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June 18, 2001
Getsigned.com Presents A Conversation with Stone Temple Pilots' Scott Weiland and Dean DeLeo
©2001 Getsigned.com. ALL RIGHTS RESERVED.


While news reports about Stone Temple Pilots over the past few years had more to do with singer Scott Weiland's personal troubles (including a drug-related incarceration) than with music, all that is about to change. The band's fifth album, "Shangri-La Dee Da", hits stores on June 19, their first since No. 4 in 1999 and Weiland's emergence from jail and heroin addiction.

Produced by longtime collaborator Brendan O'Brien and recorded at a rented house in Malibu, California, the album is an eclectically satisfying mix of hard rockers ("Dumb Love," "Long Way Home"), ballads ("Wonderful," "A Song For Sleeping") and catchy power-pop tracks like "Days of the Week." Already a radio hit, it bodes well for the new album's performance. But the band's past success looms large.

In a career that began with the 1992 smash Core (seven times platinum in the U.S.) and continued with 1994's Purple (sextuple platinum), 1996's Tiny Music…Songs From the Vatican Gift Shop (double platinum) and Core (platinum), STP has sold over 20 million records worldwide. The band- Weiland, guitarist Dean DeLeo, bassist Robert DeLeo and drummer Eric Kretz-has been honored with a Grammy Award for the #1 hit "Plush," two American Music Awards, two Billboard Video Awards, a Billboard Music Award and a MTV Video Music Award.

STP has chosen to wait to hit the road in support of the album and won't begin touring until August, when a European run will begin in Portugal on the 16th. However, the band will play a one-off festival date at the Rolling Rock Town Fair in Latrobe, Pennsylvania on Aug. 4, a sold-out show also featuring Deftones, Tantric and Oleander that will be offered as a pay-per-view event by Showtime Event Television on August 11. A U.S. tour will materialize in the fall, possibly as the headliner of the Family Values Tour.

In an interview last month, Weiland and Dean DeLeo talked about the making of the album, Weiland's difficult personal journey and how it affected the band, and the valuable lessons learned over a decade in the music business trenches.

G: Instead of booking a recording studio, you rented a house in Malibu in January and spent three months working on the album. What was that experience like?
D: Lovely because it was five minutes from my house. The place was so conducive for us. My friend Don Richtone, a Realtor in Malibu, found the place. I told him what we needed and he found the house. We turned one of the bedrooms into a control room. I went home [at night], but there were three master suites and everybody had their own entrance and their own room with a fireplace, bathroom. It was perfect. Robert, Eric and Scott lived there.

G: Did being sequestered like that make it easier to concentrate on the work?
S: Yeah. It was a decision we made coming off the last tour. We lived up to our potential on the tour with No. 4, right after I got out of jail, we were reviewed favorably and a lot of things came full circle for us. Being on the same page musically, we wanted to find a way to continue in that spirit. So we made the decision to go back into a house again and bring our gear in and live there, and bring our wives and families there and do it communally. There are no rules or parameters, really. You let the day unfold as it does. When you go into a recording studio, no matter where it is, Hollywood or New York or somewhere along the coast, you're clocking in on a time clock and you're always aware of the minutes passing by. You always feel you have to move ahead, move ahead. I don't think it really lends itself to the experience of letting free flowing ideas just happen on their own.
D: A studio is pretty much a submarine. There are no windows. And there's a lot of down time when you're making a record. Let's say my part is done and Scott wants to spend three hours working on his part, I'm just sitting around in a studio. At the house, there's a tennis court there. We had our motorcycles there. It was really nice. It was up on Paradise Cove on 20 acres so we could make all the noise we wanted.

G: You can work at 4 AM if you want to.
S: That's what we would do. If Robert of Dean would come in with the chord progressions and the basic instrumental idea of what they wanted the song to be and we would start laying down the basic foundation. We put this album together in the studio whereas on all the other albums we put together as a live band in a live room. I'd say 90% of it came together as experimentation as we were tracking. For me, once we got down to the foundation of the music, I'd sit there most nights with the engineer from ten at night to four in the morning, and just experiment with the melodies and the lyrics and work it out. I'd orchestrate the counter-melodies and harmonies and vocal arrangements. We really had the time to let it flow.
D: We made the "Tiny Music" record in a house, so we were used to that. What was different about approaching this record, on the other records we'd go into a rehearsal room and put ideas down in very raw form on a DAT. We didn't have the opportunity to multi-track the ideas or really bring the songs to full fruition. This time we had a Pro Tools system and we were able to see where we wanted the songs to go sonically and get different tones. We were really able to finely craft the songs, get out all the ideas right then and there instead of tracking the bare bones of the song and going back to it later.

