Before ‘Plush’: the bizarre way Scott Weiland and Robert DeLeo met
When discussing the world of grunge and alternative rock, it’s usually Seattle’s big four that take all the plaudits. After all, Nirvana typified the sound and opened the gates for their peers, who then helped transform the rock environment. However, it wasn’t just the Pacific Northwest that would produce widely influential bands. Cities throughout America and the rest of the world would also be rapt by the resurgence of heavy guitar music. One of the most popular acts was Stone Temple Pilots (STP), fronted by the late enigma Scott Weiland.
STP are a fascinating outfit in that not only are they still going and were one of the most commercially successful bands of the 1990s, but they’re rarely talked about when it comes to the story of rock music. Whether this be to do with Weiland’s personal issues, their antics, or the fact that the quality of their output lessened as the decade wore on, it’s strange that a band who had such a tremendous impact when at their pomp now seem to be alternative rock’s greatest pariahs.
It seems that Stone Temple Pilots broke through at the wrong time. By the time their 1993 debut single ‘Plush’ arrived, most of the world was deriding Weiland for his gravelly delivery, similar to that of Pearl Jam frontman Eddie Vedder’s in its comically whiskey-soaked timbre. Elsewhere, when the frontman wore a dress onstage performing ‘Sex Type Thing’, people thought it was a cynical, commercialised and watered-down version of Kurt Cobain’s iconic, boundary-pushing aesthetic on Headbanger’s Ball. Alas, this was the year when grunge was on its way out.
While STP certainly didn’t help themselves in several instances, they weren’t actually hanging on the coattails of grunge as desperately as listeners thought; they formed back in 1989. Just like Pearl Jam, who they supposedly ripped off, they were also fans of classic rock, metal and psychedelia, and their shimmering, chorus-drenched sound only incidentally sounded like the Seattle band in aspects. Furthermore, Weiland said his two primary inspirations were Jim Morrison and David Bowie.
It is also interesting that STP were always steeped in the musical essence of their native California, from the metal to the punk. If legend is to be believed, it was the latter genre that would directly give way to Weiland meeting bassist Robert DeLeo, which laid the foundations for the first iteration of the band, Mighty Joe Young, before they rebranded with their present name due to legal reasons.
Two conflicting stories of how the pair met exist, but the most famous one is that Weiland and DeLeo met under bizarre circumstances at a Black Flag show in Long Beach in 1985. In a reflection of the times, the pair started discussing their girlfriends and soon realised that they were dating the same person. They weren’t going to let this utterly perplexing mystery come between them, though, and realised they loved the same music. After each broke it off with the individual, they formed a band. It became the original Stone Temple Pilots lineup after they hired Robert’s brother Dean as guitarist, a successful businessman at the time, and drummer Eric Kretz.
This might not be entirely true, though. In his autobiography, Not Dead and Not for Sale, Weiland maintained that when playing in his previous band, Soi Disant, he and his bandmates, Corey Hicock and David Allin, relentlessly tracked DeLeo down after being blown away by him at various gigs. They then asked him to join the band.
Regardless of how they met, this was the start of one of the next decade’s most successful and divisive bands. It would bring both commercial success and immense tragedy.
