Scott Weiland was the lead singer of Stone Temple Pilots, one of the most popular rock bands of the early to mid-1990s.
Rising to prominence at the tail end of the "grunge" era, Stone Temple Pilots sometimes got labelled grunge and sometimes "post-grunge." I have never been fans of either term. "Grunge" mostly describes a cultural movement, bound by time (early to mid 1990s) and geography (based in Seattle), whereas "post-grunge" describes the bands that were influenced by this initial movement and went on to take the style and sound of grunge bands and make it more "mainstream." So "grunge" usually refers to bands such as the so-called "Big Four" of the Seattle scene: Nirvana, Pearl Jam, Soundgarden, and Alice in Chains. Post-grunge usually refers to bands that came a bit later and weren't necessarily from Seattle, such as Foo Fighters, Silverchair, Live, Bush, and Fuel. Personally, I am a fan of all of these bands, and chances are I will cover others of them on this blog at some point.
But this entry is about Scott Weiland. So I'll start by talking about STP and what their music means to me.
My first exposure to STP's music was their big hits that were played on KROQ 106.7, particularly "Plush" and "Interstate Love Song." The first STP album I listened to was Core, which in addition to "Plush" also had other hits such as "Sex Type Thing", "Wicked Garden", and "Creep" (not to be confused with the Radiohead song). "Sex Type Thing" was one of the first songs I learned to play on guitar. "Wicked Garden" has long been one of my favorite songs of theirs, ever since I first heard it in a car commercial. Even today, I still picture an SUV crashing through glass when I hear Weiland shout out, "Burn! Burn burn! Burn your wicked garden down!" Core was a great album, but at the time of its release it apparently got a lot of flack from critics. They accused STP of ripping off the sound of other bands such as Pearl Jam and Nirvana. Rolling Stone magazine voted them Worst New Band in 1994 in the very same issue that the reader poll rated them as Best New Band. To be fair, judging from their early videos, they really were aping the macho, aggressive, dark persona that a lot of rock bands were doing at the time.
STP started to lighten up on their second album Purple, which also happens to be my favorite album of theirs. Classic songs like "Interstate Love Song" (another of my favorite songs to play on guitar), "Big Empty" and "Vaseline" are found on this great record.
Their third album, Tiny Music: Songs from the Vatican Gift Shop, was about as weird as its title suggests. Here was the band really trying to set themselves apart. Its a good album overall, with some great songs like "Tripping On a Hole In a Paper Heart" (which has my favorite STP guitar solo) and "Big Bang Baby" as well as some . . . weird songs like "Art School Girl."
As I understand it, the band went on a bit of a hiatus between their third and fourth albums, largely due to Scott Weiland's drug problems. They finally put out the aptly titled No. 4 in 1999, which was the year that I first started becoming a serious fan of rock music. I remember the music video for "Sour Girl" playing on MTV, with Sarah Michelle Gellar as some sort of weird angel of death, making out with Scott Weiland in some kind of nightmarish landscape populated by mutant Teletubby creatures. Yeah . . . While some of the songs on No. 4 are a little over the top grunge-metal, as if the band were trying to recapture their hard rock cred, overall it is still an excellent album.
The same can't quite be said for their two remaining albums. Shangri-La-De-Da was their fifth album, and the last before their first breakup. I remember being disappointed in the album, but even more disappointed that they broke up before I got to see them.
Scott Weiland went on to join some of the members of Guns N' Roses to form the supergroup known as Velvet Revolver. I actually liked them quite a lot, and went to see them in concert twice. Once they were the sole headliner, with Hoobastank opening for them (not the best pairing . . . apparently they did not get along and Doug Robb from Hoobastank wrote the song "If I Were You" as a critique of Scott Weiland's attitude). The other time I saw them, they were co-headlining with the newly reformed Alice in Chains.
After VR broke up, STP got back together and I finally got to see them live. It was a great show down at Qualcomm Stadium in San Diego. However, I never got around to buying their comeback self-titled album. The reviews had been mixed, and by that time I had become very selective about the albums I purchased. I have listened to it though, and some of the songs are quite good.
For me, STP's music will always represent my days in high school, learning to play the guitar and exploring the world of rock music that had just recently opened up to me. My love of their music gave me something in common with another kid in my English class, who went on to become one of my best friends. I recently reconnected with this friend, having been inspired to reach out to him after I heard the news of Scott Weiland's death. Just last night, I attended this friend's wedding.
Something about STP's music really spoke to me during a formative time of my life, and I will forever consider myself a fan. The music world has lost one of the greats of his generation.
RIP Scott Weiland!
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