Wednesday, June 11, 2008

Now that the band is presumably no longer the Stoned Temple Pilots, the Stone Temple Pilots have reunited and will be at the E Center tonight.

Things have changed since the band broke up five years ago. Famously troubled frontman Scott Weiland sang with rock supergroup Velvet Revolver before acrimoniously leaving earlier this year, while guitarist Dean DeLeo now lives a few houses down from Glen Campbell and dines with the Campbells sometimes. And forgiveness apparently happens, too.

DeLeo, 46, talked to The Salt Lake Tribune just as Campbell drove past his house in the Hollywood Hills. "I think I have a great part of the canine aspect in me," DeLeo said. "I'm a loyal person."

Loyalty is one way to explain the they-said-it-couldn't-happen unification of the initially critically reviled quartet that ruled the rock charts in the 1990s.

The San Diego band broke through in 1992 with "Plush," the first of many songs with song titles that seemed like non sequiturs. Just as Nirvana was bashing Pearl Jam for seemingly jumping on the grunge bandwagon, the Stone Temple Pilots were criticized for aping the guttural, Jim Morrison-inspired vocals of Pearl Jam's Eddie Vedder.

But critics, inside and outside the music industry, couldn't stop the hits from coming: "Sex Type Thing," "Creep," "Wicked Garden," "Interstate Love Song," "Vasoline," "Big Empty," "Big Bang Baby" and "Trippin' on a Hole in a Paper Heart." Arguably, the band's singles were the most radio-friendly - and popular - rock songs of the 1990s. Throughout it all, other rock bands either died (Soundgarden) or decided they didn't want to be too mainstream (Pearl Jam).

What has been forgotten is that the band's alternative-meets-arena rock evolved throughout its lifespan. The Stone Temple Pilots - a nonsense name coined because the band members liked the acronym STP - grew more musically adventurous and gained respect for their resurrection of glam rock, with DeLeo's distinctive crunch providing the spiraling melodies.

But what finally split up the group were Weiland's struggles with drug addiction. Heroin and other drugs were cited as the cause of a two-year hiatus in the late 1990s and the 2002 breakup. (Reportedly, DeLeo and Weiland got into a fistfight during the last show of STP's fall 2002 tour.) DeLeo's struggles with alcoholism never got much press because of the spotlight on Weiland.

The reunion is nearly a year in the making, DeLeo said. He and his brother, bassist Robert DeLeo, were invited by Weiland's wife to play at a beach party last year. "I didn't want to do it," DeLeo said. "But I told Scott that if we were going to get back onstage, it should be groovier than this private party."

Once Weiland quit - or was fired from - Velvet Revolver, STP began "weeding through about 35 songs," DeLeo said, with rehearsals going "great."

"Absolutely we want to record," he said, then added: "But nothing is 100 percent."