Stone Temple Pilots: The History of STP

<v Speaker 1>Hello everybody, and welcome back to the Shirley You Can't
<v Speaker 1>Be Serious Podcast d This week we are going back
<v Speaker 1>into nineties grunge and tackling Stone Temple Pilots say.
<v Speaker 2>I am standing like a loan at somebody gave me
<v Speaker 2>because I needed a house. I don't know, it just
<v Speaker 2>came out.
<v Speaker 1>That's terrible.
<v Speaker 3>We're gonna need a drug test on mile three.
<v Speaker 2>Welcome everybody to the Shirley You Can't Be Serious Podcast.
<v Speaker 2>We are here to compare Stone Temple Pilot's Core to
<v Speaker 2>Allison Chain's Dirt. If you missed our last two episodes,
<v Speaker 2>we covered the history of Alison Chain's beginning to Bitter
<v Speaker 2>Bitter End, then we went through Dirt track by track,
<v Speaker 2>and today we are here to talk about the history
<v Speaker 2>of Stone Timple Pilots and we will be covering Core
<v Speaker 2>track by track with our dear friend and longtime supporter
<v Speaker 2>Brad Moore.
<v Speaker 1>I know I'm excited to meet Brad and he's a
<v Speaker 1>big Stone Table Pilots guy. I know you're a big
<v Speaker 1>Stone Table Pilots guy. Everybody it seems like in the
<v Speaker 1>nineties was like handed a copy of Core and said
<v Speaker 1>you must have this to enter college.
<v Speaker 2>Yes, I wasn't in college yet at that point, but
<v Speaker 2>I was definitely loving Core before we get rolling. I
<v Speaker 2>want to say thank you to our executive producer for
<v Speaker 2>this episode, my good friend mister Kevin Davis, who have
<v Speaker 2>mentioned just two episodes ago as a guy who's been
<v Speaker 2>a long time follower over us. He hit our Patreon
<v Speaker 2>page joined in the support. Thank you so much, Kevin,
<v Speaker 2>you are the executive producer sure of this episode. Guys,
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<v Speaker 2>Ozarka tumbler cups. If you like what you hear, tell
<v Speaker 2>somebody exactly, love it. Love you guys, Thank you for
<v Speaker 2>all the support that you've given us. Jason, tell me
<v Speaker 2>the first time you remember hearing something about STP.
<v Speaker 1>My first time was when Plush went next level the
<v Speaker 1>summer of ninety three. Right, yeah, so I know Sex
<v Speaker 1>Type Thing was their first single and their first video,
<v Speaker 1>but it just, I mean, I just kind of bypassed me.
<v Speaker 1>I wasn't that familiar with it. But then every time
<v Speaker 1>I turned on the radio the summer of ninety three,
<v Speaker 1>it was Plush, Plush, Plush, Lush.
<v Speaker 2>I talked to my brother this weekend, just kind of
<v Speaker 2>called out of the blue, and I said, hey, you know,
<v Speaker 2>we're going to be covering STP. And I can remember
<v Speaker 2>the first time that I heard anything about STP. I
<v Speaker 2>was riding in the car with my brother and he said,
<v Speaker 2>I heard this pearl Jam sounding band and I was like,
<v Speaker 2>was it Pearl Jam And he said no, it was
<v Speaker 2>a Pearl Jam sounding band and I was like, okay, yea.
<v Speaker 2>And within the week I had heard whatever the song was,
<v Speaker 2>whether it was Plush or Sex Type Thing, I don't remember,
<v Speaker 2>but I was like, oh, this is the band, this
<v Speaker 2>is the band that he is referring to. But it
<v Speaker 2>wasn't long before I was at Hastings picking out my own.
<v Speaker 2>Actually I think this might have been a BMI.
<v Speaker 1>I might have gotten Columbia House Yeah, that's funny because
<v Speaker 1>I had Columbia House and it could have easily been
<v Speaker 1>that for me as well.
<v Speaker 2>For all I know, I might have gotten Core and
<v Speaker 2>Dirt on the same one CD for one penny order.
<v Speaker 1>That's a heck of an order right there. Yeah, these
<v Speaker 1>guys rolled through Tulsa, Oklahoma. I remember they played the
<v Speaker 1>Zoo Amphitheater. I didn't go, but I remember wanting to go.
