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Artist News Releases
Stone Temple Pilots announce new vocalist and release new single
By Andy Malt | Published on Thursday 16 November 2017
Stone Temple Pilots have officially confirmed the identity of their new vocalist, former ‘X-Factor USA’ contestant Jeff Gutt. The band began auditioning for a new singer over a year ago, although the announcement that Gutt has joined now follows the deaths of both of his predecessors, Scott Weiland and Chester Bennington.
Guitarist Dean DeLeo says in a statement: “We wanted someone who would not only do our earlier songs justice, but would also write new songs and carve out a different path forward with us. It took some time, but we found our guy”.
The band reportedly had 15,000 people apply for the role of frontman, after Bennington left the outfit to focus on his main band Linkin Park in late 2015.
“He was one of the last guys we saw, in the last two days of auditions”, DeLeo says of Gutt to Rolling Stone. “And that was just over a year ago – September of 2016. Jeff wasn’t even part of the singer submissions. But Robert [DeLeo, bassist] happened to be playing a gig with the Hollywood Vampires in Michigan and somebody came backstage after the show and approached him and said, ‘You should check this guy out. He’s a local guy'”.
Since then, the band have been working with Gutt on new material, with plans to release a new album in the spring. And they’ve just released their first single with the new frontman in place, ‘Meadow’:
