Gay4Grunge: Stone Temple Pilots

Stone Temple Pilots are my favorite rock band of all time. My discovery of them in the early 00s would forever change me as a music fan. Yet, as many STP fans will note, it's not always easy loving this band thanks in large part to their critical reputation. Few bands were as vilified by critics & the rock establishment as Stone Temple Pilots were during their heyday despite the massive commercial success they garnered during the 90s. One of the most cited examples of Stone Temple Pilots' being loved by fans but hated by critics came from Rolling Stone magazine in 1994 when Stone Temple Pilots was declared the best new band of the year by readers while the critics at Rolling Stone declared them the worst new band of the year. In a lot of ways hating on Stone Temple Pilots was cool in much the same way hating Nickelback was cool in the decade that followed. 

As a result, being a STP fan sometimes feels like you are constantly on the defensive. You can say you love Nirvana and no one will bat an eye, even if the other person doesn't really like Nirvana, but when you say you love Stone Temple Pilots it's as if you have to mount a defensive argument immediately in order to justify why you love this band. I know for myself I would typically say they were my favorite because they had a way with melody that was stronger than their peers with a little bit more glam & sexual energy too. Stone Temple Pilots catalog is also one of the most impressively diverse & eclectic in all of 90s Alternative because Stone Temple Pilots never made the same album twice. 

When Stone Temple Pilots first emerged in 1992 with their debut album Core, they sounded like a testosterone fueled Grunge metal outfit that had a strong melodic sensibility. By the time they got to their third album, 1996's Tiny Music, Stone Temple Pilots sounded like a completely different band, one that sounded more indebted to 60s psych pop and early 70s glam rock than Seattle Grunge. Scott Weiland's vocals on Tiny Music also sounded like a completely different singer from the one who sang on Core. Scott Weiland was the one of the great chameleons of rock as he could change & adapt his voice to whatever genre of rock he needed too without breaking a sweat. Yet, no matter what type of song he was singing Scott never lost sight of melody and as most people know melody is probably the most important part of pop music for me. I can listen to music from a variety of different genres and eras as long as it has a strong melodic center. Stone Temple Pilots are the most melodic Grunge band of all time in my opinion, which is why they were the first Grunge band I fell in love with. 

My earliest memory of Stone Temple Pilots came from Beavis and Butt-Head, which is not surprising as that show was my introduction to a lot of Alternative Rock. The music video I saw on Beavis and Butt-Head was for Vasoline, the second single off Stone Temple Pilots 1994 #1 album Purple. It wasn't the first time a Stone Temple Pilots music video had been showcased on Beavis & Butthead as Plush, the biggest smash hit off their debut album Core, had been made fun of by Beavis and Butt-Head on an earlier episode where they both said Stone Temple Pilots sounded like a Pearl Jam rip-off. Yet, by the time Beavis and Butt-Head watched Vasoline they had changed their tune with Butt-Head declaring that this song kind of rocks. This would soon become a familiar pattern for Stone Temple Pilots. Stone Temple Pilots started off as public enemy #1 since many felt they represented the sellout commercialization of Grunge & Alternative Rock, but as Stone Temple Pilots kept growing & evolving as a band they would start having less & less detractors and their reputation slowly but steadily improved. In fact, by the time they got to 1999's No. 4, Stone Temple Pilots were now seen by many as one of the most iconic & legendary bands of their time and it was around this time that I truly became a Stone Temple Pilots fan.

It was the summer of 2000, which was also my first summer in Rhode Island and right before I entered high school. This summer was defined by Britney Spears' Oops! I Did It Again for me as I listened to that album non-stop that year and I saw Britney live twice that summer too, but it was also the real beginning of my Grunge obsession. I was watching VH1 one morning and I saw the music video for Sour Girl by Stone Temple Pilots. The video itself was very striking as it looked like some kind of gothic nightmare populated by demonic looking Teletubbies with a shirtless Scott Weiland dancing in the middle of this Tim Burton looking landscape. Most importantly though I saw my girl Sarah Michelle Gellar in the video, which made me sit up and pay attention even more since I was a big fan of hers thanks to her roles in Buffy, Scream 2, Cruel Intentions & I Know What You Did Last Summer. I was immediately captivated by the Sour Girl music video and the more I saw it the more I realized how much I was starting to love the song itself. It was a moodily atmospheric ballad with a great chorus that was already starting to run laps through my head. I remember even requesting it on the radio and tuning in to the Alternative Rock station to see if I could hear Sour Girl even though I was still mostly listening to the top 40 radio station at the time. 