G: I understand that you ended up with a lot of songs to choose from, too many to use.
S: Yeah we had a lot of material. My original idea was a double album because we had so much stuff. There was material that was more introspective and if you don't interpret it in a different kind of light it can come out sounding typical. If you have a piece of music that you're working on the trick is to do something fresh with it and have an open enough mind to approach it in a different way, and that's what we were able to do on this record.
D: Everybody in the band is a pretty prolific writer so that's where this whole double album idea stems from. We wanted to entertain everybody's ideas and we knew we'd all walk in with a sack of six or seven songs so do the math. Robert made a good point, especially in this day and age with all the albums for young people listening to music, it's not the way it was in the '70s when things weren't so obtainable. There are so many options today. To sit down and listen to an album for an hour or more is hard.

G: Did any of the music on this album come from the past?
D: Yeah, absolutely. "Hello it's Late," there was a version of that in the Tiny Music sessions, it was a whole different thing. It was a little more electric, a little heavier, and it turned into what it is now. "Bi-Polar Bear" I've had kicking around for five years. It just wasn't its time yet. The riff for "Hollywood Bitch" has been kicking around since Purple. In a way, keeping those songs bottled in like that is unhealthy. It's cathartic that they've finally seen the light of day.

G: You worked with producer Brendan O'Brien again. By now, is he like the fifth member of the band?
S: In a lot of ways, yeah. Just like we have conflicts within the band, we have conflicts with him. He's so talented. You have to be a pretty sharp tool to be in the shed with this band. I've had the opportunity to work with other talented people like Daniel Lanois on my solo record, and working with great people like that, if you allow yourself to be humble enough and act like a sponge, you absorb their knowledge.
D: Brendan is really great at what he does. You can really hear how hi-fi the record sounds because we did it in a house.

G: What does he bring out in you?
D: The best. He really brings out the best. First of all, he's an extraordinary musician himself. He plays mellotron on "Wonderful," and a calliope keyboard trip on the outro to "Hello it's Late" and on the second verse of "Bi-Polar Bear," some really cool keyboard. He's actually a guitar player and that makes me step up to the plate that much more. Not only do my bandmates have high expectations of me…

G: You have to impress Brendan.
D: Exactly.

G: Why did you call the album "Shangri-La Dee Da?"
D: When I was a very young boy, 10 or 11 years old, I watched The Flintstones episode where the Flintstones vacationed in Shangri-La Dee Da Valley. It was a beautiful place and I remembered the cartoon. It's also a fun play on words and sums up the place we recorded.

G: Scott, can you discuss how going to jail and getting clean influenced your writing and being part of the band?
S: I finally figured out that there was hope that I could get out of the purgatory I was in for a long time. I saw friends getting clean around me, friends who I used to get loaded with and use with, getting clean and turning their lives around. I had started lapsing into hopelessness, I didn't know I would be one of those people who'd play out the…

G: Rock star cliché?
S: Yeah. It was depressing. People observing it can call it a cliché but it sure doesn't feel like that when you're locked into it. It's a hard thing to get out of.

G: How did you get out of it?
S: It's kind of collision of decisions and fate. Part of it had to do with going to jail and being very lonely and hopeless in a place like that, and feeling that the only possible way I could get through that situation and maintain any kind of sanity without losing my mind in hopeless depression was searching for some kind of strength. I didn't think I had that strength inside me and I'd read about people finding it in some sort of spiritual way, and you know, there weren't a lot of options available to me.

G: Were you religious to begin with?
S: No, I did the whole Catholic altar boy thing, but this doesn't really have anything to do with religion. It's such a personal matter to me. I don't know if religion does it for people like me. I know there's something out there, some sort of energy that you can tap into and make changes in your life that allow you to become more honest and more self-sacrificing and less self-centered. What it did was it showed me that can happen if you allow yourself to be in the process. It doesn't mean that I don't lapse back and fail in those areas at times. I'll get to the point where I feel I'm making such amazing headway and then I'll lapse back into old ways of thinking or dealing with problems or relationships with people in my life.

