It’s all about just being healthy and touring and being on your best behaviour! ( laughs).”īecause you’ve been sober for over two years, now. We’ve just been nonstop touring and I cannot put the acoustic guitar down – as usual. Every writer has gone through that in their life, so it made sense.”Īnd how does it feel being back in the loop, now you have this new record? Do you feel re-energised and ready to do this again? “That song was written probably five or six years ago, but it was definitely an encapsulation of every writer that was on that song. When did you write that song? Obviously it’s been 10 years since Volume 4: Songs In The Key Of Love & Hate, but what kind of time period are these new ones all from? This is like capturing everybody’s lives’, that we’ve all had to grow up and learn from, you know?” Everybody goes through the same type of patterns in life – growing up, trying to find yourself, trying to find your way – and that song when it was getting written, it was like, ‘Wow, man. The first single from Welcome To Galvania was Uh Oh, which seems to almost be an encapsulation of all that trouble and all the scandals you encountered over the past decade. And you know what? It really boils down to basically one clichéd catchphrase: ‘Hell hath no fury’.” “I don’t even like to give them the gratification of mentioning any of the frickin’ names, but there were plenty. Who are these people and why do they want to do it, do you think? The press release for the new album mentions how you’ve come across people who want to bring you down. I had to rid the evil people out of my life.” Perseverance is the mega word for my life – there’s just been a lot of crazy, crazy stuff happening and people trying to take me down and trying to keep me down, so the best thing to do is take some deep breaths of air and change your playgrounds and your playmates and people that are really evil. There were just a lot of battles that had to be fought in the last nine or 10 years. Was it difficult to make this record after such a long time? It’s been 10 years since the last Puddle Of Mudd album, so presumably this one had a lot of ground to cover.
And while things seem back on track for Wes personally, as the unexpected and unwelcome intrusion that occurs during the interview, his life clearly has a little bit of turbulence left in it… These days, Wes has been sober for more than two years, and – a decade after the release of their last record – Puddle Of Mudd are back with fifth album, Welcome To Galvania. He was also picked up by cops after trying to break into the house most places report he lost to foreclosure, but which he insists was stolen (and which led to one of his most infamous onstage outbursts). Over the years that followed, Wes Scantlin was better known for intoxicated outbursts onstage, a hideous run of financial misfortune and a jaw-dropping list of arrests that include domestic violence (in 2002, he and then-fiancée Michelle Rubin, were both arrested after a roadside fight), trespassing at Graceland, not paying taxes, boarding a plane with a BB gun, drunken and disorderly conduct, and taking a joyride on a baggage carousel.
Off the back of the runaway success of that record’s three main singles – Control, Blurry and She Hates Me – the post-grunge band found fame and fortune in abundance, but everything else started falling apart and Wes Scantlin started on a downward spiral influenced by alcohol and substance abuse. Would this really be a Puddle Of Mudd interview without a little drama?Īfter all, this is the band who formed in 1991 and shot to international fame a decade later when their debut album, Come Clean, was released on Fred Durst’s Flawless label. The second time, he explains the dog’s barking because someone is angrily banging on his front door. The first time, the Puddle Of Mudd founder and mainman ignores it and it eventually stops. There are two moments during this interview with Wes Scantlin where a dog starts yapping intensely in the background while he’s talking.
0 kommentar(er)
