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Robert DeLeo / KING FOR A DAY: Dave Coutts on the Brief, Difficult Life of Talk Show.
« on: September 16, 2022, 09:06:29 PM »
Thought I'd share this article.
https://www.rollingstone.com/music/music-features/stone-temple-pilots-talk-show-dave-coutts-1234584605/
Part 1:
On Sept. 2, 1997, a new alt-rock band named Talk Show released their debut album. Leadoff single “Hello Hello” briefly got some airplay on Alternative Rock radio, but the album stalled at #131 on the Billboard 200, way below recent offerings by Chicago, DC Talk, Insane Clown Posse, and even the Phil Collins-free incarnation of Genesis. Talk Show opened up for the Foo Fighters and Aerosmith later that fall, but broke up soon afterwards and are little more than an alt-rock footnote today.
This would be a pretty unremarkable story were it not for the fact that Talk Show was Stone Temple Pilots with vocalist Dave Coutts fronting the band in place of charismatic, troubled lead singer Scott Weiland. STP were one of the biggest rock bands in America at this point, and they’d scored big hits just the previous year with “Big Bang Baby” and “Trippin’ on a Hole in a Paper Heart.” But Weiland was dealing with a serious heroin addiction, and his bandmates were tired of waiting around for him.
They didn’t realize that their label had virtually no interest in a Weiland-free STP project. “Atlantic Records came to the studio to hear the Talk Show record after it was mixed,” Coutts tells Rolling Stone. “This guy walked into the break room where I was sitting with [guitarist] Dean [DeLeo]. He didn’t even ask who I was. He just walked past me and said, ‘Dean, when are you getting back with Scott?’ He hadn’t even heard the record yet. I’m just thinking to myself, ‘Who the fuck is this?'”
Atlantic put very little money behind Talk Show, and just released a lone single before burying the album completely. In the aftermath, STP patched things up with Weiland and began work on their 1999 LP No. 4; he continued to front Stone Temple Pilots on and off until two years before his death in 2015. But Coutts had no such safety net, and he was forced to find work outside of the music industry to support his growing family. “When they told me Talk Show was over, I felt like I just got punched in the stomach,” he says. “That punch lasted a while. How do you rebound from something like that?”
Coutts grew up in Long Beach, California. His earliest musical memories involved listening to records by Elvis Presley, Tom Jones, Andy Williams, and Herb Alpert that his parents loved. “Then I got into Neil Diamond,” he says. “I can remember dancing around the room to [Diamond’s 1972 live album] Hot August Night.”
When he got a little older, he got into rock bands like Three Dog Night, Creedence Clearwater Revival, and Led Zeppelin. “The first big show I saw was Led Zeppelin at the Forum in Inglewood when I was 14,” he says. “I was sitting way in the back and people were throwing firecrackers that were blowing up at my feet. There was pot everywhere, and the band looked so small. I just remember being really scared.”
At the end of high school, he took on odd jobs at a hospital, a bar, the Long Beach Airport, and a window tinting company. But he spent his nights practicing with his band Ten Inch Men. They initially had a tiny following on the California club scene, but were eventually able to tour the East Coast when college radio embraced their music. After nearly a decade of relentless work, Bon Jovi asked them to open up for them at a couple of shows in 1993. It was the start of a journey that eventually brought him to Stone Temple Pilots.
How did Bon Jovi find out about your band Ten Inch Men?
Around that time, we finally got a record deal. We also landed songs on a couple of movie soundtracks: Hellraiser 3 and Dr. Giggles. I don’t know how Bon Jovi found out about us, but they asked us to open for them night in San Diego. That went well, and so we played again with them in San Francisco.
Was it tough to play to that many fans that didn’t really know your music?
There’s not many people there when you’re playing. It’s about maybe a third full. But no, it’s not tough. It was super exciting. We had our songs down since we were practicing about four to five nights every week. We knew the songs in our sleep. It was fun to hear your songs on these big, badass speakers playing in front of people you’d never seen before. We had a blast.
Bon Jovi asked us to tour with them in Europe for the whole summer, but our record company would not let us do it. They didn’t have the money. It was maybe $23,000 to send us for about two months to play soccer stadiums with Bon Jovi. I cut my ponytail off that night and quit the band.
What was your plan at that point?
I didn’t have one. I had been in that band for 10 years. I was with a very special girl. She said, “You know what? You better get your shit together.” She was kidding, but she was kind of half-serious. And I went to work for a little while. I got a job with insurance.
