Stone Temple Pilots

Essential Albums

  • Purple (2019 Remaster)
    Purple (2019 Remaster)
    Purple (2019 Remaster)

    Stone Temple Pilots enjoyed enormous commercial success with their grunge-adjacent 1992 debut album Core. Wisely, the San Diego band didn’t tinker too much with their approach on 1994’s Purple, working once again with producer Brendan O’Brien and recording and mixing the record in just under four weeks. While the album certainly had its Core-like moments—namely the slithering psych-rock boogie “Vasoline” and the jagged metallic stomp “Unglued”—STP had no interest in repeating themselves sonically. Purple’s rock-oriented moments exuded inspiration, with “Lounge Fly” demonstrating the band’s interest in looping different instruments for effect. Musically, STP’s progression was even more obvious on “Big Empty,” which appeared on The Crow soundtrack and was Purple’s lead single. Although the song’s dynamics were similar to those on Core—quiet verses giving way to loud, crashing choruses—the antique-sounding guitar licks were indebted to country music, and Weiland’s conspiratorial vocals were pure ’70s rock crooner. Other moments on Purple were just as nuanced. “Pretty Penny,” which the band recorded together in a living room, was a stripped-down acoustic number that found drummer Eric Kretz playing congas and bongos; the end result was somewhere between Led Zeppelin and a campfire sing-along. And the enduring hit “Interstate Love Song” used folk music and bittersweet power-pop chords as a foundation for a song about painful personal betrayal. As the latter song indicates, vocalist Scott Weiland’s lyrics this time around captured the complexities of life and maintaining a relationship while navigating living with addiction. The grinding, Alice in Chains-esque “Meatplow” is about staying defiant in the face of challenges thanks to a support system, while “Still Remains” is a smoldering Southern rock song about longing and obsession. In the end, Purple was yet another major commercial success, and is rightfully considered a blueprint for the exciting ways grunge evolved by the mid-1990s.

  • Core (Super Deluxe Edition)
    Core (Super Deluxe Edition)
    Core (Super Deluxe Edition)

    After Stone Temple Pilots released their 1992 debut album Core, the band was accused of jumping on the grunge bandwagon. Part of it was guilt by association: The album was produced by Brendan O’Brien, who had also mixed seminal early-’90s rock albums such as Pearl Jam’s Ten and Red Hot Chili Peppers’ Blood Sugar Sex Magik. Sonically, however, STP’s classic rock-derived riffs and hulking grooves sounded similar to the music coming out of the Pacific Northwest. Vocalist Scott Weiland, who favored a gravelly vocal tone and urgent delivery, could also sound uncannily like Pearl Jam singer Eddie Vedder, particularly on the Grammy-winning smash “Plush.” But history has been kind to Stone Temple Pilots, who actually hailed from sunny San Diego, California. Today, Core is rightfully seen as one of grunge’s most vibrant records, one that illustrates the genre’s fluid, expansive boundaries. That has much to do with how quickly the band recorded the album—three weeks—and the brutal honesty at the heart of the songs. Versatile guitarist Dean DeLeo cranked out slamming metal riffs on uptempo highlights “Sex Type Thing” and “Crackerman,” but dabbled in seething, psychedelic stoner rock (the Soundgarden-esque anthems “Where the River Goes” and “Piece of Pie”) and frenetic alt-punk (“Naked Sunday”). The rhythm section—drummer Eric Kretz and bassist Robert DeLeo, Dean’s brother—further kept Core’s music lively, courtesy of loose grooves that split the difference between nuance (the almost jazzy “Wicked Garden”) and aggression (“Piece of Pie”). Weiland, meanwhile, oozed vocal charisma. A chameleonic singer, he croaked like a seasoned blues singer on “Dead & Bloated,” howled through his pain like a soulful Southern rocker on “Sin,” and growled like a metal icon on “Naked Sunday.” His lyrics also possessed depth, critiquing both date rape and bro culture (“Sex Type Thing”), and elsewhere tackling disillusionment (“Wicked Garden”), personal loss (the Eric Kretz co-write “Plush”) and self-loathing (“Creep,” a co-write with Robert DeLeo). Even if every song wasn’t autobiographical—“Plush,” for example, morphed out of a true story about a girl who was murdered—they were still vulnerable and relatable. Core ended up selling millions of records and catapulted STP into the mainstream rock stratosphere.

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About Stone Temple Pilots

While grunge’s vanguard was attempting to topple the rock-god myth in the early ‘90s, Stone Temple Pilots came along to assume the mantle. Led by the mercurial, magnetic Scott Weiland, the San Diego quartet formed in 1989 and began crafting a sound—and fashion sense—inspired by rock idols The Doors, David Bowie, and Aerosmith. Brothers Dean (guitar) and Robert DeLeo (bass) slipped in hints of ragtime and rhythm and blues, while drummer Eric Kretz kicked up the speed with John Bonham-influenced footwork. Together, they were “alternative rock”—if only in their angst. Otherwise, STP oozed sex and swagger—far more than any of their contemporaries—and their 1992 debut album, Core, came loaded with blistering guitars (“Sex Type Thing”), decade-defining riffs (“Plush”), and Weiland’s distinctive wail, which teetered between menacing and melancholic (“Creep”). The band went on to rule the ‘90s, defining “alternative” on their own terms: They flexed hard on heavy hitters “Vasoline” and “Interstate Love Song,” stripped down with devastating power ballads like “Big Empty,” glammed up on “Big Bang Baby,” and tossed in elements of psychedelic rock, shoegaze, jazz, and metal in between. Heading into the 21st century, the cracks began to show, though. The band dissolved in 2003 but reunited again in 2010 for their self-titled sixth album—their final release with Weiland. Linkin Park’s Chester Bennington took over the mic in 2013 then departed in 2015, just before STP and their fans experienced a crushing blow with the death of Weiland. The band picked up again with vocalist Jeff Gutt and experiments like 2020’s all-acoustic Perdida, but they’ve already long cemented their legacy in the rock-god pantheon.

ORIGIN
Los Angeles, CA, United States
FORMED
1990
GENRE
Rock

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