<v Speaker 2>Yeah. I never saw these guys in concert. That was
<v Speaker 2>not a big concert goer when I was a kid,
<v Speaker 2>but I would have loved to have seen them back
<v Speaker 2>in the heyday.
<v Speaker 1>Yeah, okayde This is Stone Temple Pilot's Core versus Alis
<v Speaker 1>and Chain's Dirt. Core is Stone Tumble Pilot's first album,
<v Speaker 1>Dirt is Alison Chain's second album, but they both came
<v Speaker 1>out on the same day in nineteen ninety two.
<v Speaker 2>Thirty years ago this month these albums were released. Did
<v Speaker 2>these albums sound thirty years old to you?
<v Speaker 1>Well?
<v Speaker 2>No, no, But it's interesting having listened to interviews that
<v Speaker 2>Scott Wiland gave with Howard Stern, it gave me an
<v Speaker 2>appreciation for what we had in the nineties that basically,
<v Speaker 2>after about early two thousands, you didn't have anymore, and
<v Speaker 2>that was that you went to Hastings and you bought
<v Speaker 2>an album, or you ordered BMI CDs or tapes or whatever.
<v Speaker 2>Columbia House was a cheap and beautiful thing that doesn't
<v Speaker 2>exist anymore because people don't buy albums anymore, I know.
<v Speaker 2>And so not only are people not buying records, that's
<v Speaker 2>a thing, but because of that, record companies have lost money,
<v Speaker 2>which means we have a decrease in quality of music
<v Speaker 2>that's being produced because you don't have the money to
<v Speaker 2>create a big production, so you use cheaper ways to
<v Speaker 2>do things, computers and such. And because of that, those
<v Speaker 2>artists of that time, like Scott Wiland and like some
<v Speaker 2>of those other guys, in order to maintain that lifestyle
<v Speaker 2>that they had grown to appreciate in the nineties, when
<v Speaker 2>all of a sudden the two thousands rolls along and
<v Speaker 2>nobody's buying music anymore. We're all downloading it and napstering
<v Speaker 2>it or whatever, then suddenly you have to go tour
<v Speaker 2>substantially more than you did before just to maintain your
<v Speaker 2>standard of living. And if like Scott Wiland, you've been
<v Speaker 2>through a couple of divorces, you've got to do it
<v Speaker 2>just to be able to pay your child support, which
<v Speaker 2>he did not do. Well, yeah, it was troubling.
<v Speaker 1>His money went elsewhere sadly. Well, yeah, hey, you know
<v Speaker 1>you mentioned Napster and you mentioned Pearl Jam. I thought
<v Speaker 1>this was funny. The song Creep by Stone Tiple Pilots.
<v Speaker 1>There's some sort of problem with the naming of the songs.
<v Speaker 1>They can ever pick the right title because every time
<v Speaker 1>they choose the title, it's not really in the song.
<v Speaker 1>But I thought it was funny on Napster. The song
<v Speaker 1>Creep is most commonly referred to as half the Man
<v Speaker 1>I Used to be by Nirvana.
<v Speaker 2>Which is funny because Radiohead we mentioned last time. Radiohead
<v Speaker 2>had a song called Creep as well, which was Lane
<v Speaker 2>Staley's favorite song of that time period. They said, mate,
<v Speaker 2>you know, this is the best song that I've heard
<v Speaker 2>in three years when it first came out. Its song,
<v Speaker 2>and it was a constant source of confusion for me
<v Speaker 2>of which Creeper were we about to listen to? Is
<v Speaker 2>the Radiohead version or is it the stone Tiple Pilots.
<v Speaker 1>Uh? Yeah, yeah, Well at least they say creep in
<v Speaker 1>the song, right, right, yes, put it in there, right okay,
<v Speaker 1>so my history starts in nineteen fifty three.
<v Speaker 2>What In nineteen fifty three, a company called Chemical Compounds
<v Speaker 2>was founded by three businessmen, Charles Dwight Liggett, Jim Hill,
<v Speaker 2>and Robert Deehart with three thousand dollars startup capital in
<v Speaker 2>Saint Joseph, Missouri. They started the company Chemical Compounds Now.
<v Speaker 2>The next year, actor Scott Marlowe made his acting debut.
<v Speaker 2>Nineteen fifty four, made his acting debut in a movie
<v Speaker 2>called Attila, starring mister Anthony Quinn and Miss Sophia la Writt.
