy! We'd start a record with him and we would have to finish it by a certain date because he would have another record to do.

ARTISTdirect.com: Do you feel like these songs really got to live and grow?

Dean DeLeo: Definitely! We also had the luxury of working at Eric's gorgeous place, and Scott had the luxury of working at his studio. Robert's been hard at work for the past five years building a gorgeous studio in the basement of his house. We tracked a couple songs there actually. When it came time to really finish the record, we had all three studios going at once. We were doing overdubs, drum stuff and bass lines at Robert's house. I was doing my guitar's at Eric's place, and Scott was finishing vocals at his studio, so we had three studios running simultaneously. It was really wonderful to utilize all that.

ARTISTdirect.com: This album is such a collective vision on all fronts.

Dean DeLeo: I think so. We were on the road right up until Thanksgiving. We'd begun this record quite some time ago, but we'd work on it for a few weeks and then go out on the road for a few weeks. We'd go home and spend some time with the families and then work on the album for a few weeks. That happened over about ten months. When you come off the road, everybody is playing really well, and I think it shows on these performances. Everybody is on his game.

ARTISTdirect.com: Your chemistry with Scott is quite remarkable on this album.

Dean DeLeo: Thank you! As a songwriter, it's been pretty fulfilling. The vocals are the last thing to go down on an album. We work on that arrangement of the song, musically speaking, and Scott will delve into it. He'll say, "Maybe we should double this section or move this?" When he comes back with something, it's very fulfilling as a songwriter.

ARTISTdirect.com: Do you and Robert share a musical mind?

Dean DeLeo: Completely! It's very much like one mind. You know how people can finish each other's sentences? There aren't many guys who can tell a story with bass, and Robert's choice of notes and how he plays and approaches a song — he can tell a story with a bass guitar. It's probably easier to tell a story through a piano or a guitar, but when a cat can tell a story with a bass, that's pretty remarkable.

Read the entire interview from ARTISTdirect.com.