Now I wasn't quite ready to buy a Stone Temple Pilots album yet, but that fall I was able to get my hands on a CD single for Sour Girl when my family visited New York City, which was my first time visiting New York City. We stayed at the Marriott Marquis in Times Square, which at the time was across the street from the Virgin Megastore. I was able to find the single for Sour Girl there and I would eventually add that song to many cassette tape mixes in the months to come. With Stone Temple Pilots now on my radar I started noticing how many songs they had that I recognized over the course of 2001. On VH1 they did a countdown of the top 20 songs of the 90s and that's when I heard Plush. Another time I heard Interstate Love Song on the radio and recognized it immediately, because I had heard it so much on the radio in the late 90s, but it was the first time I figured out that Stone Temple Pilots were the ones that did that song. In fact, once I knew Stone Temple Pilots did Interstate Love Song I couldn't stop thinking about that song. It was so catchy and I knew I had to own it.

Now remember back in 2001 there was still no iTunes yet and CD singles were scarce for new music and non-existent for older music. So, if I wanted to own Interstate Love Song I was going to have to get the album it came from which was 1994's Purple. I ended up putting Purple my Christmas list that year and when I got it I mostly listened to just Interstate Love Song at first and a little bit of Vasoline since I knew that song too. Soon enough though I found myself listening to all of Purple more and more, which is when I also realized that the opening to track 3, Lounge Fly, used to be the bed music for MTV News back in the 90s. This was also around the time I started drifting away from pop music. The last 3 albums I got that were pop that I was listening to all the time were Britney's third album titled Britney, Janet Jackson’s All For You and Madonna's Greatest Hits Vol 2. I was quickly losing interest in the modern pop scene, but I wasn't quite sure where to go next so I just kept on listening to Purple over and over again at the beginning of 2002. 

Eventually I decided I needed more Stone Temple Pilots in my life and wanted to own Plush, which was off their 1992 debut Core. So, around April of 2002 I bought a used CD of Core at Newbury Comics and started listening to that album regularly too. By the summer of 2002 my family visited New York City again and that's when I got Stone Temple Pilots third album Tiny Music at the Virgin Megastore. I remember when I went to pay for the CD the cashier said he thought Tiny Music was very underrated. I told him I had Core and Purple and he said it was better than Core, but not quite as good as Purple. As I stated earlier Tiny Music was a drastic departure from Core as they abandoned Grunge and delved more into psychedelic pop, glam rock, Bossa Nova & even some jazz. I could now hear how Purple was the bridge between those 2 albums where they still had strong elements of Grunge, but had started branching out into more psychedelic & Beatlesque Pop. 

Now that I was able to hear Stone Temple Pilots’ evolution across those first 3 albums, I found myself even more impressed with them as a band. Before the summer was up, I bought their 4th and 5th albums No 4 and Shangri La Dee Da. No 4 of course had Sour Girl and I soon latched on to other songs such as I Got You, Glide, Atlanta and Down. Shangri La Dee Da had come out in the fall of 2001 and I was familiar with the lead single Days of the Week thanks to VH1, but I'll admit at the time it was my least favorite album by Stone Temple Pilots. That said, over the years I've come to really love Shangri La Dee Da, which houses some of the band’s best full throttle rockers such as Coma & Dumb Love, as well as some of their most beautifully melodic ballads too like Wonderful and Hello It's Late. 

By this point I was fully on board the Stone Temple Pilots bandwagon and I was starting to branch out into other Grunge bands too. Of course, the moment I became a full blown STP fanatic is the same time the group broke up. Now Stone Temple Pilots have a rocky history due to Scott Weiland's struggles with drug addiction. I'm not here to make any judgements, but it is fair to say that Weiland's drug addiction and multiple arrests for possession of drugs derailed Stone Temple Pilots more than once. In fact, after Tiny Music the band broke up for a short time with Scott putting out his first solo album entitled 12 Bar Blues and the remaining members of Stone Temple Pilots getting a temporary new singer and putting out an album under the name Talk Show. Eventually they came back together for No. 4 but just as the album was released Weiland got sent to prison for 6 months for possession of drugs. Weiland's arrest postponed all further promotion for No 4 until he was released 6 months later in the spring of 2000, which is when they finally released the Sour Girl single. It seemed by 2002 though that the band had had enough of Weiland and the group officially broke up. 

