San Diego’s Stone Temple Pilots “appeared on the scene like some crazy, man-fueled rocket” in 1992, as The Smashing Pumpkins frontman Billy Corgan aptly described in the wake of Scott Weiland’s passing in December 2015. Their debut album, Core, had all the right notes for success: a brilliant and charismatic frontman, soaring melodies and pop-laden hooks to the backdrop of guitar-driven 90’s social commentary, and any number of tunes that could be plucked from the record for rock radio success (at least five of which are still staples today).
Stone Temple Pilots proved critics wrong
The critics were wrong: Like many critics at the time, Corgan was dismissive of the band. Corgan was also one of the first of many detractors to publicly retract their previous thoughts; Weiland was now one of the “voices of a generation”, alongside Kurt Cobain and Layne Staley. It’s almost a cliche now on the internet to bring up STP’s troubled history and initial comparisons to Seattle’s Pearl Jam. Pearl Jam’s Ten arrived about a year before Core landed in September 92′. Alongside Nirvana’s Nevermind, Ten paved the way for the grunge wave that STP supposedly rode to success. And while individuals like Corgan and the writers of outlets such as Rolling Stone, Billboard, and Pitchfork have reappraised the band in the near two years since Weiland passed, there is an unspoken number of music fans (this Millennial writer included) who have found the music of STP more influential on their lives than Pearl Jam, Nirvana, or any of the other staples of Generation X.
Pearl Jam’s members were experienced musicians
A true debut record: Before Pearl Jam’s Ten was released, the members of the band were already seasoned players for a number of bands in the Seattle scene: Green River, Mother Love Bone, and Temple of the Dog, to name a few. While these groups never achieved the glowing retroactive success they had after Pearl Jam’s arrival, in a sense, Pearl Jam was a supergroup of players with previous commercial releases. This gave the band an edge in the maturity department. Besides performing in the Los Angeles music scene as Mighty Joe Young and playing individually in various groups growing up, STP’s Scott Weiland, the DeLeo brothers, and Eric Kretz really had their first grasp at widespread recognition in Core. They knocked it out of the park with a multi-platinum record. Again, a “crazy, man-fueled rocket”. Perhaps the band was a little too confident for the press’s liking, ironically enough a criticism Weiland had of The Killers when they burst into the scene in 2004.
All killer, no filler:
An ambitious vision:
The music endures:
