Stone Temple Pilots

Thu 10th Jun, 2010 in Features

A year used to be a long time in rock’n’roll. After nine years a band’s obituary was well and truly written. Nowadays, nothing stops the music: break-ups, lawsuits, dead singers. (Yes, we’re talking to you INXS; Ray Manczarek). Sometimes fans wonder why. Is it the money? The desperate hope that the music will be regarded above the voice?

Sometimes, just sometimes, it’s because everything that was wrong is right again and a group dynamic is all of sudden viable, achievable and desirable again.

After the wife of Stone Temple Pilot’s lead singer/lyricist extraordinaire Scott Weiland orchestrated a reconnection with Dean DeLeo, the guitarist who bookmarked a generation with signature distortion, suddenly a decade of angst, substance abuse and wayward legacy was behind them.

The original Stone Temple Pilots – Weiland, DeLeo, Dean’s brother Robert DeLeo on bass and Eric Kretz on drums – lineup found themselves in the Hollywood Hills where the sounds of 60s and 70s rock – Zappa, Hendrix, Joplin, Morrison, Jagger – still reverberated.

Among the carved gargoyles of the Harry Houdini Estate – itself purported to be haunted by Harry – STP walked back on stage together for the first time since DeLeo and Weiland allegedly came to blows all those years before.

“Well, it was just a nice night, man,” says Dean, the now-mellow axeman, “having that material bellow through Laurel Canyon. We had a big party with thousands of people. There’s a lot of history in that Canyon and that estate we played at. It was a really, really, wonderful night.”

During their time apart Weiland’s addiction demons continued to unsurp him, despite success with “supergroup” Velvet Revolver, while Dean and Robert continued to write and play: producing successful albums for other bands and playing in Army of Anyone. But walking back on stage after all this time? Talking to Dean ahead of the new, self-titled, album release FasterLouder assumes he must have given up hope that the band would ever work together again. .

“No, no. Never. I think, you know, with each passing year you come to a new place of tolerance and hopefully wisdom and kindness and you kind of implement that in your being [and] we’ve come to a better understanding of what we’re capable of when we do work together.”

Even though for the latest album you, Rob and Eric were still separate —geographically — from Scott during pre-production.
“The only time we were not working together was at the very beginning and we were cutting stuff and working stuff up musically at Eric’s at a very rapid rate.”

“We were working up three, sometimes even four, songs a day, demoing them. But we were taking fairly good care to demo them ’cause we were in the luxury of Eric’s studio. We could set up there as opposed to setting up in a rehearsal room, working, then packing everything up and moving to a studio. He was sending back, sometimes, two songs a day. And he would call, like, ‘You know what man, I think this one needs to be a half-step flatter, A-flat.’ Or, ‘I don’t know if I’m feeling this one, man’.”

“[Some of] these are songs that we’ve had we’ve had sitting around since 1986 and some of which were written in the [recording] sessions… I mean, I think that’s why we got back together to do this ’cause we were sitting on a wealth of material.”

And if you’ve been affectionate with the material so long, and Scott wants to change stuff up, do you get to weigh in on his ideas as well?
“Sometimes, sometimes, you know. I would say 98% of the melodies and lyrics come from Scott and sometimes he’s like, [when trying to craft lyrics] ‘What were you thinking here, man?’ Sometimes I’ll say, ‘What I was thinking wasn’t really as good as what you had.’ But we all see, for the most part, pretty much eye-to-eye on where we wanted a song to be.”

Wouldn’t it have been fucking dreamy if you shared the same telepathy with the record company? “If I can speak a little bit on the business aspect of things, we were contracted to deliver two more records to Atlantic and things got a little sticky there.”

“What I will tell you is that when we came to the table to make this record – and I mean, we’ve been with that label for twenty years, right? Twenty years – and do you believe they had the fucking audacity to say, ‘Well, we want a big name producer.’”

“Robert and I just went, ‘You know what? If you want a big name producer, fuck off. Go get one and make your own record with one of your other fucking bands. If you don’t like that, well, we’re just not gonna give you a record.”

Surely the Stone Temple Pilots name is a reasonably big itself? “Right? It’s insulting,” Dean reports. “You’re just trying to muster up a way to keep things positive and diplomatic. [laughs] You think, you know what, we’ll just step away, then.”

The record sold 62,000 straight up and was only held from the number one Billboard position by the Glee soundtrack. It must have been a relief to have such a strong result, especially after Velvet Revolver and Army of Anyone has messed with the STP formula.

“I hated that. I hated Army of Anyone doing STP and then Velvet Revolver doing it, you know. It was terrible. I just felt like we were destroying our legacy. Everyone was just killing it. [It would have been one thing] were we out doing that and, ‘Oh my goodness, that’s a really amazing version.’ But I don’t think each band was doing it justice.”

Dean seems a little taken aback when it’s suggested that to many fans those albums are seen ass classics. “I’ll be really honest with you,” he explains, “I feel really blessed and really fortunate – and I’m a very humble man – and what you just said to me, and to feel your heart, that’s the best part of my gig man.”

As for any touring plans, Dean believes a visit could be on the cards for 2011. “I think after the New Year. I can’t wait to get down there and wrestle some great white sharks.”