Murray Engleheart talks with Stone Temple Pilots member Dean De Leo about the band's new album, Tiny Music.....Songs from the Vatican Gift Shop. Over the past 18 months the Stone Temple Pilots have unwittingly taken part in an endurance test. maybe it was some weighty higher individual's master plan to give the multi-million unit some street dirt under what some perceived to be unscarred fingernails. The trials had almost biblical proportions. They've had to content not only with the creation of a critical third album but the very public drug bust of singer Scott Weiland, balance the band's schedule against that of Weilands puzzling Magnificent Bastards outfit and the loss of close family members in particularly painful circumstances in November of 1994.
"When we were in Europe last," guitarist Dean De Leo explained in what he reckoned was his third interview since mid '93 "Our tour manager comes to my room and goes, 'Your uncle Russ died'. When I called home I found he had put a gun to his head and Scott's wife's uncle had hung himself within a week.
Delayed fallout from the days Dean shared a house with Weiland only to find it had been the site of a recent murder("That was a crazy time. That house was full of some evil stuff.")? Or just hard fate? Take your pick. In any event the old maxim, whatever does kill you make you stronger has come to play as a result.
Whereas Alice in Chains returned to the scene last year after their own nightmares with an album that in varying degrees continued to plot a black personal hell, STP have called a whole heap of surprise's into the witness box and production booth. Listening to Tiny Music.....Songs from the Vatican Gift Shop it's damn hard to believe that this is the band that was once dogged by scathing comparison to Pearl Jam, which has thankfully tapered off considerably since their last effort. You see, Tiny Music is the sound of Redd Kross doing the Beatles White album. It's soul music because it has to be but it's also hybrid rock psychedelia. The grunge version of the Monkees? STP's second coming starts here.
"I think it really shows where our musical listening are," DeLeo says. "There's a lot of things that inspire us to write. Jus a daily walk through life can be quite an inspiration. Sit down and watch the news one night and that contains inspirations. There are so many things that contribute to that:love, depression...(The Beach Boys) Pet Sounds. I'm an absolute sucker for all that late 60's, early '70's pop. Spiral Staircase, and all that stull man. I just love it."
On the evidence of Tiny Music.....as Weiland said a few months back--it was necessary for the band to hit bottom, deconstruct as he put it, in order to reconstruct. After a long pause Dean responded. The difficulties the band had experienced were clearly not something he was keen on discussing openly.
"To an extent, a bit, I suppose, I don't know" he began sounding unimpressed. "It's funny because in this time off, Robert and Eric and myself would stay in almost daily contact while Scott was off doing other things, so maybe a little different. I felt that by now the band might have been working on our fourth record as opposed to our third."
Dean De Leo says work only began on the album about five months ago. They did a month of pre-production and then hit it hard for four months. The downtime prior clearly drove him nuts.
"The last gig we did together was November 23 of '94. Then we did a Letterman appearance right around Christmas and that was really the last time the band did anything. We kind of just lived our lives. Too much idle time on your hands. It was like, hey I wasn't to work! I'm exploding with songs here! And I'm speaking on behalf of the band as well. Robert and I being brothers, we talk two and three times a day and we're so good at playing guitar, holding the phone between our legs. Like, 'listen to what I've just got' and play to the phone.
"I can't really give you the potion or concoction that we have but I can tell you that the four of us share something really, really special when we get down to writing songs and it's a really beautiful thing. Aside from anything else outside or personally, when we get down and write songs, it's a wonderful experience.
"Vatican gift Shop was something that I coined back on the first record. We're actually going to call our first album Vatican Gift Shop. It was something that has just been stewing around there for a while now. Then on this last record I also coined the term Tiny Music and Scott kind of threw them together. to me it just sums up the entire celebrity of it all that prevalent in my own band. Its kind of interesting to see people when they have achieved a certain amount of success and whatever you want to call it, stardom whatever, and when you all really get down to it its just tiny."
Speaking of which, how bad did inner band relations get? Or was it all just blown out of proportion by the media?
"If there was any strife within the band it wasn't due to any press. Its trying to be shoulder to shoulder on a bus and in hotels for months on end over a period of three years. You kind of - and I'm not speaking on behalf of me looking at them, I'm speaking on behalf of the band looking at each other - get tired of each other person's shall we say, routine."
And the worst rumor you heard?
"Scott and Bjork did a Details(magazine) cover and I heard they were engaged." He laughs.
From "X-Press"