I was at that job for about a year. The phone rang one day when I was in the back doing some graphic art stuff on a computer. One of my buddies at the office said, “Hey, Dave, the manager for STP is on the phone. He wants to talk to you.” I said, “Fuck you.” That’s because this guy was a bullshitter. He goes, “No, I’m serious.”
So I went over the phone and it was [STP manager] Steve Stewart. He said, “They’re looking for a front guy because Scott’s having a little trouble. Would you would you like to meet up with [STP bassist] Robert [DeLeo]?”
Did you know him at that point?
Yeah. I had already met Robert before — they opened up for 10 Inch Men. This was before Dean and [drummer] Eric [Kretz] were in the band. They were called Swing back then, and they opened up for us at a place in Huntington Beach. I guess Robert remembered me.
What did they sound like in the Swing days?
They were playing a more funk-type style music. Robert is such a good bass player. He could do anything you wanted. I don’t remember exactly how Scott was singing, but they had a slapping bass going on. It was funky rock, maybe a little Chili Peppers-like.
Do you remember hearing STP on the radio when they first broke out?
Yes. I remember. I was driving to practice one night going to L.A. and I heard “Plush” on the radio. I just went, “Oh shit. That’s good. That’s really good. I can’t believe it. That’s my boys.” They weren’t really my boys, but I knew them. They didn’t sound anything like that when we played with them.
They had a distinct sound, but so many critics just dismissed them as a Pearl Jam knockoff.
I heard all that stuff, but I knew those guys had something.
The critics were really wrong. His voice did sound like Eddie Vedder on a few Core songs, but they had a whole different vibe.
You listen to a Pearl Jam record…and not to put Pearl Jam down, but there are maybe three songs I’ll like on a Pearl Jam record. I’ll like all the songs on an STP record. That’s my opinion.
You must have been pretty flummoxed when you got the call. At that time, they were one of the biggest bands in the country.
Yes. And I was a big, big fan. I loved their stuff. When I got the call, the second record [Purple] was already out. You had “Vaseline” on the radio and “Interstate Love Song.” I was going, “Holy shit. These guys have blossomed and they’re killing it.” I was not only excited about the call and kind of freaking out about it, I was also a very big fan.
When you met with the guys, what did they tell you about what was happening?
I met Robert first. He came to my apartment. He didn’t really talk much about it, but he said he was having trouble with Scott, and that it was drug problems. We listened to the whole Ten Inch Men record while we were sitting there. He was listening to the songs and listening to my vocal range and stuff like that.
I told him I didn’t sound anything like Scott. And he said, “Well, we don’t want you to.” I said, “OK.” But then I did say, “Lightning doesn’t strike twice, dude. This is going to be a tough time here.”
Was there any point where there was talk of making you the new lead singer of STP, or was this always envisioned as a separate project?
It was separate. The reason they wanted to call it a different name was because I think they always wanted to make sure they had STP in their back pocket if Scott ever got his shit together. I heard Dean on interviews saying, “Nope, this is not a side project. This is what we’re going to do. This is what we’re doing.” I would just take that with a grain of salt and be like, “Yeah, whatever.”
This was a pretty unusual thing. It would be like if Velvet Revolver had started just a couple years after Guns N’ Roses formed, and they tried to coexist somehow.
Yeah. It was kind of awkward, right? A little awkward.
Was there an audition process after that meeting with Robert?
Yeah. I went to Robert’s house. He had this big house in San Pedro. Dean and Eric showed up. This was the first time I’d met them. They said, “Well, let’s see you sing.” And I said, “Right here?” They said, “Yeah.”
So we’re in this big front room. It had a big stairway, and it was a nice, echoey room. I walked up the stairs, and I just started singing a song by the Grass Roots. I don’t remember the song, but I felt stupid doing it. Dean said, “Let’s do some demos. Let’s see how it sounds on tape.” A couple of weeks later, we moved down to San Diego and did a demo. That demo was the song “Hide,” which is on the Talk Show record.
Did they confirm to you at this point that you did indeed have the job?
It was never like, “You got the job.” It was always like, “Well, we have to finish the Tiny Music [… Songs from the Vatican Gift Shop] record.” This was before that record was done. And then I think they were gonna start rehearsing to tour on Tiny Music, and that’s when Scott just fell off the frickin’ truck.
They called me to show up at rehearsal one night, out of the blue. I was sitting at home barbecuing and they were like, “Hey, can you come to to L.A. right now?”
