A Conversation with Stone Temple Pilot’s Chester Bennington – HuffPost 10.28.13
Mike Ragogna: Chester! Cheers!
Chester Bennington: Mike, how are you?
MR: I’m fine, you?
CB: I’m fantastic, thank you.
MR: Nice. All right, let’s dig in. Stone Temple Pilots meets Chester Bennington. Dear God, what’s going on here, man?
CB: Madness, I tell you! Madness is happening! I know, it’s crazy, but it’s true, it is the way things are, that’s for sure. We’re having a lot of fun, we’ve been very, very productive creatively, we have a lot of great music that we’re still working on and here to put out as fast as possible and we’re playing shows and all of this is happening as Linkin Park is working on our next record.
MR: Nice. So it’s all smoothy-smooth and both houses are happy?
CB: Yeah. I wouldn’t be doing it if I didn’t get the blessing of my friends, you know? It’s the respectful thing to do; those guys deserve an opinion in it. So I put it out there, the guys have been really, really cool about things as I knew they would. They were also very honest about how they felt with their conservatory and everybody walked out feeling good about it. It’s been good.
MR: Chester, on STP’s new EP High Rise, it’s pretty obvious from the first couple of singles that you’re not straying from the formula, yet on the other hand, you’re leaving a mark. How is this merger creatively working?
CB: It’s working great. I think High Rise has great songs on it, it has exactly the kind of responses that I hoped for before. I like to get five star reviews and then one star reviews–those are my favorite kind to get. It means that we’re striking a chord of emotion in people on both ends of the spectrum, and it’s great. The majority of people that I talk to are people at the shows that we’re playing, they’re people that are playing the music, that know the band, and we’re getting a lot of support. There are the people that are going to need some time to catch up, so we just want to go out and play and we just want to release music. Let the music do the talking.
MR: Okay, so High Rise features “Out Of Time,” which was already a number one record in certain outlets, and “Black Heart.” Where do you see this new configuration heading? Is this a one-shot deal or is it more permanent?
CB: Definitely not a one-shot deal. I don’t think these guys are in the business of screwing around and wasting our time, I think that they’ve done it long enough. For us, it’s all about taking advantage of the time we have together and making it as productive as we can. I know that these guys are going to be writing songs in my absence, and same with me, and likewise with Linkin Park. When I’m off with STP, those guys are creating stuff as well. We have the same benefit, controlling everything and communicating and making sure that things aren’t conflicting. So for me, it’s more about my creative process, my creative journey, and all I want to do is sing songs and have fun and be a musician. Working with different people inspires different feelings and styles.
MR: It is a unique situation that you’re in. I don’t think it’s ever been done like this before.
CB: You know, I never really thought of it that way, but that’s cool.
MR: Is it hard to balance?
CB: I make music for a living, dude. It’s as hard as I want it to be. I show up, I hear music that my friends make, I think of melodies and I write words down and I cross my fingers and I send it out there and see if people want to listen to it. It’s a strange feeling knowing that even when you’re an established band, you can either start just touring the catalog and having fun and writing or you’ve got to keep gambling and you’ve got to put it all on the line and keep trying to push yourself forward. It’s kind of like fruit on the vine; you’ve got to keep plucking the fruit for the vine to be productive, otherwise, the fruit just kind of dies on the vine and rots away and the tree’s not producing great fruit, you know? That’s kind of like what happens with musicians, so I try to keep myself plugged into a lot of different things all the time.
MR: Chester, is this also sort of a dream come true for you because you grew up on the music of Stone Temple Pilots?
CB: I think the dream for me was really joining the band of a bunch of singers. I used to have dreams when I was in fourth grade about Depeche Mode landing a jet in my schoolyard and coming out and announcing to the school that I was going to be the fifth member. That would be equal to a lifelong dream coming true. But I definitely have to say that STP’s music is up there on my list of music that defines big chunks of my life. After touring with these guys and knowing these guys and having a passion for what they do, I want people to hear their music the same way that I heard it growing up, with that same kind of swagger. So for these guys to make the choice to move forward was a very difficult decision, but I think they made the right choice and I think one by one, as fans come and see us and listen to what we’re doing and watch what we’re doing, they can make their minds up the same way all the other people have, which has been it’s all good from where I’m standing. People I talk to every night after shows and take pictures with, I ask them what did they think about the show and they tell me. It’s been awesome so far.
