“There were times we were just checking in on him to see if he was alive”: this grunge band did everything they could to try and keep their singer on the straight and narrow whilst making their third album, but it wasn’t enough

Stone Temple Pilots in 1993 — (Image credit: Jeff Kravitz/FilmMagic, Inc))

Out of all the big grunge bands, it really did feel like Stone Temple Pilots were often dealt the worst hand. During the original line-up’s 90s run, it always seemed as if there was some sort of subplot going on to overshadow the music they were making.

For their first two records, one of which is a very fine debut and the other is a monstrously good second album, all the chat was about how they were the cash-in copyists of the genre, as if their peers had been the very first people in history to turn up their guitars and make anthemic singing noises alongside them.

Then, as they approached making their third album, the chat about what it might sound like was minimal. Instead, the conversation mainly revolved around the health of wayward frontman Scott Weiland. Which, compared to the jibes they’d faced during their 1992’s Core and its 1994 follow-up Purple, was probably entirely fair.

Weiland’s drug addiction appeared to be out of control in the aftermath of Purple’s success, curtailing what should’ve been a triumphant two-year tour for the band down to months. The singer, who died in 2015, was arrested for possession of heroin and cocaine in 1995, at which point the possibility of a third album started to look decidedly sketchy.

The band’s other members threw themselves into writing new music but it came to the point that they weren’t sure if those songs would even be for Stone Temple Pilots, because they weren't sure if there would be a Stone Temple Pilots.

Stone Temple Pilots - Big Bang Baby (Official Music Video) - YouTube

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With Weiland in and out of rehab centres for the next few months, guitarist Robert DeLeo, his bass-playing brother Dean and drummer Eric Kretz formed a new band, Talk Show, with veteran US rocker Dave Coutts taking Weiland’s place on vocals. They were not short on material, eventually divvying it up between the two projects.

“Robert and I had about 30 songs,” Dean explained to US radio station WPFK in 2021. “We sat in the room one night and basically went down the list and marked next to every song: Scott, Scott, Dave, Scott, Dave, Scott… It’s weird, because in all reality it was like Big Bang Baby could’ve been on the Talk Show record and Everybody Loves My Car could’ve been on Tiny Music...”

The reality is – sorry to break it to you, Dean – that a lot of people have heard Big Bang Baby compared to Everybody Loves My Car, and that’s because a lot of people were highly anticipating the next STP record. The band might have been short of critical acclaim but fans knew they possessed a rare alchemy, one where the musicians were adept at thrilling, explosive rock songs one minute and dynamic gear-changes the next and the singer could sound like three different vocalists in one song.

Stone Temple Pilots in 1997 — (Image credit: Dana Frank/Getty Images)

Tiny Music… Songs From The Vatican Gift Shop, as their third album would come to be called, was where Stone Temple Pilots really leant in to their left-field tendencies. It was the brave and bold sound of a band who were not letting the thought of another million record sales dictate their artistic direction. What other grunge bands do you know, for instance, that have a song with a trumpet solo on it?

“We have so many different inspirations in this band, things about music that we love,” DeLeo continued. “It was just time for that to come out.” The appearance of a trumpet on the song Adhesive, he explained, pointed back to his love of jazz. “That came from growing up listening to Miles Davis, Paul Desmond, Stan Getz—those records were always in my blood.”

Recorded in a plush rented mansion in California’s Santa Ynez Valley, the idea being that getting Weiland away from his domestic routine and dangerous habits might help focus his mind and keep him clean, the location prompted the band to indulge some experimentation. “It was a beautiful house on 100 acres,” DeLeo recalled. “That enabled us to open our creative minds more.”

Stone Temple Pilots - Trippin' On A Hole In A Paper Heart (Official Music Video) - YouTube

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A record that ushered bossa nova-ish grooves, sprawling psychedelia and lo-fi jazz-tinged ballads into its rock’n’roll palette also features some straight-up STP classics. Big Bang Baby is a hip-swivelling nod to 70s glam, whilst the standout is the yearning, Led Zep-style epic Trippin’ On A Hole In A Paper Heart.

Ostensibly recalling a night on acid, it feels very much a wake-up call from Weiland to himself. With its “I’m not dead and I’m not for sale,” it felt very much like a rallying act of defiance that he was still his own man.

“We were having problems with management at the time,” Kretz told Classic Rock in 2021, “and it’s like he’s letting you know… The vitriol is amazing.”

Kretz recalls watching the frontman piece together the song’s lyrics and rapid vocal delivery and being in awe, but alongside the memories of the powerhouse singing performances Weiland was capable of, his bandmates also grimly remember the dark times.

The mission to keep Weiland on-track throughout the sessions was not entirely successful, Robert DeLeo told Yahoo. “At that point, trying to keep the attention in a studio, and having to show up to a studio, was kind of a challenge,” the guitarist stated. “There were times when we did go upstairs, and you had to walk past Scott’s bedroom first when you went up, and we were just checking in on him to see if he was alive.”

Dean agrees. “It was evident where Scott was going,” he said. “He had a new ‘posse’ of people around him. They just kept feeding him all that he was and they left out one vital part of that and that was his health and wellbeing. Robert and Eric and I exhausted ourselves just trying to help him and be a friend. He wanted no part of that.”

It feels implausible that Stone Temple Pilots emerged with not just a new album out of the chaos, but actually went on to make three more with Weiland, too. Each would be wrapped up in a drama of some sort, but perhaps none as close to the edge as the story of Tiny Music….

Whilst never really hitting the euphoric heights of Purple, it should’ve offered up the sort of pathway that led to somewhere really interesting on album four. Instead, STP had to focus the majority of their energies on making sure there would ever be another record. For them, the easy way was never an option.

Niall Doherty is a writer and editor whose work can be found in Classic Rock, The Guardian, Music Week, FourFourTwo, Champions Journal, on Apple Music and more. Formerly the Deputy Editor of Q magazine, he co-runs the music Substack letter The New Cue with fellow former Q colleague Ted Kessler. He is also Reviews Editor at Record Collector. Over the years, he's interviewed some of the world's biggest stars, including Elton John, Coldplay, Radiohead, Liam and Noel Gallagher, Florence + The Machine, Arctic Monkeys, Muse, Pearl Jam, Depeche Mode, Robert Plant and more.

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