Additional information for this profile was provided by Atlantic Records publicity materials.
~~ Carol Brennan
biographical information
note: I didn't write this and it's copyrighted so don't email me with any discrepencies. I can't change them! anyway-- I'm probably already aware of any as it is, and it's rather dated. but I'm way to lazy to write my own bio on the boys.
Contemporary Musicians
May 1995 , Volume: 14
by Carol Brennan
Members include Dean DeLeo (born August 23, 1961, in New Jersey),
guitar; Robert DeLeo (born February 2, 1966, in New Jersey),
bass; Eric Kretz (born June 7, 1966, in Santa Cruz, CA), drums;
and Scott "Weiland" Weiland (born October 27, 1967, in
Group formed c. 1987 in San Diego; originally, named Mighty Joe
Young; signed with Atlantic Records, April 1992; released first
album, Core, September 1992; appeared on MTV Unplugged, 1993.
Awards: Core and Purple received Recording Industry Association
of America triple-platinum certification; Grammy Award for best
hard rock performance with vocal, 1993, for "Plush";
American Music awards for favorite new pop/rock artist and
favorite new heavy
metal/hard rock artist, both 1993; two Billboard Video awards and
a Billboard Music Award for Number One rock track for
"Plush,"
all 1993; MTV Music Video Award for best new artist of 1993; the
band was voted best new artist and lead singer Scott Weiland
was named best new male singer in a 1993 Rolling Stone readers'
poll; a Guitar Player readers' poll voted Dean DeLeo best new
talent of 1993.
Addresses
Record company--Atlantic Records, 75 Rockefeller Plaza, New York,
NY 10020.
The Stone Temple Pilots have spent much of their young career
fighting the perception that they are a "Seattle" band.
Their 1992 debut album, Core, invited comparisons to a host of
other current alternative rock acts from the Pacific Northwest's
burgeoning music scene, but the Stone Temple Pilots actually paid
their proverbial dues in southern California. The group is often
pejoratively lumped together with Seattle grunge rock success
stories like Pearl Jam and Alice in Chains, but in reality all
are part of a wave of new bands whose roots lie in a bizarre
allegiance to both the power-chord arena rock of the 1970s and a
modern-day punk rock aesthetic. James Rotondi of Guitar Player
described STP's work as "memorable, tough rock songs backed
by anvil-heavy grooves and rich, unflashy guitar parts."
Core spent over a year on the music charts, won a slew of awards,
and eventually went triple platinum. The Stone Temple Pilots
toured during most of 1993 and put in appearances as an opening
act for heavy metal goliaths Megadeth as well as an MTV Unplugged
show. In the summer of 1994, they released their sophomore
effort, Purple, another instant series of hits. Between the two
albums, STP were a permanent fixture on the album rock charts.
Despite their unparalleled success, the band members felt
frustrated by the criticism that often accompanies such
accomplishment, but album and concert ticket sales offered
somewhat of a balm. "Being a musician, you're so used to
what's going on in the industry," guitarist Dean DeLeo
responded to the snarkiness in a 1993 Rolling Stone interview
with Kim Neely, "but when you get fan mail and you read what
real people are saying about you, that's what really
counts."
Stone Temple Pilots formed around the Los Angeles-San Diego axis
in the late 1980s. Two of its members, brothers Dean and Robert
DeLeo, were transplanted New Jerseyites living in San Diego. They
had played professionally once before, back home in a cover band
called Tyrus. Robert came across singer Scott "Weiland"
Weiland at a Black Flag concert; the two realized they had been
dating the same woman. Nevertheless, a friendship developed and
they started to mess around with their guitars and an eight-track
recorder. Californian Eric Kretz, then playing drums in another
band, soon joined them. Kretz and Robert DeLeo relocated to Los
Angeles, and Dean followed after a few years to help out with a
demo tape. The brother decided to stick around, and the band
officially formed as Mighty Joe Young.
The first-ever show of Mighty Joe Young happened at the legendary
Whiskey-A- Go-Go in Los Angeles. The band soon tired of the L.A.
music scene and returned to San Diego, where they wrote music and
schlepped equipment to local bars for the next two years. In 1992
a representative from Atlantic Records came to one of their shows
and soon the label was expressing interest in signing them. Yet
the quartet was leery of a big, juicy, major-label contract until
they talked with industry-insider Danny Goldberg, then managing
Seattle grunge-rockers Nirvana.
Mighty Joe Young signed the contract on April Fools' Day of 1992.
They headed into the studio with Brendan O'Brien, erstwhile
producer of such bands as the Red Hot Chili Peppers and Black
Crowes. Shortly before their debut album's scheduled release,
their lawyer discovered that the name Mighty Joe Young was
already being used by an aged blues artist and they would need a
new name. The "Stone Temple Pilots" moniker originated
in the "STP" motor-oil logo sticker that the young
Weiland's bike had sported. They invented the name from the
letters.
Core began climbing the charts following its release in September
of 1992. A video for the first single, "Sex Type
Thing," made its first few appearances on the MTV metal
showcase Headbangers' Ball, then garnered heavy rotation during
the rest of the programming week. The Stone Temple Pilots arrived
on the scene just as other up-and-coming bands--especially the
Seattle triumvirate of Soundgarden, Pearl Jam, and Alice in
Chains--also began rocking the alternative charts and stations
with a similar edgy, guitar-based sound. Fans assumed the Pilots
hailed from the Pacific Northwest, too.
Meanwhile, some critics assailed the overnight explosion of
similar-sounding bands--for years the alternative scene had been
a healthy industry unto itself with neither major-label interest
nor support--but now the behemoths had stepped in and found a way
to market one particularly accessible sound to a wider spectrum
of youthful listeners. By mid-1993 the Pilots were fed up with
the issue. "What is mainstream, and what's
alternative?" fumed bassist Robert DeLeo in the Rolling
Stone interview with Neely. "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.'"
