What's life like in the stratosphere with a huge debut album and a soaring single? A
conversation with the four flyboys...
by Kim Neely
Up until a few moments ago, things at the Hollywood sushi bar the Stone Temple Pilots chose for dinner were only slightly weird. When the band walked in, the
maitre d' and more than a few patrons all bellowed, "HELLO!" as if they were greeting long-lost relatives; any time anyone has ordered one of the fruit-flavored
sake drinks on the menu, the waiters have materialized to mix them at table side -- hefting their cocktail shakers with veins bulging and eyes bugging, while
dramatically hollering, "SHAAAAKE! SHAAAAAKE! SHAAAAKE!"
Now, a half-hour into dinner, things get flat-out surreal: Kool and the Gang's "Let's Go Dancin'" begins blasting from the restaurant's stereo system, thousands of tiny
Christmas-tree lights begin to blink, and the waiters behind the bar, grinning broadly, metamorphose into a goofy disco offshoot of the Rockettes. Apparently, this is
a restaurant tradition. Within a few seconds, most of the patrons are climbing onto their chairs, dancing and singing along.
Standing on a chair and shaking one's booty to a disco band in a crowded Japanese restaurant does not exactly jibe with the brooding rebel image that is so highly
coveted in rock & roll, and most rockers would probably choose to sit out this little bit of fun. The Stone Temple Pilots, however, are into it. Maybe it's the sake,
but the band members -- vocalist Weiland, drummer Eric Kretz, guitarist Dean DeLeo and his younger brother Robert, the band's bassist -- are among the first in
the place to get up. They seem quite gleeful about making spectacles of themselves. Their manager, Steve Stewart, remains seated, viewing the pandemonium with a
tired they're-doing-it-again expression and looking as if he'd give anything to be invisible.
Judging from the gloom that pervades their platinum debut album, Core, it would be tempting to peg the Stone Temple Pilots as world-class cynics, the kind of guys
who wouldn't be caught dead yukking it up in a campy joint like this. But the more time you spend with them, the more appropriate it seems: They are a mass of
contradictions. They're properly dour and politically correct when the mood strikes them -- they'll talk your ear off about homelessness, sexism or racism -- but like
overgrown class clowns, they devote equal time and sincerity to dissecting some of the hokiest topics imaginable: the ratio of tornadoes to trailer parks in any given
state, cooking tips, you name it. They veer back and forth between the cerebral and the arcane so rapidly that talking to them is probably something akin to playing
Trivial Pursuit with Sting. Ask a question like "What's important to you right now?" and this is what ensues:
"One thing that's been irking me," says Kretz, "is that the average person in Europe knows more about American politics than your average American does. When
Weiley and I went over there for a promotional tour, they wanted to know who I voted for, and why, and so many different things. It was amazing for me to be so
far away from America and to hear people very concerned about American politics. When you go to say stuff like that in America, most people don't give a crap."
"Sex," counters Weiland. "See, sex is the most important thing in the whole world. And not just for humans, either -- for animals too. I mean people seem to think
that humans are the only ones who approach sex for pleasure -- that's what organized religion tries to teach us. But you know what? When I was a kid, my dog use
to ---- my leg all the time. And obviously, he knows he's not gonna get a puppy from doing that. So there's gotta be some kind of sexual pleasure that dogs get from
------ your leg. Sex is the most important thing in the world. it's the most important thing to me when I get off tour. It's better than going to Disneyland."
Everyone at the table looks at the singer in disbelief -- jeez, can't he come up with a better comparison than Disneyland?
"OK," Weiland says, utterly straight-faced. "Better than Magic Mountain."
On the following evening, over dinner in a more refined establishment, the DeLeo brothers are recounting their band's brief history. The way they tell it, the Stone
Temple Pilots have always approached their music the same way they approach day-to-day life. Seriously, but not too seriously.
"We were serious about the music," says Robert, "but we weren't serious about doing what we had to do to play the music. We never rehearsed. Our rehearsals
were when we did gigs. We just kind of winged it."
Didn't they run into problems at early shows?
"Nothing we couldn't cover up," says Robert with a smile.
The Stone Temple Pilots began taking shape in the mid-'80s, when Robert graduated from high school and moved from the brothers' native New Jersey to
California. Dean and Robert had played together in a New Jersey cover band called Tyrus, but at the time neither of the brothers had seriously considered music as
a career.
"I was just really sick of being in New Jersey," says Robert. "I was still young, I had a chance to do some things, so I just took the chance and went to California. I
was pretty lost as far as what to do. I was thinking, 'Art school, sit on the beach and surf all day.' I lived in my car for a while, lived with girls. I did whatever I could
to survive."
Dean was equally uncertain about his future. After a stint exploring Europe and skiing in the Austrian Alps, he decided to follow his brother to California and settled
in San Diego. Meanwhile, Weiland, who had grown up near Cleveland and moved at age 15 to Huntington Beach, Calif., was soaking in the thriving Orange County
punk-rock scene. He met Robert at a Black Flag show in Long Beach, and the two discovered they had been sleeping with the same girl. They hit it off anyway.