G: You're not talking about relapsing with drugs?
S: No, I mean with anything. Using drugs is how I handled things from the time I was a very young person and that changed the way I felt about myself and my surroundings. You take that away and you still feel the same about yourself and your surroundings, you've got to find some way to come to grips with getting on some kind of path of self-discovery. For people who have a problem like I've had, that's what seems to work the best. It's a two step forward, one step back kind of thing sometimes, but I've stopped relying on the destination being my source of happiness. I've achieved just about every destination I've wanted to in my life, financially, sexually-every sort of success and excess, and never found any enlightenment in any of those destinations. Ultimately, the enlightenment comes on the journey and as soon as you realize that the better you'll be able to appreciate the day you're in.

G: Did your specific experiences affect specific songs?
S: The majority of emotions that I had felt most comfortable with and in tune with were negative ones so I really had a hard time coming to grips with positive emotions in the songs that I write. So going through what I've gone through, the goal is to experience a new kind of life and take the bad with the good and the good with the bad, and be able to get real and honest and express those feelings, and to realize that the good emotions have as heavy an impact on my life as the negative ones I've felt, so why shouldn't pay homage to them as well? There are dark and questioning songs because that's the human condition but there are songs that evoke a whole different feel, and that's the result of becoming a more well-rounded person. We've dipped our toes in that water before but never completely explored it.

G: Which album of yours do you think this is closest to, if any?
D: I don't know, that's a hard question to answer. I like to think I always remain fresh in my writing.

G: That must be hard when you have that fine line to tread, between wanting to grow and experiment and progress but not change too much from what people like about you.
D: I don't think any artist wants to paint the same picture over and over. I'd love to tell you that we toil over it, but songwriting comes very easy to us. We all come in with an immense amount of material. The agonizing part of it is remaining fresh sonically, not repeating yourself sonically or chordally or melodically. The amount of material we sifted through on this record was huge. But with 13 songs, we only have 47 minutes of material. I think if you can't say it in two-and-a-half to three minutes, get out!

G: In terms of the lyrics, did you go in with an idea of what you wanted to write about or did you let the music dictate that?
S: Both. We all come from a very similar place. As much as my private struggles have been publicized, everyone in the band has gone through severe growing pains. It's just that most people are able to go through theirs in private. When we took time off, when I did 12 Bar Blues and those guys did the Talk Show thing, that was a time period when there wasn't a lot of touring and we hardly saw each other very much. Then we got back together, did No. 4 and then I went to jail and then we toured for that album. There has been a lot of growth and we were able to get to a place where we could be more sensitive and vulnerable.

G: "Song for Sleeping" is about your new baby, Noah, who's six months old now, right? How has fatherhood affected you?
S: It's the most rewarding feeling in the world. My only experience in my life before was romantic love and the love I feel for my brother and my parents. The love I feel for my son is such an intense feeling that it's hard to really explain. It's like being so head over heels in love with somebody that you can't get them out of your mind. You're obsessed with them but without the dark baggage that goes along with that. I can lay there with him and stare at him and smell his skin and kiss him and play with him forever. It's hard when I have days like this and I'm working and can't be around him. He's here in the hotel but I can't be with him.

G: What happens when you go on the road?
S: I'm taking my wife and my son, and we have a great nanny, who helps a lot since neither my wife nor I have a nine to five job.

G: Your wife Mary is a model, and I heard you signed with her agency.
S: Yeah, so we could do things together. There are a couple things being negotiated now. We've posed together for different photographers. Doing something together we'd make a lot more money than her doing something on her own. She doesn't want to do this much longer. She can't stand the modeling industry. It's worse than the music industry. There aren't any unions to protect models.

G: You wrote "Wonderful" for her.
S: Yeah, and "Hello It's Late" was written after we had a really horrible argument. You can still have your heart broken when you're in love with somebody and you're living with them.

G: Let's talk about "Bi-Polar Bear," which reflects your manic-depression. Did it come into play while you were writing?
S: Yeah, I go into periods where the pendulum swings both ways. The down side is the depression part, where you can't do anything. All the great, ambitious things I'm working on when I'm in the manic upswing of it, I come down and I start wondering how I could ever achieve anything. There are two ways to deal with it: medication and knowing that the down side won't last forever and just riding it out. The first six weeks of the album, when we sculpted the songs, I could talk out some of the feelings. I was on medication but I stopped taking it because I felt very flat-lined. I would rather deal with the ups and the downs and be able to express those feelings both speaking them and through music. I feel that on medication I can't really feel anything and what's the use then, if you don't have your emotions?

