SCOTT WEILAND: 'I Wanna Make A Rock And Roll Record Again'

MSN Canada's Matt Schichter recently conducted an interview with former STONE TEMPLE PILOTS and VELVET REVOLVER singer Scott Weiland. You can now watch the chat at this location.

Weiland's current tour with his solo band THE WILDABOUTS features him playing STP classics and select VELVET REVOLVER cuts alongside two songs from THE WILDABOUTS' forthcoming album, tentatively due in November. So far, seven songs have been recorded, with five more to come. It will be Scott's third solo studio LP and first since 2008's "Happy In Galoshes". Weiland has stated in recent interviews that the new album will be more of a full-band effort.

Regarding the songwriting process with THE WILDABOUTS, Scott told MSN Canada: "We all are very close friends. We all have a very similar taste in music — music that we grew up with, music that our parents grew up with and music that is current now. So it's so easy [to write music together]."

He continued: "We talked about what we wanted, and I said, 'First of all, I wanna make a rock and roll record again.' I think that STP and VELVET REVOLVER fans aren't getting necessarily what they want from an art record; that kind of production. I think if we make an art record, they'll be into it, they'll be a lot more receptive and we'll have a bigger audience, at least from the core audience. And we'll get new fans too. But I didn't wanna make just a rock record, like hard rock and roll. I wanted to have it be retro-modern. I wanted to have influences from older music yet use sounds and techniques of recording that are modern and give it a combination — that one-two combination of modern-retro, retro-modern, whatever you wanna call it. You know, go away from using big Marshall sounds and find obscure, old fuzz boxes and all kinds of bizarre pedals. My guitar player's pedal board is about as big as a surf board."

THE WILDABOUTS originally began as a five-piece but recently decided to drop down to a four-piece. "The reason for doing that was, we started playing one time… like, there 's a couple of times Doug [Grean, guitar] was gone and we played, and we realized that it sounded a lot better as a four-piece; there was a lot more space between the beats, between the notes," Scott told MSN Canada.

Last year, Weiland embarked on the "Purple At The Core" tour, where he and THE WILDABOUTS delivered selections from STONE TEMPLE PILOTS' first two albums, 1992's "Core" and 1994's "Purple".