Stone Temple Pilots to Release Reunion Album Recorded Apart From Scott Weiland

Billboard.com reports that the upcoming release from 90’s radio regulars Stone Temple Pilots features no sessions where all the band members were present. In fact, the whole album features singer Scott Weiland’s vocals recorded separately from the rest of the band. Sounds like the bad blood is still there a bit, doesn’t it? While STP charged through the 90’s with radio hits and lots of insane stories from camp Weiland, the band put out a barely bought album Shangri-La Dee Da in 2001, and then fell apart again, for the second time, after Weiland and Dean DeLeo nearly got into a fistfight onstage in the midst of the last show of STP’s fall 2002 tour. Amazingly, the band reunited in 2007 after Weiland’s wife made a call to the DeLeo brothers about playing a private beach party, leading to yet another reconciliation. The band has toured several times since. Recordings for the upcoming album began in December 2009. While the band recorded in another studio, Weiland recorded his vocals in his own studio with producer Don Was. Says Robert DeLeo, "Scott wasn't there for the creation of these songs. We kind of guessed our way through it. It was challenging because we had to get as much done as we could to complete a song, but hold back because we had to see if it was in the right key and stuff like that. The songs we sent over to Scott were pretty much in a completed form, with a scratchy melody, and he had the option to use the melody or not." It’s a bit surprising that the band would record separately, considering they made the effort to tour together first to see if they could handle each other. The tour went well (no one got into a bottle swinging fight), so one would think all the bad blood had dried up. But as DeLeo explained, “We've been a band for 18 years. More like 23, before we were signed. There's a certain understanding you have. You know what the other person's going to like and dislike and you know what's going to work. So even though it's challenging, to me it's a great achievement to do this record the way we did it. I'm very proud of that." To keep everyone aware of what was being created, Weiland’s producer Was would take Weiland over to the rest of the band’s studio during sessions to smooth things out. DeLeo recalled, "Scott came over to our studio two or three times and Don was responsible for getting us together on the same page. He's very good at that—he's a people person. Sometimes you need someone in the middle, and Don did that." It seems like some bands just need a mediator nowadays, when did music turn into a reality show gone wrong? Or did reality TV come from the public’s hunger for dysfunction amongst its heroes? Either way, STP’s new album is due out on May 25. The band has a few upcoming festival gigs this summer, but I think we’re all really curious to hear what this interesting recording arrangement will reveal.