G: Is "Hollywood Bitch" about anyone in particular?
S: No, I've lived in Los Angeles for a long time and it's an observation. The image of the city is what people buy into but there's a real dark side, a dark underbelly to it and a lot of innocent people fall from grace in the city. Especially the club life, it attracts the type of people who are searching for something but they don't know what they're searching for, just something to fill them up and make them feel whole. It's kind of sad and lonely and it's a little disgusting at times, too. I hardly ever go out to nightclubs anymore. I don't have a need, I don't go out and womanize and I don't go searching for drugs and drink any more so I don't need to make connections. Every once in a while I'll go out. But it's easy to be constantly bombarded with the idea that you don't have enough. There's always somebody in better shape, who has more money, a better gig or a better car or a better house. You're bombarded with those images all the time. The line that best sums up that song is "everybody's searching every single night."

G: How about "Too Cool Queenie." Is it about Curt Cobain and Courtney Love?
S: I'm just going to go on record and say that it's a fable.

G: A fable that might be true?
S: Art imitating life, imitating art, imitating life.

G: Dean, how did the rest of the band deal with what Scott went through?
D: You know, we had that period where we ventured off and did other things, Scott did 12 Bar Blues and we did the Talk Show record, and you know, absence makes the heart grow fonder. It was not only very cathartic for us to be apart and go through our different trips, it really gave all of us the opportunity to see what we really mean to each other. That's what led to us having such a great tour, when Scott got out of jail and we toured for No. 4. Scott's not being sober affects a lot of people, not only the band. Loved ones, family, it's a long chain, plus ultimately what it does to him. Scott has been fighting for his sobriety for over a year now and he's doing really well. And it really makes things very easy. It's a huge difference.

G: What's the best way to preserve harmony in a band, do you think?
D: Sometimes you have to hang the white flag. When there's a tug of war, let go of the rope. You want to make sure everyone's happy. There were a few songs I brought in for the Shangri-La Dee Da record and I'd play them for Scott and he was like, "I'm not feeling that, man," so we move on. There was such a huge amount of material.

G: All of you write.
D: Yes. In a band like Smashing Pumpkins, Billy Corgan calls all the shots there and it's noticeable. When you have four different guys contributing to the music you get different walks of life and I think that makes for an interesting record.

G: What do you think the fans will think of it? Will they be surprised?
D: I think they'll really dig it.

G: I hear there's a documentary about making the record.
D: We documented everything. I don't know what's going to happen with it. It may be something to show the grandkids, I don't know. We haven't sifted through it yet. We'd never done it before. It was a really spectacular location, and this last time on the road, we were playing some of the songs for the record for each other in the dressing room and we knew what we had in our pocket. We thought we should document it.

G: You've done five albums now. Does it get easier? Or is it more of a challenge not to repeat yourself?
S: There's a challenge but I think we've become bold and brave enough to explore material and songs that we wouldn't have felt comfortable doing before and I think we've earned the right to be able to do that. There are lot of bands coming out who I feel are aping what we've done in the past.

G: Is that flattering or annoying?
S: Both, really. It's flattering that young rock bands cite us as an influence, that's great, it's the same way we think of The Beatles or the Stones or Zeppelin or Velvet Underground. But in the same breath I'll also say that we don't want to repeat ourselves and if people want to hear music we created off "Core" or "Purple" they can go out and buy Creed records or Fuel records. It's gotten easier to make records because we know how to go about it, we've all gotten more experienced in the realm of production and have all done things like producing artists on our own.

G: You recently worked with Wonder Girls.
S: Yeah. I was also a co-producer and co-writer on the last two Limp Bizkit records and produced a track and wrote a track for The Crystal Method's new album. It brings a lot more objectivity when you're not emotionally tied to something and it also really helps when we make records together because we've become a lot more self-sufficient. We know how to get the sounds we want and we have a broader field of reference as far as what kind of instruments and amps and effects to get the sounds. We really completed the majority of this album, production-wise, arrangement wise, and recording-wise when it was just us and Doug, our engineer, even before Brendan got there. The album was well on its way because we know what we wanted to do. When we made the first couple of albums we knew how to write songs but we didn't know what to do in the studio, but you learn. We've been fortunate enough to work with Brendan on every album.