<v Speaker 2>By nineteen sixty, he was in a movie called The
<v Speaker 2>Subterraneans with actor Roddy McDowell. Fright Night, There you Go
<v Speaker 2>throw back to our Fright Night episode Very good. He
<v Speaker 2>was also in many episodes of Have Gun, We'll Travel.
<v Speaker 2>I'm not going to sing the song for you today.
<v Speaker 2>Go listen to stand by Me if you want to
<v Speaker 2>hear it. So after nineteen sixty, The next year, Scott
<v Speaker 2>Marlowe had his first little brother, whose name was Dean.
<v Speaker 2>Because Scott Marlow's given name was Ronald Richard Delio Wow.
<v Speaker 2>His very much younger half brother, Dean, was born in
<v Speaker 2>nineteen sixty one. Five years later, he had another half
<v Speaker 2>brother who they named Robert. That's Robert and Dean de Leo.
<v Speaker 2>A little later on that year, a guy named Eric
<v Speaker 2>Kretz was born, and the following year we saw the
<v Speaker 2>birth of mister Scott Wiland.
<v Speaker 1>That's fantastic. I thought you were going all the way
<v Speaker 1>back to like the birth of Heroin or something like this.
<v Speaker 1>I was like, nineteen fifty three, what are we talking
<v Speaker 1>about here?
<v Speaker 2>Well, the Chemical Compound Company. It's going to come up later,
<v Speaker 2>but not now. Just save it, put a pin in it,
<v Speaker 2>think about it, and you know where it's going to go,
<v Speaker 2>but you may not. Listener, You'll have to hold on
<v Speaker 2>and see where it comes back up again. Okay, I
<v Speaker 2>am at your feet.
<v Speaker 1>Do you lead us down this trail to where we're going?
<v Speaker 2>Okay? So Scott Wiland was not born Scott Wiland. He
<v Speaker 2>was born Scott Klein. His parents ultimately got divorced, his
<v Speaker 2>mother remarried. He was adopted by his father, whose last
<v Speaker 2>name was Wyland, and that's how he became Scott Wiland. Yes,
<v Speaker 2>he lived in Ohio. The DeLillo brothers grew up in
<v Speaker 2>New Jersey. Eric Kretz grew up in California. But ultimately
<v Speaker 2>Scott decided to go out to California and Robert decided
<v Speaker 2>to go out to California and they started, you know,
<v Speaker 2>seeing girls going to concerts. Well, sure, and they go
<v Speaker 2>to a Black Flag concert and they run into each
<v Speaker 2>other and they're like, oh, hey, how's it going. Yeah? Good,
<v Speaker 2>And they start talking about their girlfriend and it turns
<v Speaker 2>out it's the same girl I hated.
<v Speaker 1>Hi. When that happens, well, it ends up.
<v Speaker 2>That I think they liked each other better than they
<v Speaker 2>really liked her. She moves back to Texas and so
<v Speaker 2>they roommate together in her old apartment. Well really, yes, wow,
<v Speaker 2>And since Scott's a singer and Robert is a guitarist
<v Speaker 2>and a bass player, they decide they're going to put
<v Speaker 2>together a band.
<v Speaker 1>Hey, before you get there, Before you get there, I
<v Speaker 1>just want to mention this really quick. I found this fascinating.
<v Speaker 1>Scott Wiland in high school was an athlete.
<v Speaker 2>Oh yeah, you sent me a picture of him, like
<v Speaker 2>he's a quarterback, and I.
<v Speaker 1>Sent you his football picture.
<v Speaker 2>Yes, it's fantastic.
<v Speaker 1>It's he wasn't like the last guy off the bench.
<v Speaker 1>He was the quarterback. Yeah, he played football. He played soccer. Yeah,
<v Speaker 1>he wrestled, Yeah, played volleyball.
<v Speaker 2>You sent a picture of him in the group text
<v Speaker 2>that we share with James Buckley and David Wright, right,
<v Speaker 2>and you're like, who's this guy? And David Wright said,
<v Speaker 2>is it Jack Wagner? And I thought, yeah, he's right,
<v Speaker 2>that's Jack Wagner. Like he looks like a soap opera star,
<v Speaker 2>very young. Scott Weiland looks like a young James Wagner.
<v Speaker 1>Flashback to Our Girls Girls, The Girls episode Jack Wagner.
<v Speaker 2>Yeah, but he does.
