LaLaGrunge reported the following on the Below Empty forums:
Rick Beato, the affable musician/producer/engineer with the flourishing “Everything Music” YouTube channel, was live streaming at a bar with fellow guitarists Pete Thorn and Phil X (Bon Jovi lead guitarist since 2013) talking about all things music.
Rick and friends have asked the youtube audience to list guitarists that they believe to be underrated and someone says “Dean DeLeo”.
Rick talks about seeing STP live in Atlanta “about 15 years ago” and watching Dean play Allan Holdsworth’s “In the Dead of Night” as an intro solo to “Vasoline”. [FYI: Rick mentioned this very anecdote in his “What Makes This Song Great?” episode of “Vasoline” that you can find below here in The Wicked Garden. His dates seem scattered because he said that the show was in the 90s]
Phil X remembers attending an event and seeing Dean play “Sex Type Thing”. He asks Dean how he plays the solo before the song and Dean happily leads him over to his Les Paul guitar and shows him.
Rick remembers working at NRG Studios in North Hollywood in 1999 and hearing Brendan O’Brien and STP recording “No. 4” down the hall from him. He was amazed by Dean DeLeo’s guitar sound. He went into Studio A where STP was recording and saw Brendan’s Orange Overdrive 80 amplifier that Dean was using on the album. He says he ended up finding and buying that very amp six months ago.
Rick finishes by talking about Brendan playing a gig once a year around Thanksgiving in Atlanta in the mid-90s. He says Brendan would play guitar riffs similar to Pearl Jam songs like “Dissident”. He alludes to the possibility that Brendan, as producer of Pearl Jam during that time, steered the band in the direction of some of these riffs.
