Surprised? Roughly a week after Stone Temple Pilots sued their fired singer, Scott Weiland has filed a countersuit against his former bandmates. According to numerous reports, Weiland is seeking at least $7 million in compensatory damages, and says his former bandmates conspired against him.
Weiland reportedly said in his complaint “How do you expel a man from a band that he started, named, sang lead on every song, wrote the lyrics and was the face of for 20 years, and then try to grab the name and goodwill for yourselves? … You don’t, but three of the instrumentalists from the band ‘Stone Temple Pilots’ (the ‘Band’) tried.” Weiland’s complaint also brings attention to a partnership agreement signed by Stone Temple Pilots in 1996 and amended in 2010, which Weiland argues allows each band member to perform on his own. However, Weiland says that under the agreement, the band would be forced to play under a different name if separate and apart from him (thus meaning they are breaking said legal agreement by performing with Chester Bennington). Weiland also claims that he reached out to his bandmates multiple times, but his attempts at communication were ignored. More specifically, the singer is seeking compensatory damages “in excess” of $5 million, along with statutory damages of up to $2 million for each “willful use” of the Stone Temple Pilots name “per mark, per type of goods or services sold, offered for sale or distributed.”
Just before Weiland issued his countersuit, the other three members of Stone Temple Pilots (Dean DeLeo, Eric Kretz, and Robert DeLeo) issued a statement explaining their reasoning behind their lawsuit, saying the following:
“You may have read we recently filed suit against our former singer, Scott Weiland. We wanted to clarify a few things:
Our purpose in taking this action is not to hurt Scott. We want to move forward productively, and Scott’s choices and actions have prevented us from doing that. We were in the process of putting our 20th anniversary tour together to celebrate the release of our first album, Core. The plan was for a big tour where we’d perform the album in its entirety, along with some other favorite STP songs. So, you might imagine our shock and disappointment when, without any notice, we learned that Scott had seized this tour for himself as his solo tour, and decided to do exactly what we as a group had planned. We found out about it the same way you did—we saw an ad for it.
Without getting into legal details, the band has a binding agreement that clearly states what each of us can and cannot do outside of STP. Unfortunately many of the decisions Scott made violate this agreement, have been harmful to the band, and prevented us from moving forward. When our requests to Scott and his representatives that they abide by the agreement were ignored, we finally had enough. So now, we’ve made our choice. It was beyond time we made some new music, which was impossible in the dysfunctional environment we were in. We’ve lived in it long enough and have decided to move forward with STP. We wish Scott well. We’re really excited about the new music we’ve been making with Chester, including the song we just released, ‘Out Of Time.’
We love this band and respect everything it means to you. We want to always give you our best and the choice we made is completely in that spirit.”
So essentially, both parties seem to be citing the same “agreement” they signed in 1996 and amended in 2010, but that the other (not themselves) violated it. Thus, we now have a classic “he said, she said” scenario.
Still not convinced that STP’s relationship with Weiland was next to dead? Then you obviously didn’t hear about their performance at the MusiCares MAP Fund benefit show in L.A. Thursday night (May 30). Not only did they perform their second show with the Linkin Park singer, but also covered “All The Young Dudes” with Weiland’s former Velvet Revolver bandmates Slash and Duff McKagan. Guess that means Weiland is also definitely not rejoining Velvet Revolver. Watch fan filmed footage of STP’s performance with Slash and McKagan below.
[youtube width=”500″ height=”344″]http://youtu.be/Dlha2EhuuKY[/youtube]