<v Speaker 1>I mean he looks athletic, he's bustled up, and he
<v Speaker 1>looks like a football player.
<v Speaker 2>Yeah, he changes that look. He changes his look over
<v Speaker 2>and over again. As his career progressive. He does. He
<v Speaker 2>does so.
<v Speaker 1>When he's a young man, he's an athlete. He's going
<v Speaker 1>here and there, and on the weekends he's starting to
<v Speaker 1>go to parties. High scholers do that, they binge drink
<v Speaker 1>on the weekends. Except for Scott. It starts to have
<v Speaker 1>an obsessive pull on him to where he thinks about Monday,
<v Speaker 1>thinks about it Tuesday, thinks about it Wednesday and has
<v Speaker 1>to kind of make it to Friday. Yeah, that leads
<v Speaker 1>to weed and then cocaine, and his parents find those
<v Speaker 1>little white bundles in his bedroom one day and he's
<v Speaker 1>off to rehab for the first time, age sixteen.
<v Speaker 2>Sixteen. Yeah, so I learned in this process a very
<v Speaker 2>tragic story. Apparently, and possibly he was dealing with a
<v Speaker 2>prior event that had occurred about four years before, right
<v Speaker 2>that he had, according to him in his book, suppressed
<v Speaker 2>this memory until he's in rehab and was going through therapy.
<v Speaker 2>But apparently twelve years old again, gets invited to a
<v Speaker 2>barn to you know, hang out like you do out
<v Speaker 2>in Ohio, and it's play spin the bottle with some
<v Speaker 2>girls and a mason jar full of liquor. And this older,
<v Speaker 2>you know, high school senior who's twenty at the time,
<v Speaker 2>shows up and starts having relations with one of the
<v Speaker 2>girls right there in front of everyone, and then just
<v Speaker 2>within the week says, hey, you want to come hang out.
<v Speaker 2>Scott goes with him over to his house and he
<v Speaker 2>is raped by this twenty year old high school senior.
<v Speaker 2>That is tragic. I could see myself becoming a drinker
<v Speaker 2>and a drugger if that had happened to me, and.
<v Speaker 1>A violent, angry young man. Yeah, okay, when to bring
<v Speaker 1>it down. Actually I did hear him describe it as
<v Speaker 1>quick and unpleasant.
<v Speaker 2>At least it was quick, I guess at the very least. Yes.
<v Speaker 2>So Robert and Scott are living together. They've decided to
<v Speaker 2>put a band together. They get a couple of childhood
<v Speaker 2>friends to join the band, a guy named Corey Hickock
<v Speaker 2>and a guy named David Allen. Yep, but they don't
<v Speaker 2>live up to snuff. And while Robert and Scott are
<v Speaker 2>at a concert, they are listening to this band and
<v Speaker 2>they're like, man, I can't hear anything but the drums.
<v Speaker 2>This guy is incredible, right. That guy was Eric Kretz.
<v Speaker 2>They said we need to get him. They got him,
<v Speaker 2>kicked out the other two guys and said, okay, we
<v Speaker 2>need a guitar player. And Robert says, you know what,
<v Speaker 2>let's give my brother Dean a call.
<v Speaker 1>You mentioned the fact that Scott Wiland's childhood friends are
<v Speaker 1>in this band. They're just not quite as good as
<v Speaker 1>they need to be. And so one of the songs
<v Speaker 1>that they had been working on very early on in
<v Speaker 1>their days as a band was Piece of Pie. So
<v Speaker 1>they had been working on it and it had guitars
<v Speaker 1>and Corey Hickock was playing the guitar wasn't a great
<v Speaker 1>guitar player, so Dean actually came to help out on
<v Speaker 1>that song in particular, and when he showed up to help,
<v Speaker 1>it became obvious that Dean is much better. And so
<v Speaker 1>when Dean showed up, he inadvertently kicked him out of
<v Speaker 1>the band. And he said that he has since forgiven
<v Speaker 1>him and that he's a sweet guy.
