Stone Temple Pilots React To Critics Calling Them Pearl Jam & Nirvana Ripoffs

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In a new Yahoo video interview, Stone Temple Pilots discussed critics falsely blasting Core as a Seattle Grunge scene ripoff in 1992.

Robert DeLeo said, “I don’t think we ever made records for critics. That wasn’t our whole point of doing what we were doing. We were trying to make the best music we could make, the best songs we could make. I think with the landing of Nirvana, I think there was no way around – the whole Seattle thing, we were just excited about making a record. We didn’t really know what was going to happen, it’s pretty much out of your hands after you do that. You don’t know who is going to buy it, whose going to like it, whose not going to like it. Talking to some of those critics these days, they’re like, ‘Sorry. I didn’t really listen to your record. I just went off what everyone else was saying.'”

A Core review then appeared on the screen describing STP as having ‘climbed onto the Seattle Grunge bandwagon.’ The review also stated, “Its slow songs, with heaving riffs and half-speed vocals, are second-rate Pearl Jam; for variety, there are some midtempo groans that imitate Nirvana.”

Dean DeLeo then added, “I remember seeing some reviews, it looked like there was just a mirror between them. Like this person didn’t even listen to the record, he’s just repeating what that person is saying. But there was so much excitement in our bubble, that it was what it was. We knew what we were doing, we knew what we had, and moreso than what we kind of contributed on Core, we all kind of knew what we had in our pocket for the forthcoming albums.

Robert said, “I remember doing interviews back then and saying, ‘Don’t criticize us off our first record, criticize us off our fifth record.’ Which had meaning to it, it meant we weren’t just going to make one record and go [down]. We made that clear with Atlantic Records, of having a career, doing five records, six records, or ten records.”