They were in this giant rehearsal studio. I showed up and we tried to put together some stuff while we were there. But we had not rehearsed together or written together at all. So we just kind of played what we could and saw how we worked together.
https://www.rollingstone.com/music/music-features/stone-temple-pilots-talk-show-dave-coutts-1234584605/
Part 1:
On Sept. 2, 1997, a new alt-rock band named Talk Show released their debut album. Leadoff single “Hello Hello” briefly got some airplay on Alternative Rock radio, but the album stalled at #131 on the Billboard 200, way below recent offerings by Chicago, DC Talk, Insane Clown Posse, and even the Phil Collins-free incarnation of Genesis. Talk Show opened up for the Foo Fighters and Aerosmith later that fall, but broke up soon afterwards and are little more than an alt-rock footnote today.
This would be a pretty unremarkable story were it not for the fact that Talk Show was Stone Temple Pilots with vocalist Dave Coutts fronting the band in place of charismatic, troubled lead singer Scott Weiland. STP were one of the biggest rock bands in America at this point, and they’d scored big hits just the previous year with “Big Bang Baby” and “Trippin’ on a Hole in a Paper Heart.” But Weiland was dealing with a serious heroin addiction, and his bandmates were tired of waiting around for him.
They didn’t realize that their label had virtually no interest in a Weiland-free STP project. “Atlantic Records came to the studio to hear the Talk Show record after it was mixed,” Coutts tells Rolling Stone. “This guy walked into the break room where I was sitting with [guitarist] Dean [DeLeo]. He didn’t even ask who I was. He just walked past me and said, ‘Dean, when are you getting back with Scott?’ He hadn’t even heard the record yet. I’m just thinking to myself, ‘Who the fuck is this?'”
Atlantic put very little money behind Talk Show, and just released a lone single before burying the album completely. In the aftermath, STP patched things up with Weiland and began work on their 1999 LP No. 4; he continued to front Stone Temple Pilots on and off until two years before his death in 2015. But Coutts had no such safety net, and he was forced to find work outside of the music industry to support his growing family. “When they told me Talk Show was over, I felt like I just got punched in the stomach,” he says. “That punch lasted a while. How do you rebound from something like that?”
Coutts grew up in Long Beach, California. His earliest musical memories involved listening to records by Elvis Presley, Tom Jones, Andy Williams, and Herb Alpert that his parents loved. “Then I got into Neil Diamond,” he says. “I can remember dancing around the room to [Diamond’s 1972 live album] Hot August Night.”
When he got a little older, he got into rock bands like Three Dog Night, Creedence Clearwater Revival, and Led Zeppelin. “The first big show I saw was Led Zeppelin at the Forum in Inglewood when I was 14,” he says. “I was sitting way in the back and people were throwing firecrackers that were blowing up at my feet. There was pot everywhere, and the band looked so small. I just remember being really scared.”
At the end of high school, he took on odd jobs at a hospital, a bar, the Long Beach Airport, and a window tinting company. But he spent his nights practicing with his band Ten Inch Men. They initially had a tiny following on the California club scene, but were eventually able to tour the East Coast when college radio embraced their music. After nearly a decade of relentless work, Bon Jovi asked them to open up for them at a couple of shows in 1993. It was the start of a journey that eventually brought him to Stone Temple Pilots.
How did Bon Jovi find out about your band Ten Inch Men?
Around that time, we finally got a record deal. We also landed songs on a couple of movie soundtracks: Hellraiser 3 and Dr. Giggles. I don’t know how Bon Jovi found out about us, but they asked us to open for them night in San Diego. That went well, and so we played again with them in San Francisco.
Was it tough to play to that many fans that didn’t really know your music?
There’s not many people there when you’re playing. It’s about maybe a third full. But no, it’s not tough. It was super exciting. We had our songs down since we were practicing about four to five nights every week. We knew the songs in our sleep. It was fun to hear your songs on these big, badass speakers playing in front of people you’d never seen before. We had a blast.
Bon Jovi asked us to tour with them in Europe for the whole summer, but our record company would not let us do it. They didn’t have the money. It was maybe $23,000 to send us for about two months to play soccer stadiums with Bon Jovi. I cut my ponytail off that night and quit the band.
What was your plan at that point?
I didn’t have one. I had been in that band for 10 years. I was with a very special girl. She said, “You know what? You better get your shit together.” She was kidding, but she was kind of half-serious. And I went to work for a little while. I got a job with insurance.