G: Do you want to do more producing and collaborating?
S: Definitely. For me, it's an ongoing thing. I don't just write and record songs when we're working on an album. I was just asked in the last few weeks to produce and write some tracks with Sheryl Crow, and also with Liz Phair. My manager is trying to work out our schedules. I have a studio in Burbank-it's how I spent the majority of the advance from my solo album. I rent it out as well. Mandy Moore was in there a month ago. The rap group I signed to my label, Lavish Records, is in there. It's an independent label, we have a deal with AMG for financing. We signed Campfire Girls. They made one record for Interscope and imploded because of drugs but they got their act together. They're amazing.

G: What's the story on the Wallflowers song you remixed, "Letters From the Wasteland"?
D: It was a favor. We had met Jake [Dylan], and he asked Scott and I to come down and help out with this track. I personally don't dig doing that stuff. I have no aspirations. I just wanted to be a guitar player in a rock band. I have no aspirations to go and do this or that with anybody else. Scott digs that, and my brother wrote some stuff for Aerosmith and Sheryl Crow and Ozzy. I have no aspirations to do that. But we met Jake, and I told Scott I didn't really want to do it, it wasn't my thing, but I decided to do it out of respect, and Scott and I went down there an Jacob didn't even show up!

G: Is the business side a drag for you?
D: I'm not that involved in the business aspect though I do stay abreast of what's going on. We have a great management team and we let them come up with the plan, and they run it by us. But I'm a songwriter, and I'm completely fulfilled just going in the studio and making a record and going out and touring. But there's a whole other trip that goes with it. There are aspects of being in a band that are very uncomfortable. Doing this, talking about myself and trying to explain my music, my art, is very hard.

G: Even after all this time?
D: Yes. But I'm not in any way being a martyr. If any of us were to ever complain-not just us but any successful artist-and to get to do it and have success doing it we should be shot if we moan about it! I feel quite fortunate and I don't take it lightly.

G: You've been together for a decade now…
D: Yes, '91 to 2001. Robert, Eric and Scott have been together since '87.

G: To be together for 10 years is quite an accomplishment, especially nowadays. What keeps you strong and viable?
D: The music, plain and simple. I don't have any magical mystical concept. It's the music. When the four of us get in a room it's pretty gratifying. We all have an enormous amount of respect for each other's talent. The band isn't about any one person's virtuosity. It's really just about the song. What does this song dictate sonically, lyrically, melodically? In a lot of instances, less is more. It's about crafting the song.
S: Songs. A gimmick only lasts for so long. No matter how great that gimmick is constructed eventually people get bored with it and want substance. As interesting and talented as someone like Marilyn Manson has the ability of being, if the gimmick starts to overshadow the art, it's over. Look at U2. They're still around, still viable. When they felt that what they were doing was becoming kind of a gimmick they pulled back and focused on the powerful aspect of who they are. I think they're probably the most emotional rock band of the last 20 years. People love music because it makes them feel a certain way and if you have the ability to affect people's emotions in a strong way, then you're viable.

G: What have been some highlights of your career so far?
S: Winning a Grammy, but at the time I didn't appreciate it much because I was young and didn't allow myself to embrace that and see it for what it was and as something to feel good about. Being able to share the stage with The Stones in Canada and Neil Young in Los Angeles and Iggy Pop in Europe. Being able to play with Glenn Campbell. Robert Plant. People who are musical icons. Being able to make a record with Daniel Lanois. Very few people who have success in this business are able to have experiences like that. It was really cool to have that.

G: Have you met all your idols?
S: I've yet to meet David Bowie, I'd love to write a song with him.
D: Growing up on the East Coast, in New Jersey, as a kid I got to see The Who and Zeppelin and Queen at Madison Square Garden. It was THE place. When we got to gig the Garden with Aerosmith on the Tiny Music tour in '96, Steven and Joe came up and we did "Sweet Emotion" and "Lick and a Promise." In '94 we did a couple of shows for Robert Plant and we'd just finished up the version we did of "Dancing Days." I had it on a cassette and I got to play it for him. That was really cool. Another amazing experience that made it worth all the expense of shooting the documentary: Glenn Campbell. His son Cal is a big fan and when we played Phoenix the second time he brought his dad, and we hit it off. Glenn came up to the house and we did an incredible version of "Wichita Lineman," and we got it on film and audio. What's spectacular: a rainbow came out over the house.

G: Are you going to release it? Maybe as a B-side?
D: It's way too special to be a b-side. It will appear somewhere. We'll share it.

