Still Remains: Stone Temple Pilots’ Purple at 30

For a band that broke through massively, one couldn’t blame Stone Temple Pilots for feeling like they had a little something to prove when they went into the studio to record their second album.

Their debut, Core, was double-platinum when they started recording in earnest in March, 1994. By the time the follow-up was finished later that month, the debut’s sales were over three million.

Purple, released 30 years ago today, delivered what the band was hoping for.

Coming up through the Southern California club scene, San Diego’s Mighty Joe Young built up an audience in the early ’90s, drawing the attention of major labels in the wake of the success of Nirvana and Pearl Jam.

The band — bassist Robert DeLeo and his older brother, Dean, on guitar; Eric Kretz on drums and Scott Weiland as the singer — had its creative dynamic in place. The brothers wrote the bulk of the music while Weiland handled the lyrics.

Core, recorded in May 1992, was in the mastering stage and on the release schedule when the band got the news that it needed a new name because another act, a bluesman from Chicago, already went by Mighty Joe Young.

The answer came from STP motor oil stickers, the kind one would see on cars and bikes. Some acronym possibilities were worse than others, with Stone Temple Pilots being the choice.

The album’s commercial success wasn’t matched by critical praise. Being next in line, their similarities to who’d arrived the previous few years were noticeable.

Sure, some of it was Stone Temple Pilots drawing from the same influences. We’re talking about bands with people of similar ages whose album collections would have had a lot of overlap. But they also leaned into it on Core, especially Weiland, who could be spotted sounding like Cobain, Staley and Vedder, effectively leaning into it, however unintentionally.

Multiple songs connected regardless, the mid-tempo “Plush” with its Pearl Jammy chorus, the darker ballad “Creep,” the psychedelically tinged “Wicked Garden” and the anti-date rape song with the easily misconstrued lyrics in “Sex Type Thing.”

Purple’s first song came about because STP needed a song for the soundtrack to The Crow. They’d planned to use “Only Dying,” a song from the Core sessions, but Brandon Lee’s accidental death during filming meant a song with that title was a bad idea.

So they went into L.A.’s Record Plant in late May of ’93,  coming up with “Big Empty.” Pleased with the results, they decided the song would go on the next album.

The song, with music written by Dean, was a sort of “Plush” 2.0, only expanded with little touches — the slide guitar accents on the verses, the extended instrumental break. Plus, it had a bigger hook for Weiland to wrap his growl around.

Another one-day session, this time in July at Prince’s Paisley Park, produced “Lounge Fly.”

It opens with a looped section of a Robert DeLeo harmonics part backwards, a sound familiar because it would later be used as an intro for MTV News updates, back when MTV had a news division (and music). Then the drums and guitar kick off the percussive song immediately as Weiland attacks his lyrics, and its subject (himself, as it turned out), with an insinuating sneer.

“I wrote this on an airplane to San Diego. Foolishly, I was stoned and felt like shit when we landed – that’s what the slide guitar part at the start should portray,” Robert told Musik Express in 1994.

The new sounds on “Lounge Fly”  reflected the band’s growing experience as writers and what they were allowed to do in the studio.

Regardless of what Stone Temple Pilots heard from some corners of the press, they felt the support from going triple platinum translating into a hands-off approach from Atlantic.

“I feel like we were one of the last of those rock bands doing those kinds of deals with major labels, which gave us creative freedom,” Robert told Billboard in 2019.

The band reconvened with producer Brendan O’Brien in Atlanta in January. While they weren’t pleased with the criticism, the DeLeos also felt confident in what they were doing, that the band was being misunderstood.

Weiland, meanwhile, had more of a chip on his shoulder. With his life driving him to write more personally anyway, he also internalized the bad press, which wasn’t limited to who they sounded like. In a line that aged poorly the second it was written, Robert Christgau, in his 1993 Consumer Guide, wrote that if the lyrics to “Sex Type Thing” were literal, that “the whole band should catch AIDS and die.”

“There was so much negative energy swarming around the four of us that it was a real weird situation,” he told Melody Maker in 1994. “On one level, we were feeling that it was a complete necessity to purge these feelings and get them out of our system. On another side, I was dealing with my own demons and exorcizing them. Writing these words was therapeutic for me. So, because of that, it’s a much more personal and less observational album than the last one.”

The response to the critics started on album opener “Meatplow” (“They got these pictures of everything/To break us down, yeah, to break me down/They make us hate and we make it bleed”), a grungy stomper that would have fit right in on Core.

VIDEO: Stone Temple Pilots “Vasoline”

At the time, Robert said the up-tempo standout “Vasoline” (title no doubt misspelled to ward off a potential lubricant company lawsuit) was also about how they felt trapped by the press.

