Post Scott Weiland Stone Temple Pilots, was possibly the biggest surprise of my rock concert daze. I doubt I will ever have another rock experience quite like this again.
The Revolution 3 Tour, with Bush, The Cult and Stone Temple Pilots... Yes, Stone Temple Pilots, and before you check it out on google, you were not mistaken, Scott Weiland did just die in 2015. But we will go into that later in the article, first things first.
It was the final stop on this tour, and imagine my astonishment when I heard The Cult was the opener of this show. The Cult, had a handful of hits on the Album Rock radio format for sure, and possessed superior talent to many of their more commercialized contemporaries of the 80's. But lets face it, they were never the monsters of rock in their hey day. But they still had the original lineup with the immense power vocals of Ian Astbury and they were great showmen. The Cult is a picture perfect measure of Rock n' Roll professionalism and they have that set down. Certainly, they were no STP in terms of success, but c'mon... STP has a new singer, that should put down a few notches right?
And now on to Bush, was for my age bracket in high school, the "IT" band. They were the next punch of the grunge era after the death of Kurt Cobain. Grunge, but not from America, they were a touch of goth and a sloppy erratic processed guitar effects that were definitely cut from the Seattle sound. But Bush came a bit too late to be pioneers of that genre. They seemed packaged and ready to be sold on lunch boxes and T-shirts at Millers Outpost coming out the gates. But they had an undeniably great sound. It seemed like they were almost accidentally good. The unique vocals of famous frontman Gavin Rossdale gave credibility to what looked like the latest mediocre product of the MTV generation. A desirable crooning English rocker with a god like voice crunching through barely rhythmic power chords, intentional feed back and indiscernible guitar solos. The problem with Bush for most rock fans... they did too good of a job appealing to young girls. They were so popular, they almost became the Nickelback of their era. But they didn't, and here they are, rocking again.
Gavin Rossdale looks almost exactly the same. Same hair, fit and minimal signs of age. Voice hasn't wavered, but let us face it, the grunge voices didn't challenge themselves the way the era of Journey and Bon Jovi did. His stage strutting rock moves weren't the coolest, but I can give him an A for effort.
I couldn't tell if it was the original band. They looked too young to be the originals. They looked liked Rossdale called the ad agency for Old Navy and trained some jeans models to play his old songs. Bush was exactly how I remembered them, no more, no less. Fun, energetic and cool. They sounded just as you would hope. However, Bush made one painful error. They allowed Stone Temple Pilots to open for them.
When I saw the order of bands at the show, I thought it was terrible for STP to be second on the bill. I have seen Skid Row, Blind Melon, Warrant, Queen, and several other bands with new singers. All of them were failures, in tragic ways. I know Sublime sorta pulls it off, but it just seems like a whole new band that plays some Sublime songs. Van Halen is just another band altogether, and I believe so is AC-DC. So, my expectations were pretty much telling me it would be a good time to go to the bathroom and stand in line for a personal pizza. Thank the lord I stayed.
Stone Temple Pilots new frontman Jeff Gutt, was astonishing. I just don't know how else to put it. STP stole the show even with an unknown on vocals. I realize Gutt had a career and was featured on the X-Factor. But my ability to recognize the X-Factor as anything more than a cheap reality show that harnesses no reality dismisses any credibility to a singer might have otherwise had. My brain wants to injustify my interest because, it was no different than watching an Elvis or Micheal Jackson impersonator in Las Vegas, yet we didn't seem to care as an audience. Jeff Gutt did a dead on impression of the charismatic frontman Scott Weiland. Weiland, to me seemed just irreplaceable. And Weiland, I put him in a category of the elite stage strutters of all time. From Elvis, to Jagger, Tyler, Roth, Mercury, Rose... I think Scott Weiland was easily the most magnetic on stage of the 90's. STP took a back seat to the popularity of Pearl Jam, Soundgarden and Nirvana, but I don't think any of those bands would have the gall to have STP open the show.
Having said all that, Jeff Gutt captured Weiland's raw mojo just brilliantly. I wanted to dislike him, but he won me over before the first song was over. Much like a comedian putting his best joke in the front to capture the audience, he sucked me right in. He dressed like Weiland, sang like Weiland and moved distinctly like Weiland's unmistakeable wiry, slightly effeminate yet really cool motions. He was undoubtedly, the coolest man in that arena. He is the guy you want to party with,
banging out album rock hits like Wicked Garden, Sex Type Thing, Big Bang Baby, Vaseline. They had to cut hits off the set list to make room for the new material featuring Gutt. The new material is solid, just as solid as I would imagine Weiland doing had he been alive today.
Although it's hard to imagine STP having a real rebirth, Jeff Gutt is not Brian Johnson or dare I say, Sammy Hagar who can lead the band to new relevance, but damn, can he perform the living hell out of a packed crowd with the arsenal of the original STP behind him. If I didn't know Scott Weiland was dead and if I was sitting even five rows further back, I probably never would have figured out it wasn't Weiland. That in it self was worth the ticket. But eventually, you just listen and realize, Stone Temple Pilots are one of the best rock bands ever, and for me, it required seeing them live to realize that statement. It's almost as if they crept up on us in the 90's and just became an overlooked part of our collective subconscious. They didn't have a Smells Like Teen Spirit, Welcome to the Jungle, or a Surrender. But they had riffs and hooks just as memorable. Guitarist Dean DeLeo is very underrated. He wasn't a virtuoso like Joe Satriani, an innovator like Jimmy Page, but DeLeo wrote some of the best riffs in rock history, that sounded classic on the first time you heard them. Their songs were so commonly slow and steady, not head banger party songs, more like soundtracks to your after prom hangover. It took having these licks jump out of the speakers one after another live on stage for me realize how much they embodied the final great era for popular Rock n' Roll. Watching them live shoots a surges of electricity right into your spine when you hear Jeff Gutt scream the words to Dead and Bloated. It was one of those rare times when watching the opening band systematically cut the heads off of the headliner. Much like Jerry Lee Lewis used to set out to do when being the warm up act to Elvis, Cash or Chuck Berry.
Stone Temple Pilots will never be the same without Scott Weiland as the quarterback, but I think even Weiland would look at Jeff Gutt at the helm and admit from the audience, "Damn, he's pretty good."
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