G: What do you think of the music scene now, and where do you think it's going?
D: It's a real fabricated, disposable market right now. It's weird. I can get real bitter about it. I'm very pleased with where we're at, but I find it hard to drum up any respect for a group of cute guys or girls who go out and perform music that they have no capability of writing. I was backstage at an awards show once and the 'N Sync fellows were there, and Steven Tyler walks by and said, "Hey, don't be afraid to play some instruments." I died laughing! I feel that this onslaught of fabricated jive that we have terribly overshadows true art. I remember growing up listening to the stuff my mom put on, like the Mamas and the Papas, Spanky and Our Gang, Andy Williams, Glenn Campbell and Tommy James. It was pop but it was real, and the songs were great.

G: When you were young did you know you wanted to be a musician?
D: Absolutely. We have older brothers and sisters-we're the two babies. My mom's been married a lot and we have a big family, half brothers and half sisters. From my sister's room Crosby, Stills & Nash would be playing, and from my brother's room Hendrix would be playing, and from another sister's room, James Taylor would be playing. We were exposed to the best of the best. We all have a great affinity for music.
S: I knew when I was singing in the choir in elementary school. Even though most of them couldn't sing there's a certain sound that's created that makes the hair on your arms stand up. It's like God touching you. It's a spiritual awakening every time.

G: Do you have favorite guitar players, Dean?
D: Wes Montgomery, Pat Metheny, Jeff Beck, Allan Holdsworth, Glenn Campbell, George Harrison. I love the way George approaches playing. Really cool style. Mick Taylor, I really begged, borrowed and stole from him over the years. Another great player who's overlooked is Brad Whitford. We went on the road with Aerosmith when we did the Talk Show record. I can't say I'm a big fan of their later stuff but to see them live is incredible. The early Aerosmith records have a big influence on me. Toys in the Attic is in my CD changer right now. So is Toots Thielmans, Rufus Wainright. The Defonics. They did "Didn't I Blow Your Mind." They're amazing. I like it all. Music is the soundtrack to life. It's amazing how it affects you. When I'm ready to go out I fire up something like Iggy Pop or for a nice quiet evening I can put on a little Edith Piaf.

G: What has been the biggest surprise about your career so far?
S: It may sound pompous, but I saw all this happening, I envisioned it happening just as it has happened. The philosophy behind the book The Alchemist is if you believe in something strongly enough and envision it happening you can tap into the energy of the world, the energy of the universe. I think in abstract, philosophical ways; that's how my brain functions. I never passed algebra. I have these poetic overtones.
D: Scott's trip has been the hardest. But we've been able to live our dream. Even though I feel that we've achieved them, in a sense they're sitting in our hands on a silver platter, sometimes Scott's demons get the best of him. It's like we're sitting in the highest tree and he's at the bottom with an axe. It's a little frustrating. It's been a weird thing to swallow, getting the rug pulled out from under you once in a while. But we love one another and we share an intimacy that's pretty deep. I think the only people we're more intimate with are the people we share our beds with.

G: What's the biggest misconception about the music business?
D: Nothing really, it's everything I expected it would be. It's everything I dreamt about and wanted to do and taste and feel, all of it.
S: It hasn't really surprised me. If you're a student of pop music or history in general you see that everything happens in cycles. Everything that happens there's usually a reaction to it. We had a pretty smooth sailing decade and people made a lot of money and got nice cars and houses and weren't feeling disenfranchised and disconnected so suddenly there was a pop phenomenon again. But now here we are with another conservative Republican in the White House and a conservative Republican Senate and it will be interesting to see what happens in the next year or so. All these young girls will start to realize that cute older boys will pay attention to them but won't look kindly on girls who have Backstreet Boys pictures on their folders. Young boys start feeling the testosterone in their loins and groups with homogenized pop music don't sound as interesting and they become drawn to rap or punk.

G: So timing is a big part of success?
D: I think a great part. With everything that was happening in the early '90s, the timing was perfect for us. It allowed us to step in and do what we're doing now. Today everybody's going for whatever the flavor of the month is.

