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Andrew Wood, whose dedication to the glam-rock aesthetic presaged Weiland’s at times, passed away in 1990, leaving behind wiry, spindly songs and bandmates who would later morph into Pearl Jam. The list of 90s rock stars who met a too-early end is a fairly long one. (He left the band last month, not long after its remaining members performed “Interstate Love Song” with Brit belter Joss Stone on Jimmy Kimmel Live.)

He was allegedly difficult to deal with, and was fired from Stone Temple Pilots in 2013 Chester Bennington, front man of the emotionally overdriven early-aughts act Linkin Park, took over lead-singer duties shortly after. And his most recent album, Blaster, was shot through with power-pop bravado and the sorts of hooks that were tailor-made for blasting out of tinny radios. Which isn’t to say that Weiland was a miserablist if he had been, he would have been a complete mismatch for his band’s hookier moments, like the ferociously groovy “Big Bang Baby.” In 2011 he released a winking Christmas album.

“Maybe that’s why all the real emotion ends up in my songs.” “Rock guys can’t look sensitive, you have to look tough, but it’s really a myth, a mask,” he said to Aquilante. Weiland’s 2008 solo album, “Happy” in Galoshes, was written in the wake of his marriage breaking up and his brother passing away he told New York Post rock writer Dan Aquilante that the title was a sardonic nod to his only being happy when it was, metaphorically, raining. And they had a knack for hooks-the triumphant riff that powers the anthemic “Interstate Love Song,” the sneering chorus of “Trippin’ on a Hole in a Paper Heart”-that revealed their pop aspirations. They’d frequently twist their own back catalogue into slightly different forms, creating songs that resembled echoes of the more-recent-than-you-might-think past. It’s probably their least interesting record, and not only because of the layer of grunge that’s settled upon it.įor all the grumbling about trend-hopping, and for all the superficial resemblance between lead singer Scott Weiland’s growl and that of grunge crown prince Eddie Vedder’s moan on early singles like “Plush,” Stone Temple Pilots, at the best moments in their admittedly uneven discography, revealed themselves to be keen reflectors of rock’s most potent acts-Bowie, the Beatles, the distortion-heavy masters of grunge, and even themselves. Their songs were straightforward enough, though, that they made the classic-rock cut Core, their 1992 debut, dominates the 90s segments of those stations’ playlists, which will trot out the heavy plod of “Plush” and the country-grunge sulk “Creep” at least once a day. As the band’s career chugged on, through tours and albums and breakups and rehab stints, it became clearer that placing the band in the then expanding bubble of “alternative” rock was a ruse, a way to keep them current enough to avoid relegation to the dustbin of uncool. In some ways, this characterization was not too far off. They were-heaven forfend, especially in the cred-conscious early 90s-poseurs, just piggybacking into a world that was all about integrity. When they first appeared on MTV with the growling, squealing “Sex Type Thing,” Stone Temple Pilots were seen as interlopers, a group of dudes claiming to be from San Diego (“the next Seattle”!) who were riding the grunge train to middling musical success.