Still, this did not deter my fandom, if anything it made Stone Temple Pilots feel like they now belonged to me even more. I was also a fulltime rock radio listener by they point too, which meant I still heard Stone Temple Pilots on the radio on a daily basis so even if they were no longer together, they still had a strong presence on the rock landscape. In fact, during the 00s if felt like the Grunge bands of the early 90s had a bit of a rock radio renaissance as many of them continued to be rotated quite a bit in the 00s, especially since so many of the newer bands on rock radio then were all directly influenced by the 90s Grungers. For myself and other millennials, the 00s is when we rediscovered early 90s Grunge thanks to rock radio now treating these bands as the bedrock of Alternative Rock as a whole. This helped give Grunge a second life with Millennials after it's 90s heyday with Gen X had passed. 

In 2003 Stone Temple Pilots put out a greatest hits called Thank You, which gave them some of the best reviews of their career as rock critics were finally giving STP the long overdue respect they deserved. I picked up that Greatest Hits the day it came out. I made sure to get the Deluxe Edition, which came with a bonus DVD of all their music videos as well as many live performances. Again, this was before YouTube but after MTV stopped playing videos so this DVD was how I watched those STP music videos back in the day. I also used to bring that Greatest Hits CD to all my track and field meets and listen to it as I got pumped up to run. In fact there was one meet where a DJ played songs while races were run and he actually played Interstate Love Song for me.

Other than that Greatest Hits, things remained quiet on the Stone Temple Pilots front, but it didn't take long to hear from Scott Weiland again. In the summer of 2003, it was announced that Weiland was to be the new lead singer of the Guns N Roses side band Velvet Revolver. The first single was Set Me Free and while I was a little turned off by the verses at first by the time the giant chorus hit I was sold, especially since that chorus once again showcased Weiland's strong knack for vocal melodies that stick in your head immediately. That summer my family went to California and we went to Universal Studios for the first time. Set Me Free was part of the Hulk soundtrack which was a universal picture, which meant I heard that song played over and over again on the various speakers across Universal Studios that day and I was not complaining. 

Unfortunately, it took a year before an album finally materialized with Velvet Revolver, but it proved to be worth the wait, at least for me. In fact, I remember finally hearing the official lead single to the album, Slither, that spring on the radio and loving it instantly! By this point at was at the end of my senior year of high school and I was working at the Newport Marriott part time and I had my driver's license. So, I was driving to school and work quite frequently and I was listening to music constantly in the car. In fact, I would volunteer to run errands just so I could listen to music in the car. The day Velvet Revolver's album dropped, which was called Contraband, I picked it up at Barns & Noble with a gift card I saved from my birthday. I went there right after school, but I had to go straight back afterwards for graduation rehearsal. It was the first time in a while that I was so excited for a new album. I remember even seeing the music video for Slither on MTV in between videos for Britney Spears and Maroon 5. It was the first time in a while that I had a new album I was excited about and its singles were everywhere that year too and I just soaked it all up. The album even debuted at #1, which was the first time Scott Weiland was on a #1 album since Purple 10 years earlier. 

The album was an interesting blend of GnR and STP as the songs dealt more with the sex, drugs and rock and roll of GnR, but the choruses and vocal melodies sounded very STP. It's easy to forget now that Velvet Revolver has kind of been forgotten, but they were huge for a minute there! The singer of my favorite rock band was back and bigger than ever and all my peers who listened to rock radio even liked the singles off Contraband. While I never saw Velvet Revolver live, I made my fandom well known in college, especially with the Velvet Revolver t-shirt I wore all the time back then. While I still preferred Stone Temple Pilots overall, I'm still really glad Velvet Revolver exists, because it allowed Scott to really indulge his rock star fantasies on stage and on record even more than he did with Stone Temple Pilots. Plus, it felt like something different yet still playing to Weiland's strengths therefore diversifying Weiland's musical output even more. 

The second Velvet Revolver album Libertad arrived in the summer of 2007 and while the lead single She Builds Quick Machines got solid airplay it didn't make the same impact as the singles from their last album. The album petered out pretty quickly too with none of the remaining singles making much of a dent on rock radio that year. My reasoning for this is that by 2007 Alternative Rock radio was now in the thrall of emo and new wave revivalists such as The Bravery and The Killers. In just 3 years Velvet Revolver already felt a bit passe for Alternative Rock. So, it wasn't surprising to hear that Velvet Revolver was breaking up less than a year after the release of Libertad. What was a bit more surprising to hear was that Stone Temple Pilots was actually getting back together as a result! 

