Photo credit: Katrina Dickson
Stone Temple Pilots’ landmark debut album Core was released 25 years ago today. Surviving STP members Dean DeLeo, Robert DeLeo, and Eric Kretz paid tribute to their legendary frontman Scott Weiland and discussed “Plush” in a new Rolling Stone article.
“Scott not being here to celebrate this is a little melancholy,” Robert says. “He had so much to do with contributing to this and he’s not here to enjoy this moment. That’s a little bittersweet for all of us. We’re in the throes of that and going through all this stuff and having so many memories of something that was a huge part of my life, while at the same time what we want to do is move on and continue to make music as Stone Temple Pilots.”
Dean added, “We did this interview recently and somebody played us the vocal track from ‘Plush.’ I had never heard it. I looked over at Robert and Eric, and we were all teary-eyed. To hear the brilliance of his performance was incredible.”
Eric Kretz discussed writing the lyrics to “Plush” with Scott Weiland, “The line in the song about dogs is basically because dogs have always fascinated me because their sense of smell is so incredible. If someone comes to your house and walks around the corner, they don’t have to see you, but they can still smell the scent. I put that part in there because of the uncertainty of who’s going to be around when we’re gone, what’s going to be happening and how much everyone in the band loved dogs, how much we loved having dogs there for watchdogs and certain types of protection.
They were man’s best friend. And yeah, that’s kind of an odd thing but it all made sense at the time. With the mask in the lyrics, it was around the Day of the Dead – the Mexican festival – and there’s a lot of masks. We were always excited about ethnic art. If you look at ethnic art, masks are such a big part of it. It could come from a million places.”
Dean told Yahoo in another interview, “We’ll always be reminded of [Scott], it just never fails. I don’t know if it’s some way of communicating, but it just never fails. I get in the car, I never have the radio on, but my wife is in the car, she’ll leave the radio on, and I’ll get in, and there’s Scott singing at me. Every time I get in there car, it’s like, ‘Alright, I got it man!’ (Laughs).”
Robert added, “It’s as poignant as this. Getting in my car and having my compass on in my car, and every time I’m pointing it says southwest, it says S.W. Scott Weiland.”
Below is Scott Weiland’s isolated “Plush” vocal track.
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=1hBdVZwTY5w