But years later, in his 2011 autobiography Not Dead & Not for Sale: A Memoir, Scott told the real story, saying his lyrics were “about being stuck in the same situation over and over again. It’s about me being a junkie. It’s about lying to Jannina (his first wife, Jannina Castaneda) and lying to the band about my heroin addiction.”

The signs were there without having to look too much. The cover art, with a child riding a mythical Chinese winged creature, was taken from a stamp on a heroin packet he’d bought. Weiland’s habit began on the last day of touring with the Butthole Surfers in 1993. By the time they recorded Purple, he was in “functioning junkie” mode, getting strung out away from the studio, but meeting all his writing and recording obligations in a timely fashion.

The intro sounds on “Vasoline,” coming from Robert running his bass through a wah-wah pedal, herald the song’s arrival, its propulsive, riffy alternative rock a crisper improvement on Core’s murkiness.

The third single, and the song that’s lasted the longest from Purple, was “Interstate Love Song.” From its twangy guitars to its arena-ready sound and hooks to Weiland’s emotive vocals, the song seemed predestined to be a hit.

It began as a bossa nova song Robert came up with during the Core tour, one Dean saw the potential in right away. Weiland’s first contribution came before the lyrics, when he started humming the song’s original intro as the chorus.

The lyrics could be read as another addition to rock’s extensive “life on the road is hard” canon (and indeed, that was the spin at the time).

But the reality again was darker. Castaneda had walked away from heroin. Weiland hadn’t, putting  strains on a relationship which already had problems.

“It has a few different themes,” Weiland told Blender in 2005. “Honesty, lack of honesty, my new relationship with heroin. I had been away from [Jannina] for quite a long time, and there were some issues of trust going on. The whole time I was in Atlanta I was telling her I was off it.”

When they recorded it, Robert felt they had something with it, to a degree that it took away a lot of self-imposed pressure to follow-up Core by recreating it.

For all its familiarity, Purple expanded the band’s sound from Core, more open and less murky.

“Pretty Penny” was an acoustic song from Dean that the band kept that way, using the first take recorded in the living room of one of O’Brien’s friends with everyone playing something. It’s mournful lyrics were originally written in the third person before Weiland realized how much he was in them.

It marked a stylistic break on the album, sandwiched in between “Still Remains” and “Silvergun Superman.”

The former is a desperately pleading love song, a showcase for Weiland’s strength as a singer. For the others he sounded like on Core (intentionally or not), he was  an individual talent who could croon or roar well. He had a love for glam era Bowie and, even without the substance abuse, had a presence that wouldn’t have been out of place with higher hair on Sunset Strip a few years earlier. Throw in a healthy amount of charisma and it’s easy to see how the band clicked (and what it lost years later).

“To have the luxury of Mr. Weiland singing on your song was a huge pay-off,” Dean told Classic Rock last year. “It was very rewarding. It was wonderful. Scott always hit the mark on making a song what it should be.”

“Silvergun Superman” was originally an attempt from the brothers to come up with a song for a collaboration with Cypress Hill for the Judgment Night soundtrack. The rappers went with Pearl Jam (well, Pearl Jam minus Vedder) instead.

The track marries heavy grunge verses to a more sweeping chorus, with Weiland stretching notes out.

And, yes, the “Silvergun” is what you think it is, as lines like “Wait for me, take a dive/Take a piece of my life (Leave me numb)/Wait for me, take a dive/Take a piece of my life (Leave me numb)” in the bridge reflect.

“Unglued” is driven by its riff (which came from Weiland) and aided by Kretz’s steady drums, a quick trip through the singer’s troubled mindstate at the time.

Dean’s music for “Army Ants” dated back to his teenage years, reflecting a love for Led Zeppelin one might expect from a future rock guitarist at the time of Physical Graffiti and Presence.

Taking the song up for Purple, the band made it harder and faster, a standout sheer rock track that showed again that, for Core’s best parts, STP had stepped its game up, aided by even better production.

The affection for classic rock was also readily apparent on “Kitchenware & Candybars,” perhaps the album’s most underrated song. The band stretches out its themes of loneliness and angst at a pace perfectly suited for an album closer.

But there was a sense of humor in Stone Temple Pilots, which they let show with Purple’s hidden track.

While the brothers were doing a radio station appearance in Seattle, they came across an album by local musician Richard Peterson, a trumpeter and pianist.

Peterson had titled his second album “The Second Album” and opened it with “Second Album,” which sounded like it had been beamed in from a Holiday Inn Lounge somewhere in the tri-state area. A lounge lizard vocalist croons about how the album has “12 gracious melodies” and how for Johnny Mathis lovers, “this album has his style.”

The band, who’d taken to listening to his music before shows, asked his permission to use it. Peterson was paid a nominal fee and got royalties from the song’s inclusion.