My brother Wes called me at my college apartment a month or 2 before graduation telling me that Stone Temple Pilots would be performing in Massachusetts at the same place I'd seen Britney Spears and Pearl Jam back in high school. STP would be part of an all-day lineup that also included Everlast, Filter (who we were both pretty excited about too), 10 Years, Pennywise and more. My college friends Jen and Josh also got tickets to the show as well. I had been waiting 6 years for my chance to finally see Stone Temple Pilots live and I wasn't going to be miss my chance. At the show I got my first Stone Temple Pilots t-shirt, which I still have though it's a bit raggedy these days. We enjoyed seeing Everlast and especially Filter. It was also the first time I heard 10 Years a second wave Post Grunge band that I wouldn't really get into until very recently. Still, I was there for Stone Temple Pilots and they didn't disappoint. My friend Josh had told me that their show in New Jersey the night before had been severely delayed as Scott didn't take the stage until 90 minutes after they were scheduled to go on. They ended up being late for our show too, but only by about 30 minutes which was much more tolerable. 

Scott came out wearing a cowboy hat and Big Empty, one of the bands biggest hits off Purple, started playing. STP then went right into Wicked Garden, which rocked hard and from there they just played hit after hit after hit. Scott also took a moment to reflect on all the negativity and bad press that had been thrown at the band over the years, but the fact that their songs were still being played on modern rock stations in 2008 was proof that they had made music that had lasting appeal. Overall, it was a great show that met all my expectations. 

So now that I'd finally seen Stone Temple Pilots live the next question became when were they going to release a new album. The answer turned out to be 2 years as Stone Temple Pilots dropped their 6th studio album in the spring of 2010. A self-titled album that was also self-produced by the band instead of Brendan O'Brien who had produced all their previous albums. The lead single was a swaggering comeback called Between the Lines, which became their first #1 on the alternative rock chart which is kind of crazy to think about because of how many hits they had. Most of my friends and family who knew Stone Temple Pilots liked it and this also where I want to mention that all my friends and family who have any interest in rock or the 90s like Stone Temple Pilots. I can't deny and say I didn't influence a few people close to me into liking STP, but most of my friends and family could at least name a few songs that they like by Stone Temple Pilots, which I actually can't say for most of the other Grunge bands. For me this shows that Stone Temple Pilots have a larger appeal than they are given credit for. 

Around this time I had also been dating my future husband Cory for less than a year. I used to play that 2010 Stone Temple Pilots album whenever we drove around Rhode Island so it always reminds me of those times whenever I listen to that album. I also managed to make Cory a Stone Temple Pilots fan and in fact his favorite song by STP was the third and final single off their 2010 album which was Cinnamon. I think he likes it because it's an extremely poppy and upbeat song and you'd never hear a song like Cinnamon from any of STP'S peers or the Post-Grunge bands of the 2000s. I also think Cory likes it the most because like me it reminds us of our first year of dating. 

In the immediate years following the 2010 album, Stone Temple Pilots continued to tour relentlessly and put out their first concert DVD with Alive in the Windy City. Still rumors were swirling once again that Scott Weiland was making things more and more difficult for the band again and before you know it Scott Weiland was kicked out the band permanently. I knew deep in my heart that this Stone Temple Pilots reunion was living on borrowed time and they would soon implode again. The fact that this reunion lasted almost 5 years and resulted in a new studio album and lots of tour dates was honestly more than I had hoped for. As far as I'm concerned, we were lucky to get what we got. Still, it didn't make hearing the news that Scott was out any easier for me. 

Now in previous years whenever Scott derailed Stone Temple Pilots, the band either went on hiatus or they started a side band like Talk Show or Army of Anyone. This time though they were going to keep the STP name and just replace Scott as the frontman. The band's choice turned out to be a bit surprising when it announced that Chester Bennington, the lead singer of Linkin Park, would be the new singer for Stone Temple Pilots. Now I'm not really a big fan of Linkin Park though I don't hate them either and I did like their 2012 hit Burn It Down quite a bit. Chester also mentioned that Stone Temple Pilots were his favorite band growing up and he did have the chops to pull it off. This new version of STP toured a lot but only managed to put out one 5 song EP in 2013 called High Rise. 

Honestly, I never thought this version of STP would last because at the end of the day Chester's other band Linkin Park was much bigger than Stone Temple Pilots and he couldn't stay away from Linkin Park for too long as a result. At the time I kind of ignored the High Rise EP, but after Chester died in 2017 I decided to listen to it with an open mind and an open heart. I found it to be a pretty solid EP that gets better the more I live with it. There's no denying that Scott probably would have made these songs a bit better, but it's still worth a listen for any fan of Stone Temple Pilots or Linkin Park. It's also definitely better than Talk Show or Army of Anyone. 