"Weiland was really the first one that I actually could get along with in a writing-type situation," says Robert. "We did stupid crap -- I had an eight-track
home-recording studio, and we were just dorking around on that. We went to a club one night, and Eric was playing with this band. He was just pounding the crap
out of his drums, so we decided to ask him what he was doing."
Robert, Weiland and Kretz began writing, eventually moving to Los Angeles, where they toiled under a seemingly endless series of ill-fated day jobs. Dean joined
the band a few years later when Robert called him in San Diego and asked him to help record demos of the songs the three had written -- among them "Piece of
Pie," "Crackerman" and "Where the River Goes," which eventually turned up on STP's debut.
"He played on the demo stuff," says Robert, "and when we actually put it together live, we just knew we had a cool thing."
Officially a band -- and having dubbed themselves Mighty Joe Young -- the four played their first gig in August 1990 at the Whisky, in Los Angeles. They then
moved to San Diego and began to build a following, but when their break came two years later, it was at a show in Los Angeles: Booking agent Don Muller of
Triad Artists saw them at an underground dive called the Club With No Name and tipped Atlantic A&R man Tom Carolan, and Atlantic began the wooing process.
"God, we were scared," says Robert. "I think any band that's getting looked at by a label is worried. We were all concerned about getting on a major label and
getting lost in the sauce. I mean, there's two kinds of contracts: There's one with Vaseline, and there's one with coffee grounds -- you get screwed either way. We
just weren't looking to get Door No. 2."
Carolan's alternative- and college-radio background helped to ease their minds, but it was an early meeting with Danny Goldberg -- the manager of the Beastie
Boys, Sonic Youth and Nirvana, who joined Atlantic last year as a senior vice president -- that finally persuaded them to sign with the label. "At that time, Danny
was still affiliated with Gold Mountain," says Dean. "But he was why we were gonna sign with Atlantic. We didn't want a major-label big-money-stupid-hype thing.
We wanted to let the music to do the talking. And fortunately, Danny, who is very familiar with letting a band grow with that grass-roots atmosphere, just let it
happen that way."
Mighty Joe Young inked their deal with Atlantic on April Fools' Day 1992. A month later, with producer Brendan O'Brien (the Red Hot Chili Peppers, the Black
Crowes), they were recording their debut. Two days before they were to hand in the album and artwork, they got a call from their lawyer, informing them that an
elderly blues singer already had claim to the moniker Mighty Joe Young. It took them two weeks of brainstorming to come up with the name Stone Temple Pilots;
other than Weiland's memory of the STP motor-oil logo he put on the banana seat of his bike as a kid, the name has no real significance to them -- they just like the
way it sounded.
After Core was released in September 1992, it didn't take long for rock fans to decide they liked the way it sounded. The album, which finds the band veering from
AC/DC-style slammers (STP's breakthrough single, "Sex Type Thing") to softer, acoustic fare ("Creep") and rain-drenched dirges (the recent hit ("Plush"), took off
almost immediately -- largely on the momentum of the video for Weiland's anti-date-rape song, "Sex Type Thing," which was picked up by MTV on Headbanger's
Ball and then put into "stress rotation."
Core began a steady climb up the charts, but unfortunately, as soon as STP hit the tour trail to support the album -- first on a solo club outing and then opening for
Megadeth -- controversies began emerging. First, Weiland found himself in the position of defending "Sex Type Thing" to individuals who took the first-person
approach he used in the song ("I am a man, a man/I'll give ya something that ya won't forget/I said ya shouldn't have worn that dress") literally.
"It was, 'All right, the "Cop Killer" controversy's dead, let's try to find something else,'" says Weiland, who has been outspoken in the press about women's rights
and contends that he wrote the song in the mind-set of what he has called "the typical American macho jerk" because he didn't want to sound preachy. "I never
thought that people would ever seriously think that I was an advocate of date rape."
On the heels of the "Sex Type Thing" flap, STP raised eyebrows by turning down an offer by Aerosmith to open their summer arena tour, opting instead to do a
smaller tour with the Butthole Surfers -- a move that was perceived by many as an attempt by STP to distance themselves from Aerosmith's mainstream audience
and cultivate "alternative" credibility. But they say not so.
"We grew up on Aerosmith," says Robert. "That had nothing to do with Aerosmith -- I just can't picture us being an arena band at this point in our careers."
"You know," says Dean, "this is our third tour. Our first tour was a club tour -- four band members and two buddies, and each of us drove and moved equipment
and did the whole thing. Our second tour -- with Megadeth -- was in B-market cities, playing to 3,000 to 5,000 people. The band has really never gone out in
major cities. And for us to go out and jump on an arena tour is the most impersonal thing that could ever happen."