I was at that job for about a year. The phone rang one day when I was in the back doing some graphic art stuff on a computer. One of my buddies at the office said, “Hey, Dave, the manager for STP is on the phone. He wants to talk to you.” I said, “Fuck you.” That’s because this guy was a bullshitter. He goes, “No, I’m serious.”
So I went over the phone and it was [STP manager] Steve Stewart. He said, “They’re looking for a front guy because Scott’s having a little trouble. Would you would you like to meet up with [STP bassist] Robert [DeLeo]?”
Did you know him at that point?
Yeah. I had already met Robert before — they opened up for 10 Inch Men. This was before Dean and [drummer] Eric [Kretz] were in the band. They were called Swing back then, and they opened up for us at a place in Huntington Beach. I guess Robert remembered me.
What did they sound like in the Swing days?
They were playing a more funk-type style music. Robert is such a good bass player. He could do anything you wanted. I don’t remember exactly how Scott was singing, but they had a slapping bass going on. It was funky rock, maybe a little Chili Peppers-like.
Do you remember hearing STP on the radio when they first broke out?
Yes. I remember. I was driving to practice one night going to L.A. and I heard “Plush” on the radio. I just went, “Oh shit. That’s good. That’s really good. I can’t believe it. That’s my boys.” They weren’t really my boys, but I knew them. They didn’t sound anything like that when we played with them.
They had a distinct sound, but so many critics just dismissed them as a Pearl Jam knockoff.
I heard all that stuff, but I knew those guys had something.
The critics were really wrong. His voice did sound like Eddie Vedder on a few Core songs, but they had a whole different vibe.
You listen to a Pearl Jam record…and not to put Pearl Jam down, but there are maybe three songs I’ll like on a Pearl Jam record. I’ll like all the songs on an STP record. That’s my opinion.
You must have been pretty flummoxed when you got the call. At that time, they were one of the biggest bands in the country.
Yes. And I was a big, big fan. I loved their stuff. When I got the call, the second record [Purple] was already out. You had “Vaseline” on the radio and “Interstate Love Song.” I was going, “Holy shit. These guys have blossomed and they’re killing it.” I was not only excited about the call and kind of freaking out about it, I was also a very big fan.
When you met with the guys, what did they tell you about what was happening?
I met Robert first. He came to my apartment. He didn’t really talk much about it, but he said he was having trouble with Scott, and that it was drug problems. We listened to the whole Ten Inch Men record while we were sitting there. He was listening to the songs and listening to my vocal range and stuff like that.
I told him I didn’t sound anything like Scott. And he said, “Well, we don’t want you to.” I said, “OK.” But then I did say, “Lightning doesn’t strike twice, dude. This is going to be a tough time here.”
Was there any point where there was talk of making you the new lead singer of STP, or was this always envisioned as a separate project?
It was separate. The reason they wanted to call it a different name was because I think they always wanted to make sure they had STP in their back pocket if Scott ever got his shit together. I heard Dean on interviews saying, “Nope, this is not a side project. This is what we’re going to do. This is what we’re doing.” I would just take that with a grain of salt and be like, “Yeah, whatever.”
This was a pretty unusual thing. It would be like if Velvet Revolver had started just a couple years after Guns N’ Roses formed, and they tried to coexist somehow.
Yeah. It was kind of awkward, right? A little awkward.
Was there an audition process after that meeting with Robert?
Yeah. I went to Robert’s house. He had this big house in San Pedro. Dean and Eric showed up. This was the first time I’d met them. They said, “Well, let’s see you sing.” And I said, “Right here?” They said, “Yeah.”
So we’re in this big front room. It had a big stairway, and it was a nice, echoey room. I walked up the stairs, and I just started singing a song by the Grass Roots. I don’t remember the song, but I felt stupid doing it. Dean said, “Let’s do some demos. Let’s see how it sounds on tape.” A couple of weeks later, we moved down to San Diego and did a demo. That demo was the song “Hide,” which is on the Talk Show record.
Did they confirm to you at this point that you did indeed have the job?
It was never like, “You got the job.” It was always like, “Well, we have to finish the Tiny Music [… Songs from the Vatican Gift Shop] record.” This was before that record was done. And then I think they were gonna start rehearsing to tour on Tiny Music, and that’s when Scott just fell off the frickin’ truck.
They called me to show up at rehearsal one night, out of the blue. I was sitting at home barbecuing and they were like, “Hey, can you come to to L.A. right now?”
They were in this giant rehearsal studio. I showed up and we tried to put together some stuff while we were there. But we had not rehearsed together or written together at all. So we just kind of played what we could and saw how we worked together.