The Prodigal Son

Kurt Cobain's head is split in two, and that's the way Pat Scantlin likes it.

"Our son Scott painted that," she says, pointing to a portrait. "He made it in two pieces, so we split it up."

Pat is referring to an oversized image of Cobain hanging in the dining room of a three-story A-frame overlooking Lake Waukomis. The Nirvana martyr's face has been halved to fit on the wall.

"It's almost too ironic that we have this painting of Kurt Cobain," she says before adding, "Wes doesn't really sound like Kurt Cobain."

Actually, he does. But it's a comparison that's difficult for many purists to stomach. It doesn't simplify matters any that her son's band makes a good living playing darkly polished music derivative of Nirvana and the other plaid-shirt poster boys. It's near-heresy for music snobs to utter any comparison of the two, but it's hardly the only source of discontent for critics of the band.

A lot of people hate Wesley Reid Scantlin, including many in his hometown. They hate his voice. Hate his band, Puddle of Mudd. Hate his music. Hate his image. They hate his friends. They hate his success. They hate how he became a star. They hate that he is a star. And they really hate that a lot of people also love him.

"The problem isn't with Kansas City, and it's not with the fans," Pat says. "It's the people in the music world who feel it's necessary to tear Wes down. They say he deserted his friends, and, well, that's not true."

Maybe. Maybe not.

Scantlin and two former bandmates spoke with the Pitch to clarify how one Puddle of Mudd fell and another rose, the circumstances of which have cast a shadow over Scantlin's past, his present, and, perhaps, his future.

What is clear is that Come Clean, released in 2001, sold more than 5 million copies. Last year, the group notched four Billboard Music Awards, and ASCAP named "Blurry" its Song of the Year. The band has been featured in magazines and newspapers, on radio and television and on headlining tours across the globe. All in little more than two years.

But even as Puddle of Mudd launches Round Two with its new album, Life on Display, the band's lead singer is still struggling to shake a reputation that has made one of the world's biggest rock stars a pariah in his own backyard.

I. Desertion

Why can't you see that I'm drowning in a pool of Missouri -- "Away From Me"

"The light was going out," Pat says. "Wesley was ready to give up the dream when the phone call came."

Scantlin's mother is trying to explain her middle child. Trying to make sense of why people resent him. Trying to explain why Kansas City is still his home. Scantlin may have relocated to the sun and silicone of Los Angeles after the phone call came, but he's never left.

This is where his dream began. A serene, lakeside neighborhood of upper-middle-class homes with leaf-strewn lawns and snapping American flags a few miles east of Interstate 29 in the Northland. Scantlin spent hours in his bedroom here butchering Zeppelin riffs, unaware he would one day share a stage with Jimmy Page. And the basement figured prominently in the volatile history of the original Puddle of Mudd before it disintegrated.

How exactly Scantlin came to be the only Kansas Citian in the most successful Kansas City band around is a matter of contentious debate and a primary reservoir of disquiet in the music scene that spawned him. All most people know is that four native sons began Puddle of Mudd in the flooded remnants of a warehouse practice space beneath the Broadway Bridge, but only one emerged a rock star.

"What happened to the rest of the musicians?" asks Jeanie Moore, a writer for the local zine Heavy Frequency. "Yeah, the guy went off and did good for himself, but he also left three guys behind."

Scantlin sold out his friends. That's the story. Nü-metal guru Fred Durst tendered a you-or-them offer to join Flawless Records, and Scantlin took the one-way, one-person ticket to fame and fortune. Naturally, the story's not so cut-and-dried.

The original lineup of Scantlin, Jimmy Allen, Sean Sammon and Kenny Burkitt collapsed at least two years before Durst entered the equation. The band was a regional success but couldn't overcome in-fighting. Allen quit, and the band sputtered, then imploded. Scantlin kept the band on life support with a revolving lineup of musicians -- including Burkitt -- to record demos. That's when the last gasp came.

"The band was already disfigureated, man," Scantlin says. "I had to take matters into my own hands."

The infamous story is that Scantlin slipped a demo to a security guard during a Limp Bizkit show, leading Durst to send A&R man Danny Wimmer to Kansas City to audition Puddle of Mudd. There was only one problem.

"There wasn't really a Puddle of Mudd," says Dave Johnson of local rockers Everybody's X. "It was basically just Wes demoing stuff."

Scantlin and Burkitt recruited two musicians for the showcase, who subsequently wilted under the stare of the major label executive. The audition was horrible. Wimmer was not impressed.