G: What are you proudest of?
D: The music. I'm proud of our songs.
S: I think I'm proudest of what's happened recently with the band. I've always had incredibly high expectations of myself and of everyone in this band, what we could do collectively, and how powerful we could be on stage. It's all come together since we started touring for No. 4, and since I got out of jail it's all come to fruition. I only hoped and prayed we could get to that point, and we did it. What happened on that tour was so rewarding. A lot of artists say they don't care what people think of them but that's a bunch of shit because the two main things that motivate artists are commerce and respect, not necessarily in that order. It depends on what kind of day it is and how you're feeling. Sometimes you make decisions based on making money and living the good life and not being taken advantage of and maximizing your potential and other times you make decisions because they're right for your art and you want to be recognized for having made a significant impact on music. We're in the process of that happening and when the artistic community sees that happening and is giving us accolades. That's really rewarding. In the first couple years of our career we knew we had that potential and ability and saw that people did not get what we were about. We didn't get the respect we were hoping for, but that was the position Led Zeppelin found themselves in for the majority of their career. It's kind of like the line in "Too Cool Queenie": What comes around goes around.

G: With five albums out now, you have a lot of songs to choose from to play live. It must be hard to pick a set list.
D: That's the hard part. But I really want to cover a lot of the material on this record. When we toured for the No. 4 record we didn't do a lot of material off it, maybe three songs. But we have two to four well-known songs on each record, the standards.

G: Yes. Some already classics. Which ones do you think will still be played in 20 years?
D: "Interstate Love Song," "Big Empty," "Plush," "Trippin' on a Hole." There's a long list. Early on, when we were cutting the Core record, I thought that we'd have a great sense of validity if we contributed five records, and here we are, this is our fifth. That's a very proud moment for me. For a group of guys to be able to hold it together…

G: Especially with all the problems you've dealt with!
D: Yeah. I'm very proud of that. It's a very proud moment that we got to the fifth record and I hope we get to do five more.

G: What are your touring plans for this album?
D: We have one show in Pennsylvania. We're getting together a European tour for August/September and I think we're doing the Family Values tour in October/November. Then I have a feeling we'll do Australia, New Zealand and Japan.

G: What will you do between now and when you go on tour?
D: I'm going to get all the sex can with my wife! You really have to relish being at home when you're home. We'll finish up this jaunt of press and then we'll chill out for a while and spend time at home. Releasing a record there's so much to do besides making music.

G: What are some other things you want to accomplish?
D: We're so immersed when we make a record that our thoughts don't go much beyond that. Now it's getting on the road and touring.
S: Being able to get to the point where I feel like I'm a good mate, a good husband, a good lover, a good friend to a woman, and a good dad. It's not as hard to be a good father as it is to be a caring, compassionate, unselfish and patient and loving husband. I'm so in love with my wife it makes me crazy!

G: When did you get married?
S: About a year ago but I've known her since she was 16, she just turned 26 last week.

G: But you married someone else first.
S: Yeah, but we knew each other the whole time. We were soul mates. It's happened at the perfect time in my life.

G: Balancing the demands of work and a personal life can be difficult.
D: My wife Julianna is a big help in that. There are two kinds of people, feelers and thinkers. My wife is a thinker and she really grounds me. Scott, Robert, Eric and I are all feelers, like most artists. My wife plays a great part in the tranquility and serenity of my home life. It sometimes can be a hard thing to balance because we work the way we do. Three months of sitting around the house can get really old, you start getting bored and itchy but then the road hits at just the right time. I think most artists are idealists. We like to dream and the road allows us to do that because it's not reality out there. It's play time. When you get home you have to take out the trash.
S: The main thing, when this band is working there's not much time to do anything else. I can't. Otherwise everything in my life becomes top heavy. And if my life is top heavy the foundation falls apart and I can't have that.

G: You've been through a lot. Is there anything you'd change if you could?
D: Seeing Scott lose his spirit, that's hard. Everything else, I have no complaints.
S: I don't regret anything I did other than that there were casualties along the way. I think everything I experienced and did has helped me become who I am and who I'm in the process of becoming. I regret that other people got hurt. But it's growing pains.

G: It makes you a good writer.
S: And a hopeless romantic.



Gerri Miller has been a music journalist for 20 years, most recently as the executive editor of Metal Edge magazine, a post she held from its inception in 1985 until the end of 1998. Concurrently and since, she has edited and written six special-issue magazines on KISS and one focusing on the 1998 OzzFest. Born and raised in New York, she now lives in Los Angeles, where she contributes daily news reports and video interviews to the Metal Edge Web site, features to KNAC.com and Japan’s In Rock magazine, writes bios and liner notes for bands, and is collaborating on two book projects. She has contributed to Getsigned.com since 1999.


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