At the end of the day, the band knew it had a good follow-up on its hands.

“I’m so confident with the songwriting of the people in this band, the people I play music with, that I’m not going to let any person try to judge me as a person or songwriter, because I know where we’re at,” Weiland told RIP Magazine that year. “I’m not saying we’re better than everybody else, but we’re a completely different entity than anyone else. I’m satisfied with this album, and I hope that we continue challenging ourselves and progressing as songwriters.”

Audiences responded again, taking the album triple-platinum by the end of October. If the band wasn’t suddenly making year-end critics lists, the reviews were getting more positive, a step in the ongoing reappraisal of its work.

The shame was that things would become much more fraught before long. Indeed, they’d started to already. Not long after finishing the album, Weiland went into the hospital, telling Details later that year that it was for “ah…psychological, ah…fatigue. I was sick.”

The truth was that it was his first attempt at rehab.

Weiland’s addictions made him less dependable as time went on, the word “functioning” in “functioning junkie” unable to do the heavy lifting.

Their third album, 1996’s Tiny Music: Songs From the Vatican Gift Shop, was another favorite with songs like “Big Bang Baby” (the best-ever Redd Kross song that wasn’t by that band). But the tensions between Weiland and the DeLeos had grown. The sessions were more difficult and much of the ensuing tour was canceled.

The band managed two more albums over the next five years. During that period, the DeLeo brothers formed a new band, Talk Show, when Weiland ran into trouble with law enforcement. The singer went to rehab and released a solo album, 1998’s 12 Bar Blues.

Ultimately, they broke up in 2003 after one too many skirmishes with Weiland, the final one involving Dean DeLeo.

They reformed five years later, releasing one more album with the classic lineup in 2010.

Weiland hadn’t been the only one in STP with a drug problem. But Dean DeLeo’s rehab stint years prior held while the singer relapsed. Eventually, planned shows were scuttled and the other three had enough.

In February, 2013, there was a terse statement on the bands website reading, “Stone Temple Pilots have announced they have officially terminated Scott Weiland.”

It was an ignominious end to Weiland’s run with them. There was no doubt the group wouldn’t have succeeded to that degree without him, but it became impossible to live with him.

As Kretz later put it, “It wasn’t spontaneous by any means. He was making choices and they were all going bad.”

That was it. The other three won the legal rights to the band’s name and continued on, first with Linkin Park’s Chester Bennington (who’d leave on good terms in 2015), then Jeff Gutt, who’d been a nu metal singer and X Factor contestant.

Weiland, who’d joined ex-Guns N’ Roses members Slash, Duff McKagan and Matt Sorum as the frontman for Velvet Revolver during STP’s breakup years, didn’t have that as a fallback after they fired him, so he went solo.

By 2015, concert videos started to crop up showing the singer appearing to be in a bad way. Filter’s Richard Patrick, who’d played with the DeLeos in Army of Anyone during the 2000s hiatus, expressed concern that Weiland’s addictions had gotten worse. He said, in part, “[The fans are] just sticking up for Scott, and they have no idea of [what is going on] behind the scenes. And it’s actually … they’re pushing him into his death, because they’re making him believe that, ‘Whatever I did is acceptable, and I can be as high as I want and I can do as much drugs as I want.'”

That spring, Weiland denied the allegations, saying he hadn’t touched hard drugs in 13 years. That sadly wasn’t the case. While on tour in December, he died in his tour bus from an overdose of cocaine, alcohol and MDMA.

VIDEO: Stone Temple Pilots “Interstate Love Song”

Years later, the surviving members are proud of what they accomplished with Weiland, along with feeling the sadness and regret that there wasn’t more. The memories are unavoidable when they play those peak era songs live now.

“It’s very emotional,” Dean told Classic Rock in 2013. “I’m just feeling him. There’s times when I can just smile and laugh, and there’s times it brings me to tears, man.”

Robert told Loudwire in 2016, “It’s really sad and I guess that’s the beauty of music, though. I simply have to go on YouTube and there he is. There he is and there we are, and there we are sharing something really amazing together. I think that’s what lives on. That thing we created together, I’ll always cherish for the rest of my life.”

Three decades later, Purple fares as one of the state-of-the-art modern rock albums of its period. The combination of musical chemistry, a charismatic frontman getting more personal and improved songwriting showed.

Stone Temple Pilots were more creative and longer-lasting than the post-grunge bands that came along over the rest of the ’90s, even with the missed opportunities caused by Weiland’s disease of addiction. But Purple stands, showing Core’s success was no fluke and giving them a real shot at being in it for the long haul.

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Kara Tucker

Kara Tucker, after years of sportswriting, has turned to her first-love—music. She lives in New York City with her partner and their competing record collections.

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