Stone Temple Pilots Had 'No Room For Error' In Finding Weiland Replacement

Stone Temple Pilots guitarist Dean DeLeo said in a new interview that the band had "no room for error" when selecting a new singer to replace the late Scott Weiland.

The group had a brief run with late Linkin Park frontman Chester Bennington taking over lead vocals but when he left the group, the band took their time in finding a new singer and ultimately hired former The X Factor contestant Jeff Gutt.

The band will be releasing their first album featuring Gutt on lead vocals next week. The self-titled album is set to hit stores on March 16th and DeLeo spoke to The San Diego Union-Tribune about their new singer.

"There was no room for error," he told the paper. "That's why we spent nearly a year together with Jeff before we invited him to join the band. We wanted to make sure it was the right decision. But we did find somebody who could not only do the catalog of our previous songs justice, but someone we could write new songs with, too."

He was asked what the band was looking for and responded, "Vision was a pre-requisite. Because Jeff's ability to move the band forward with more music and more records was very important to Robert, Eric and I. Jeff has a really great sense of what a song needs. It's just so important to really allow the song to dictate what it needs, and Jeff had a great sensibility about that - not to mention he's such a great singer." Read the full feature here.

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