How This Unforgettable ’90s Grunge Band Went From Hated to Huge

When Stone Temple Pilots arrived in the early ’90s, critics and a lot of fans decided they knew exactly what the band was before they had even finished listening to the first album. They were pegged as Pearl Jam knockoffs, accused of stealing from the Seattle bands that had already made grunge the biggest thing in rock, and generally treated like a bunch of opportunists who had shown up at exactly the right time.

The record-buying public didn’t seem to get the memo. STP’s 1992 debut, Core, sold millions of copies and gave the band hits with “Sex Type Thing,” “Creep,” and “Plush,” the latter becoming one of the biggest rock songs of the decade. Then came Purple, which debuted at No. 1 on the charts and made it pretty damn difficult to argue that the group was simply hanging onto somebody else’s coattails.

The critics eventually had to eat some crow. Stone Temple Pilots kept evolving, kept selling records, and outlasted plenty of the bands they were supposedly ripping off. Whatever armchair pundits considered the group when they started, they weren’t going away, transitioning from punching bag to one of the biggest rock acts of the ’90s, while offering up a good example of the difference between critical approval and actual staying power.

They Weren’t from the Right Geographical Locale

Image via Everett Collection.

The easiest way to understand the backlash against Stone Temple Pilots is to look at how and when they arrived. Grunge was no longer just a weird, outlying little Pacific Northwest scene; it was the center of the rock universe. Nirvana had changed everything, first with the sonic boom of “Smells Like Teen Spirit” and then the brilliance of the Nevermind LP as a whole. Pearl Jam was selling truckloads of their debut effort, Ten. Alice in Chains had begun to transition from being viewed as just a heavy metal act, and Soundgarden, who had an early jump on landing a major label deal, was on its way to becoming a household name.

Then along came four guys from San Diego.

Scott Weiland, brothers Dean and Robert DeLeo, and Eric Kretz had been working their way through the SoCal club circuit when Atlantic Records signed them in 1992. They weren’t some hastily assembled label project designed to cash in on grunge, but that didn’t matter much once their first album, Core, hit stores in September 1992. The timing made the accusations almost inevitable. And, in all fairness, it wasn’t completely pulled out of thin air. Taken at face value, the LP sounded almost like a greatest hits of what worked best for Seattle’s finest to date.

“Sex Type Thing” had the kind of heavy guitar riff that could sit comfortably next to Alice in Chains, and in fact started getting play on MTV’s Headbangers Ball much like when AIC were a buzz band. Weiland’s voice could shift from a low growl to something more melodic on a dime, evident on “Creep,” which had the gloomy acoustic quality that was practically required of alternative rock in the early ’90s. Then there was “Plush,” a massive, melancholy rock song with a video that landed the group in heavy rotation on MTV. It was also endlessly compared to Pearl Jam – especially Weiland’s vocals.

It was easy to hear where the band had gotten some of its ingredients. The problem was that critics treated influence as evidence of fraud. Not only that, but due to STP coming from San Diego, it came off as even more inauthentic. Remember, this was a time when the major label record executives were starting to open their checkbooks for anything that sounded even remotely grungy, and not just in Seattle.

Core Was Too Big to Ignore

No matter what the reviews said, though, people bought the record. Core eventually went eight times platinum and peaked at No. 3 on the Billboard 200. “Plush” became a monster rock hit, and nabbed multiple honors, including an MTV Video Music Award for Best New Artist, a Billboard Music Award for No. 1 Rock Song of the Year, and a Grammy for Best Hard Rock Performance. The band went from mismatched bills opening for acts like Rage Against the Machine and Megadeth to headlining their own shows.

That’s where things got awkward for the people who had nothing good to say. It was one thing to dismiss a band as a cheap imitation when nobody is listening. It’s another when that band is selling millions of records and packing venues.

“The critics hated it; the critics pulverized us; the critics loved pulverizing us,” Weiland wrote in his 2011 memoir Not Dead & Not for Sale: The Earthling Papers. “The record started selling, and some eight million copies later, has never stopped. Neither did the critics stop criticizing.”

STP also had something that plenty of their critics apparently didn’t want to give them credit for: they could write songs. It sounds obvious in retrospect that the band wasn’t successful because four guys happened to put on flannel shirts and stand onstage with musical instruments. “Plush” was an enormous song because people liked hearing it. Same with “Creep.” Same with “Sex Type Thing.” Same with the rest of Core.

The audience wasn’t sitting around wondering whether Stone Temple Pilots had earned the right to sound like a rock band. They just liked the songs.

There Wasn’t a Sophomore Slump

If Core had been a fluke, the critics would have eventually been proven correct in theorizing that Stone Temple Pilots were opportunists of a burgeoning scene they had no right to sound like. It wasn’t.

Purple arrived just before summer hit in 1994 and immediately put a hole in the argument that STP was going to disappear after one successful album. The record debuted at No. 1 and eventually went six times platinum. “Interstate Love Song,” “Vasoline” and “Big Empty” gave the band another batch of hits, while the album showed that they were capable of more than simply repeating the Core blueprint.

That didn’t mean the critics suddenly embraced them. In fact, it was quite the opposite. There were still plenty of complaints about originality, with some reviews essentially arguing that STP had become better at copying everybody else. Robert Christgau dismissed Purple, simply, as a “dud,” in The Village Voice, while other critics once more heard recycled pieces of the alternative-rock bands that had come before them.

Yet even when people complained about the band’s influences, the actual records were getting more interesting. Dean DeLeo wasn’t content to sit around playing the same three chords. His guitar work became increasingly layered, his brother Robert’s bass was a huge part of the band’s sound, and Weiland was proving to be a much more versatile singer than the “Eddie Vedder imitator” label suggested.

That’s not to say the poison pen-wielding writers weren’t still filled with vitriol toward the group. “Stone Temple Pirates?” screamed a Los Angeles Times headline. And Rolling Stone Magazine named the group “Worst New Band” in 1994, despite readers voting them “Best New Band.” At the end of the day, STP was also starting to realize it didn’t have to play the game critics wanted them to play. That became very obvious on the next album.

Tiny Music… Was the Turning Point

If STP really were just a bunch of guys trying to cash in on grunge, Tiny Music… Songs from the Vatican Gift Shop would have been a terrible career decision. Instead of making another Core, or even trying to replicate the success of Purple, the band went somewhere else entirely.

Released in 1996, Tiny Music still had plenty of heavy guitars, but the grunge tag didn’t explain what was happening anymore. There was glam rock, psychedelic pop, ’60s and ’70s rock, jangle pop, weird little studio touches, and songs that sounded like the band was having a hell of a lot more fun than it had on its first two records. That was weird in itself, because interpersonally, the group was in shambles for the first time in what would be a recurring cycle of drama caused by Weiland’s drug problems.

Locked in the throes of heroin addiction, Weiland was arrested for possession of the drug, along with cocaine, before recording could even commence. He then started a side project, The Magnificent Bastards, while the DeLeos and Kretz began Talk Show, their own STP spin-off with another singer. But they managed to pull the nose up under the Stone Temple Pilots umbrella, and completed Tiny Music…, with “Big Bang Baby” practically announcing the evolution in style.

“Trippin’ on a Hole in a Paper Heart” was bright, fast and catchy as hell. “Lady Picture Show” had a completely different feel from anything on Core – or Purple for that matter. “And So I Know” sounded like it had wandered in from some smoky, after-hours lounge.

The critics were still divided, but some of them were finally starting to hear what was going on. Rolling Stone, which hadn’t exactly been in STP’s corner, gave the album a much warmer reception. Even the L.A. Times came close to delivering a caveat in saying, “Those who hated the blatant pillaging will be flat-out appalled, but if you respect a band ornery enough to wrestle a multitude of rock ‘n’ roll monsters with ambitious, grabby, creatively sly maneuvers, Tiny Music will make you swoon.”

Tiny Music… peaked at No. 4 on the Billboard 200, eventually went double platinum, and produced three major rock hits. At this point, the “they’re just ripping off the Seattle Scene” argument was starting to look pretty stupid. After all, how many times can a band reinvent itself before you admit it might actually have its own identity?

The Critics Didn’t Get to Decide

There’s another reason the Stone Temple Pilots story is interesting, in that they didn’t need critical approval to become successful. It sounds obvious, but it wasn’t how alternative rock worked at the time. There was a tremendous amount of importance placed on authenticity, especially among critics and the music press. The right bands were supposed to sound like they didn’t care about being famous. The wrong bands were accused of wanting it too badly. STP didn’t seem particularly interested in adhering to those rules.

They wanted to be a rock band. They wanted people to know their influences. They wanted to make records. They wanted people to buy them. And they weren’t embarrassed about any of it. That probably irritated the critics almost as much as the music itself.

There was also a strange double standard at work. Rock has always been built on musicians borrowing from what came before them. Led Zeppelin borrowed from blues artists they thought no one would ever hear. Aerosmith borrowed. Guns N’ Roses borrowed. The Rolling Stones borrowed. Everybody borrows.

But STP arrived at a moment when critics were especially obsessed with originality and authenticity, and because the band was quickly signed to a major label and sounded like several popular groups at once, they were a target too easy to ignore. The irony is that their willingness to borrow from different eras eventually became one of their strengths.

They Were Still Around When the Grunge Bubble Burst

Image via MTV

By the end of the ‘90s, the landscape had changed drastically. Nirvana was over. Soundgarden had broken up. Alice in Chains was barely functioning. Pearl Jam had pulled back from the commercial machine and had zero interest in being radio or MTV-friendly. The grunge boom that had made it possible for Stone Temple Pilots to become a major band in the first place was already fading into history.

And despite all their inner band dysfunction, Stone Temple Pilots were still making records. No. 4 arrived in 1999 after another difficult period for Weiland and his legal and drug problems. Instead of trying to get weirder than Tiny Music…, the band leaned back toward its heavier side. “Down” was aggressive and riff-heavy, while the balladry of “Sour Girl” became another major hit. It was another platinum album.

The band followed it with Shangri-La Dee Da in 2001, but by then the original STP run was nearing its end. They broke up in 2002, eventually reunited in 2008, and released a self-titled album in 2010. The story didn’t end particularly well. Weiland’s struggles continued, and his relationship with the band deteriorated to the point that he was fired in 2013. His death in 2015 brought another tragic end to that chapter. But none of that changes what happened during the band’s first decade.