Meanwhile, the members of STP have been fending off accusations that they are grunge-bandwagon jumpers -- it's difficult to find a review of Core that doesn't
contain a comparison to some Seattle band. The situation escalated when MTV began giving heavy play to the video for "Plush." That the song itself is probably the
most Seattlesque of all of the tracks on Core was only part of the problem: Weiland's mannerisms in the video bear an embarrassing resemblance to those of Pearl
Jam's Eddie Vedder. It would be difficult for anyone who has seen both bands to ignore the similarity. When the subject comes up, the singer is polite, but it's
obviously a sore point with him.
"I have a lot of respect for Eddie Vedder and the ideals and things he stands for," says Weiland. "As an artist, he's very valid. But I never really thought that if you
put us next to each other, we looked like Siamese twins or anything." Sarcasm creeps into the singer's voice as he adds with a grin, "I mean, visually, on-stage, I
kind of liken myself to a disco-dancing Frank Sinatra -- a cross between Perry Como and John Travolta."
All of the band members roll their eyes when the grunge question comes up -- and their indignant about the perception that they've been calculating in terms of
developing an "alternative" image.
"What is mainstream, and what's alternative?" Robert asks. "I mean, you can't really control who's gonna buy your album. You can't put an alternative sticker on it
and say, "This is for cool people only."
"People get so shallow, thinking that you grabbed your influences from the bands that are out now," the bassist adds. "Wouldn't anybody stop to think that we're all
the same age and we all grew up on the same kind of music?"
"Frankie Avalon's staring at us right now," says Kretz, pointing to an autographed photo on the wall at the Formosa Bar and Grill, the third stop on STP's tour of
Hollywood.
I always get him confused with Frankie Valli," says Weiland. "Which one was the guy who pretended to be a surfer?"
"Frankie Avalon," says Kretz. "He's the guy without the falsetto. He was also the guy that hung out with the Mouseketeer, right? The Skippy peanut butter woman,
Annette?"
"Do you know that this place has been here 41 years?" asks Weiland. "Probably some really cool people sat in the same seat that we're sitting in."
Weiland orders himself a margarita, and the conversation turns from the famous faces on the wall to STP's burgeoning fame. The singer finds it odd that the same
feelings and ideas that mad him an outcast in high school are now, via his lyrics on Core, causing thousands of rock fans to gravitate toward him.
"I was a pretty apathetic and lonely kid," Weiland says. "I guess I never felt that I was liked very much. When I was younger, the only friend I really had was an
imaginary friend named Poogus. I used to blame things on him."
"When I got a little older," he continues, "I didn't feel like I was what I should be. I wasn't popular, really, and I tried for a while to be. I really was mad at myself,
and angry -- I couldn't figure out why I wasn't and why I didn't identify with other people. I always had, like, only one real friend at a time."
"I guess I tend to find the darker shades of life more attractive than the yellows and oranges," he says of his lyrics, which rely heavily on themes of alienation, apathy
and guilt. "I know it's something that I relate to when I listen to music." Did he ever expect so many other people to relate? "There's no way you can plan anything
that happens," says Weiland. "It would be hard for me to make an assessment of what it is people are attracted to. We're in a really shaky sort of social climate with
all these different variables coming into play. So much racial discontent, so much anger from groups that have been discriminated against for so many years... There's
a handful of people who are making music with a sort of public conscience, and I think it's just something that people relate to because of discontent."
"Who's happy all the time, other than aerobics instructors?" asks Kretz. "We're going through the same thing that everyone else is going through. Today I had a
horrible experience -- it ruined my whole day. This guy, as I was walking down the street, had a sign that said, 'Hello, my name is Eric, I'm dying of AIDS, anything
you can do can help.' And he showed me the papers, and he was like basically in tears because no one can help him. He has no insurance, he has nothing. It just
makes me so depressed -- it's horrible."
"Sometimes life isn't all it's cracked up to be," says Dean. "These songs came from things that each of us were going through at the time, which was really not a
happy time. It's very trying to stay alive and get on with it on a day-to-day basis."
Likely, things are a little easier now for the members of STP -- at the very least, financially -- but they say they're still not used to their success.
"We did this gig in Daytona," says Dean, "and we played with Living Colour, Lenny Kravitz, the Black Crowes, Soul Asylum. I couldn't believe I was there. I was
like 'I can't believe I'm here with these guys.' To have your work accepted publicly is a beautiful, beautiful feeling. But to have it accepted by guys that you copied in
front of a mirror with a tennis racket is the most incredible feeling that you can imagine."
"One thing I do want to say," the guitarist adds, "is that being a musician, you're so used to what's going on in the industry -- but when you get fan mail and you read
what real people are saying about you, that's what really counts."
What with all this adulation, do the members of STP have any trouble maintaining their privacy? Do they worry that eventually they won't be able to walk down the
street unrecognized?
"Nobody bothers me," says Dean, laughing. "I have to go into supermarkets and look at magazines and pull people over and go, 'Look, this is me!'"
