Stone Temple Pilots guitarist Dean DeLeo has now responded after Smashing Pumpkins frontman Billy Corgan accused the late Scott Weiland of ripping off a Pumpkins song for Stone Temple Pilots’ hit “Plush.”
During The Magnificent Others with Billy Corgan podcast, Billy spoke with the DeLeo brothers, Stone Temple Pilot’s guitarist and bassist. Billy claimed that the iconic “And I feel, and I feel” line in “Plush” was lifted from the Pumpkins’ song “Suffer.” He said he was watching MTV, heard “Plush,” and thought it was ripped.
While speaking on The SDR Show, DeLeo said that he didn’t understand what Corgan was talking about and respectfully went with it. He revealed that after a few days, he checked the song that Corgan was talking about. However, he couldn’t hear the similarities between the two songs.
DeLeo then spoke about how Stone Temple Pilots came up with the name, ‘Tiny Music Songs from the Vatican Gift Shop’ for their album. He recalled reaching out to Scott Weiland and pitching the name Vatican Gift Shop. He said Scott loved the title but detailed how the name was changed.
Billy Corgan paid tribute to Scott Weiland in 2015 after he died, “Having just woken to the news of this passing, I feel compelled to put pen to paper and pay my respects to Scott. And in that I will not pretend to know more than I know, or add some sad homily to how he loved his life. At least in that, may I now say he is undoubtedly in the arms of grace and eternal love.
May I also offer my humble condolences to his family, friends, and bandmates; who have, and are, suffering this great loss. For when anyone as vaunted leaves far too soon, we mourn all that might have been.
As any fan, I find myself reflecting on what I do have in my own treasure chest: in scarce moments where Scott and I spoke as contemporaries or competitors, and got to know each other as people beyond the footlights and shadows we were so busy casting to the world. It may seem trite in reflection, but I’d try to make him giggle when I saw that the manic whirl of the dumb parties we were at (in Hollywood, no less!) might be causing undue stress.
It was, I’d guess you’d say, my way of apology for having been so critical of STP when they appeared on the scene like some crazy, man-fueled rocket. And not only was the knight up front freshly handsome to a fault, but he could sing too! As any supreme actor gives a real and different voice to each character played.
It was STP’s 3rd album that got me hooked, a wizardly mix of glam and post-punk, and I confessed to Scott, as well as the band many times, how wrong I’d been in assessing their native brilliance. And like Bowie can and does, it was Scott’s phrasing that pushed his music into a unique and hard-to-pin-down aesthetic sonicsphere.
Lastly, I’d like to share a thought which, though clumsy, I hope would please Scott In Hominum. And that is: if you asked me who I truly believed were the great voices of our generation, I’d say it were he, Layne [Staley], and Kurt [Cobain].
So it goes beyond tragedy to say it is we who lost them, and not the other way ‘round…”
