Stone Temple Pilots drummer Eric Kretz discussed unreleased ‘Tiny Music’ recordings in a new SPIN interview.
Eric Kretz said, “Some of these versions are from early in the writing phase, and that’s always the best part to revisit. Sometimes you go “I don’t remember that at all,” or you quite vaguely remember it, but there’s always a reason why we didn’t use it. It’s really interesting how that all comes together, and it stirs up a lot of fond memories of 20-plus years ago, when we were in the writing and recording stages of making Tiny Music.
He later said, “We found a beautiful 20,000 square foot house out in the Santa Ynez Valley, north of Santa Barbara, where we could live and bring in all the recording equipment in the world. We had microphones everywhere and drums, guitars, amplifiers, Fender Rhodes in every room — and we’d utilize every room for its own unique sound. Like the foyer had a lot of tile in it with 20-foot ceilings, so that had almost like a reverb chamber type of sound that you can hear coming in on a song like ‘Lady Picture Show.’
Brendan and I went into a bathroom that was bigger than most people’s apartments, and we did the percussion in there for some of it, so it’s just all these beautiful, natural reverbs and crazy sounds. It really lent itself to being a completely unique record in that way, because it wasn’t using any of the standard studio effects that are usually attributed to every normal record.”