Scott meanwhile kept busy in the first half of the 2010s. On top of his work with STP, Scott also released an autobiography, a covers album, a Christmas album, which he toured behind, and in 2015 he had 2 albums come out with two different bands. The first was with the metal outfit Art of Anarchy and the second was with Scott Weiland and the Wildabouts, the latter of which he mounted a tour with. I didn't pay attention to these albums or the tour much in 2015, but rumors were once swirling about drug abuse again. Still Scott had been dealing with drugs for so long that it had become part of his mystique. No matter how many times drugs would derail Scott, he would always bounce back to the point that he was starting to feel like the Keith Richards of Alternative Rock. 

I remember waking up on December 4, 2015 and seeing a text message from one of my college friends. In the text he said “Dougy I've got some bad news” and there was a link to a news site confirming that the body of Scott Weiland had been found on his tour bus the night before and that he was found dead at 48 with lots of drugs in his possession. This was the news I had always feared would happen, but never thought it would actually happen. I remember putting on the music video to Interstate Love Song immediately and starting to tear up. There had already been numerous tragic deaths for many of the Grungers before Scott's death and there would be more to come, but this one hit the hardest for me, because Stone Temple Pilots had long been my favorite Grunge band. I had felt a close and protective kinship to their music. 

For the next month I went into deep mourning as I listened to nothing but Scott Weiland for a month straight, something my husband can attest too. I also listened to Art of Anarchy and Scott Weiland & The Wildabouts. The song that jumped out for me the most was the closing song off the Wildabouts album called Circles. It was an achingly gorgeous southern rock ballad that saw Scott singing about his own untimely death in such a sad but beautiful way. The song felt like Scott's impossibly sad swan song in the same way that All Apologies and Over Now felt like impossibly sad goodbyes to Kurt Cobain and Layne Staley. I also turned to many Stone Temple Pilots fan groups on Facebook to mourn with fellow fans as well. 

This wouldn't be the last time tragedy would hit Stone Temple Pilots though as a year and half later, Chester Bennington was found dead from suicide. At this point it felt like it was probably time for Stone Temple Pilots to call it quits for good, but instead they announced a new lead singer, Jeff Gutt, and a new album in 2017. I'll admit I was pretty skeptical at first and didn't think Stone Temple Pilots continuing on with yet another new lead singer was a good idea. Shortly after STP released their new single Meadow at the end of 2017, I quickly changed my tune. Meadow was a melodically driven riff rocker that got catchier and more addicting with each listen. Jeff's vocals were also a perfect fit for the band and it was clear that he was the guy STP had been waiting for. As more singles dropped my excitement for the new Stone Temple Pilots album increase, which was eventually released in April of 2018. 

From that point forward Stone Temple Pilots became the working band they always wanted to be as they toured and cut records at a consistent level that they struggled to achieve with Scott Weiland after 1996. The 2018 album itself was better than I expected too. The album definitely has some filler on it, but it also contains some of the band's best work from Meadow to the psychedelic blues workout of Just a Little Lie, to the pummeling rocker of Roll Me Under to the achingly melodic ballad Thought She'd Be Mine, which reminded me of the STP ballads off Tiny Music or Shangri La Dee Da. It became clearer to me why Jeff was the perfect replacement for STP, because not only did he sound a lot like Scott, but he could hop scotch different genres of rock pretty well. While Jeff wasn't quite the vocal chameleon that Scott was, he could still deliver vocals that felt right for various different sounding songs. 

Another album came 2 years later with the acoustic based Perdida. It was a very somber and mellow album that felt like the group was dealing with a lot of their personal demons as well as processing the loss of Scott Weiland in a way they hadn't done with their 2018 album. I'll admit I have to be in a very specific mood when I'm listening to l Perdida compared to their previous albums, but like all STP albums it's grown on me more and more over the past few years. In the end I'll always come around to whatever Stone Temple Pilots is doing, because they are my favorite rock band of all time and I don't see that ever changing. Even as queer pop pushed out a lot of rock music from my regular listening rotation, Stone Temple Pilots has remained one of my most streamed bands year in and year out. I continue to listen to this band all the time no matter my mood or phase I'm in with music. I can never go too long without listening to these guys even when I'm mostly listening to pop music by queer artists. 

At the end of the day no matter what happens Stone Temple Pilots continue to endure. No matter the bad press, name calling from critics, drug busts, side projects, changing tastes in music, the death of their frontmen, or the death of the CD & the rise of streaming, Stone Temple Pilots just keep bouncing back when you least expect it. People keep writing off this band constantly ever since they first made it big, but you can't keep a good band down especially when you have music that's this great. Stone Temple Pilots always rise above the detractors and haters by just putting out great music every single time. Here's to more great Stone Temple Pilots music in the future.