The Stone Temple Pilots began a heavy tour schedule, making stops
in both the United States and Europe. They turned down a slot as
openers for Aerosmith in part because of the legendary act's
traditional treatment of women as sex objects. Core's first
single, "Sex Type Thing," was a strident message
against date rape written by Weiland that nevertheless was
sometimes read the wrong way as being pro-date-rape. The vocalist
told Rolling Stone reporter Neely that he put himself in the
frame of "the typical American macho jerk" as he was
writing the song's lyrics from a first-person stance and was a
bit stunned that some took his intent in a completely opposite
way.
More criticism was heaped on the Stone Temple Pilots' second
single, "Plus"; the track was easy to mistake for a
Pearl Jam tune due to its riffs and Weiland's vocals. But Guitar
Player's Rotondi tried to put the similarity in perspective,
saying, "A generation that grew up discovering the joys of
the Doors and Led Zeppelin in the wake of the punk explosion are
bound to see and hear things similarly. If ... Weiland sounds
like anybody, it's Jim Morrison, whose moody baritone has been
appropriated by everyone from the Cult's Ian Astbury to Billy
Idol to Glenn Danzig to Layne Staley to, well, Eddie Vedder--all,
like Weiland, talented, charismatic figures."
The Stone Temple Pilots began racking up an impressive array of
awards as their debut album was selling millions.
"Plush" remained on the charts for a record-setting 77
weeks from 1993 to 1994, and won the Grammy for best hard rock
performance with vocal as well as a Billboard award for Number
One rock track; indecisive American Music Award voters gave them
honors for favorite new pop/rock artist and favorite new heavy
metal/hard rock artist; Rolling Stone readers voted them the best
new band and Weiland the best new male singer of 1994, and they
also won an MTV Music Video Award for best new artist.
But the success as well as the pressure nearly dissolved the
band, as Weiland admitted in retrospect to RIP reporter Mick Wall
in early 1995. "A year ago, well, it just got to the point
where we just really did not have the energy to communicate with
each other," Weiland said of this period. "There were
problems ... [like] the lack of respect that we had gotten from
the music press, which we had always paid attention to." As
a band they had been secure in their songwriting abilities, he
explained, and at first were indifferent to what others were
saying, but "then after a while I think it started running
on us and we were thinking like, 'Maybe they're right,' you know
'Maybe people are right. Maybe there's something wrong with what
we're doing.'"
But the Stone Temple Pilots managed to keep their heads up long
enough to duck back into a studio in Georgia in early 1994.
Working again with Brendan O'Brien, they wrote much of the
material for the next album in studio and got it down on tape in
less than a month. The DeLeos wrote the music and Weiland the
lyrics, and many of the twelve tracks on Purple could be termed
somewhat brooding and introspective. "I guess I tend to find
the darker shades of life more attractive than the yellows and
oranges," Weiland told Neely in the Rolling Stone interview
about his muses. "I know it's something that I relate to
when I listen to music." Robert DeLeo looked forward to
getting the album released in an effort to silence their critics.
"I think the new album is going to be our only savior,"
he told Rotondi in Guitar Player in early 1994. "Hopefully,
it will dispel a lot of the demons that are following us
around."
Purple debuted at Number One on the Billboard 200 in June of
1994. Its first singles were "Vasoline" and
"Interstate Love Song," each quickly becoming staples
on both alternative and rock radio. Critical reaction was mixed.
Reviewing it for Entertainment Weekly, David Browne called it
"rock & roll utterly without roots or, despite the
pseudo-underground sheen, a real, defined sense of time or
place." People writer Tony Sinclair made the usual Pearl Jam
comparison and also likened STP to a sort of modern-day Grand
Funk Railroad. Lorraine Ali of Rolling Stone was less judgmental,
however. She described Purple's lyrical content as "cryptic
and sensitive" and lauded "mystical interludes and
acoustic melodies [that] could be hokey but instead are naively
pretty."
Critical barbs aside, Purple was an unqualified success. It went
triple platinum in less than six months, and "Interstate
Love Song" held at Number One for 15 weeks on Billboard's
album rock charts, a rather rare feat. The Stone Temple Pilots
began playing headlining dates around the country as well as
sold-out shows overseas. By early 1995, they were working on a
third album and planning a tour that would perhaps feature STP's
own ticket distribution system. The band hoped to eliminate what
they viewed as exorbitant service charges imposed on concertgoers
by Ticketmaster, a national ticket distributor.
The Stone Temple Pilots remain nonchalant about their success and
their detractors. "Before the Seattle thing happened,
popular rock was stale," Robert DeLeo told Guitar Player's
Rotondi. "Before we got into the whole alternative scene,
things were fine. But bands that are in this so-called
alternative scene are just trying to prove that 'Hey, my band's
more underground than yours.' What's the point here Are we trying
to prove how underground we are, or are we trying to prove we can
make good music We're all making music, so why should we hack on
each other And why not look at the differences between bands
Everybody's got something to offer."
Singles; on Atlantic
"Sex Type Thing," 1992.
"Plush," 1993.
"Vasoline," 1994.
"Interstate Love Song," 1994.
Albums; on Atlantic
Core, 1992.
Purple, 1994.
Tiny Music.. from the Vatican Gift Shop, 1996
Billboard, December 10, 1994; January 14, 1995; March 4, 1995.
Entertainment Weekly, June 10, 1994. Guitar Player, August 1993;
February 1994. People, June 13, 1994. RIP, February 1995. Rolling
Stone, August 5, 1993; February 10, 1994; July 17, 1994.
Additional information for this profile was provided by Atlantic
Records publicity materials.
~~ Carol Brennan