Stone Temple Pilots have recently returned to the live circuit in support of their recently-released album with new vocalist Jeff Gutt. Now in a recent interview, their new singer has revealed how he feels that one track from the group’s Scott Weiland era is “off limits” to him.
Performing at the Rocklahoma festival in the US state of Oklahoma over the weekend, drummer Eric Kretz and Jeff Gutt sat down with Brad Copeland of the ‘Rick & Brad Morning Show’ (via Blabbermouth) to open up about the group’s recent status, with Gutt being asked whether there were any tracks from the band’s back catalogue that he felt he was not allowed to perform.
“Well, that’s more up to these guys [the band], but I have a particular thing for ‘Sour Girl’, just because I feel it’s written, y’know, it’s a personal message, so I don’t know,” Gutt explained. “To me, that one’s a little off limits. But other than that, I’m game.”
Elsewhere in the interview, Eric Kretz expressed how he was more than pleased with Gutt’s appearance in the group, explaining that his talent allows them to “pull out stuff that we haven’t really busted into in about 20-something years”.
“When he came into the audition, man, he nailed it,” Kretz explained. “He actually came in and sang ‘Piece Of Pie’, and no one had the balls to come in and hit something that hard.”
“I had to do it first song, ’cause it was the one I didn’t have memorised. I knew every other song; it was seven songs,” confirmed Gutt. “Most of them I’d been playing for ages. Thank god I did ‘Trippin’ On A Hole [In A Paper Heart]’, like, ten years before that for many years, so that was like second nature.”
Stone Temple Pilots recruited Jeff Gutt as their new lead vocalist after a tumultuous few years which saw the firing of former frontman Scott Weiland, who would later pass away in 2015, and the death of Linkin Park’s Chester Bennington in 2017, who served as the group’s replacement vocalist from 2013 until 2015.
The group’s latest self-titled album was released back in March, but there’s no word yet as to whether or not the band will be showcasing their new vocalist in Australia any time soon.
Check out Stone Temple Pilots’ Rocklahoma interview:
