RhinoOn September 29, 1992, Stone Temple Pilots arrived on the scene with their debut album Core, which featured the hits “Plush,” “Creep” and “Wicked Garden.” Twenty-five years later to the day, the surviving members of STP — guitarist Dean DeLeo, bassist Robert DeLeo and drummer Eric Kretz — are reissuing Core with a host of demos, B-sides and live tracks.
Dean tells ABC Radio that looking back at Core is emotional for him, given STP frontman Scott Weiland‘s struggles with drugs and his eventual death in December 2015.
“I have some of my best memories of my career in those early days, because my singer was healthy,” he says. “It was the greatest time, and we were so excited, and there was such an electricity in the air.
“As a person to be in a band with, and a person to have as your singer, yeah, it was amazing,” Dean adds of Weiland. “From his lyrics to his choice of melody to the character that he took on with recording each and every song.”
A lot of those memories came flooding back for DeLeo while sifting through STP’s old demos for the reissue.
“It’s really cool, ’cause you’re hearing the first go-round of these songs, when we were really just putting them together,” he says.
One of the bonus tracks is Dean and Weiland rehearsing an acoustic, intimate version of “Plush” for a 1993 edition of MTV’s Headbangers Ball.
“It was a great example of what an incredible singer Scott was, man,” Dean says. “He not only had that country kind of thing to him — he was just raised on that — but he also had the ability to be a crooner.”
Core has been certified eight-times platinum, while “Plush” won STP a Grammy for Best Hard Rock Performance.
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