MR: With the live aspect, I imagine you’re playing the STP catalog in addition to songs that are on the EP, so do you find that you’re bringing something in that they didn’t have in the mix before? How is it morphing on the stage?
CB: You know, from my point of view, I don’t have any history with these guys other than that I know them on a personal level. I don’t have any ties to the songs on an emotional level, I’m not sick of playing one song one way, another song doesn’t remind me of all the times I performed it poorly and I just hate that song now. These older songs, they’ve been playing at every single show of their career. There was a period of time where I was like, “Hey guys, what are we going to be playing on our tour?” and everybody was like, “Oh, I don’t know, we’ll kind of figure it out.” We were focusing on the EP, so I just started putting set lists together. I put them together coming from, “I like this song, I can sing this song really well, here are the four songs off the first three records each that I like the most, here are three or four songs off the other remaining albums that I like the most,” and I just put them all in a list. With the exception of I think one or two songs either being added to the list or taken off the list that we’re playing live now, it was like, “Okay, cool, we’ll play those.” So I’m singing the songs that I like and I’m singing the songs that I think fans are going to be stoked to hear.
MR: I also imagine your fans from both groups are going to be intrigued by this move. What message do you have for those fans?
CB: Talking about what people think is kind of a tricky thing, and trying to evaluate that at the same time is also kind of tricky. To a certain degree, I talk to kids on Twitter. I pay attention to what people say, comments on whatever video I see from shows, or if they listen to the songs on radio. It’s always a mixed bag. You always get people who are like, “This is awesome, I can’t wait to hear more,” all the way to, “I hope Chester kills himself.” It’s so all over the place and you never know where people are coming from, either. There are reviews for High Rise on iTunes coming from people who haven’t even listened to any of it. They just said, “I’ll never listen to any of this,” and they give it one star. When you change a member of a band that’s established and has a legacy and songs that people like, people get defensive about it. I always find it interesting when you become successful as a musician, what people think about what you’ve done. Going back to making music, earlier, before anybody knows who you are and people like what you’re making, you don’t really think about what people who aren’t going to like what you’re doing are going to say about what it is that you’ve made. That’s a good place to operate from. I smile at the good comments, I laugh at the bad comments, and I just let the performances and the music that we’re making speak for themselves. People aren’t stupid. If they see something in a song and they like it, they’re going to like it. If they see a video on YouTube of a band crushing it live and then someone says, “This sucks,” the proof is in the pudding. It sounds great. As long as we play live well and as long as we make good music I feel really comfortable about our fans’ responses. Like I said, they’re my favorite kind, they’re all the way to one side or the other. But not a lot of two and a half star reviews.
MR: So Stone Temple Chester, what advice do you have for new artists?
CB: I think getting people to listen to your music is the most important part but before you get to that point, I think for young artists who are reading this article and happen to get to this part, it’s really easy to trick yourself into thinking that just because you created it, it’s good. I think the most valuable thing that I’ve learned in this business… When you’re a painter, people either get it or they don’t, and people can love it or hate it but for some reason, some art makes it and most of it doesn’t. With musicians, it’s different because you’ve got four or six or more people that are painting the canvas and you kind of need to know your place and what role you serve in the whole, and you need to act upon those strengths as much as possible. The trick is kind of letting your ego get away. It’s good to take all criticism of what you’ve made as constructive criticism.
MR: Cool. All right, anything we need to know about this musical merger or even Chester Bennington?
CB: All the unclassified stuff has been talked about. The rest is above my pay grade.
MR: [laughs] Then let it be written, let it be done. Chester! I really appreciate the interview, as always, and let’s talk again real soon.
CB: All right, sounds good. Thank you very much.
Transcribed by Galen Hawthorne