<v Speaker 2>So well, that's nice. It seems to me that Robert
<v Speaker 2>is probably the most driven of the group, right. I
<v Speaker 2>heard Scott talk about it. Robert would have a beer,
<v Speaker 2>you know, once or twice a month maybe, but he
<v Speaker 2>said that while he was doing drugs and STP Dean
<v Speaker 2>was doing them with them. Dean was a heavy drug
<v Speaker 2>addict as well. Wow. But as they pointed out, it's
<v Speaker 2>a little different to play the guitar than it is
<v Speaker 2>to sing. You've got a human instrument when you're the singer,
<v Speaker 2>and if you're off, you can't tune it. You know,
<v Speaker 2>there's no key to change, so it's a little bit difficult,
<v Speaker 2>which is probably why he ultimately had more pressure from
<v Speaker 2>the rest of the band and why ultimately he got
<v Speaker 2>the bit right.
<v Speaker 1>So Originally they weren't even called Stone Temple Pilots. Really,
<v Speaker 1>this blew me away. All right, tell me about that. Okay,
<v Speaker 1>So their original name was called Mighty Joe Young.
<v Speaker 2>Like the old Giant Gorilla movie. Yeah, okay, all right,
<v Speaker 2>you see that one, Bill Paxton. I did not. I
<v Speaker 2>saw the old black and white one though. Okay.
<v Speaker 1>So, like weeks before Coors come out, they realize that
<v Speaker 1>there's this guy in Chicago who's got the copyright to
<v Speaker 1>this name.
<v Speaker 2>He has the rights to the name Mighty Joe Young. Yes,
<v Speaker 2>blues musician, yes, yes, So they have to come up
<v Speaker 2>with a new name.
<v Speaker 1>So they do that.
<v Speaker 2>My friend brings me to the Chemical Compound Company that
<v Speaker 2>started back in nineteen fifty three.
<v Speaker 1>Okay, this is great, so good job.
<v Speaker 2>The Chemical Compound Company's sole product was an oil treatment
<v Speaker 2>simply called STP. The name was derived from scientifically Treated Petroleum.
<v Speaker 2>In nineteen sixty one, same year that Dean was born,
<v Speaker 2>the company was acquired by the Studebaker Packard Corporation and
<v Speaker 2>they changed the meaning of STP to Studebaker Tested products.
<v Speaker 2>But the CEO of Studebaker at the time said, you
<v Speaker 2>know what, I think this product could outpace Studebaker, and
<v Speaker 2>so he recruited this guy named Andy Granatelli and he
<v Speaker 2>made him the CEO of the STP company to help
<v Speaker 2>raise the product's image. The way that he did that
<v Speaker 2>is he became the public face of STP and he
<v Speaker 2>would go to races with a white suit emblazoned with
<v Speaker 2>a red oval with the logo STP. That STP logo
<v Speaker 2>became a fashion go to for skaters and bmxer's and
<v Speaker 2>other guys my age in the late eighties early nineties. Absolutely,
<v Speaker 2>And so when these guys find out they can't be
<v Speaker 2>Mighty Joe Young, they say, we love STP. Let's just
<v Speaker 2>come up with three words that give us the initials
<v Speaker 2>S t P.
<v Speaker 1>That's a fascinating story, right, right, So here's what they
<v Speaker 1>come up with.
<v Speaker 2>Shirley Temple's po.
<v Speaker 1>Once again, a name you can't use at Walmart.
<v Speaker 2>Yeah, they also thought of sticky toilet paper. Ultimately they
<v Speaker 2>got really close. They said, how about Stereo Temple Pirates? Yes,
<v Speaker 2>and it was very close, but the record company was
<v Speaker 2>like pirates with the music I don't know. And so
<v Speaker 2>they said, well what about pilots And someone else said,
<v Speaker 2>I like the idea of stone better than Stereo, So
<v Speaker 2>there you go.
<v Speaker 1>Stone Temple Pilots once again grabbed this name at the
<v Speaker 1>last second before the album came out.
<v Speaker 2>All because of Micole compound company stp Oil.
<v Speaker 1>I like this name better than Mighty Joe Young.
<v Speaker 2>Oh yeah, you know it doesn't I mean, m Jay
<v Speaker 2>Y doesn't roll off the tongue quite as well as
<v Speaker 2>that's true. That's true. So these guys started playing together
<v Speaker 2>as Mighty Joe Young for the longest time in San
<v Speaker 2>Diego and they would go up and down the coast.
<v Speaker 2>They ended up playing at the Whiskey in La Yep,
<v Speaker 2>And very quickly we're discovered. And this is about nineteen
<v Speaker 2>ninety two, when we've had Nirvana's Nevermind has come out,
<v Speaker 2>Pearl Jams ten has come out, and the record company
<v Speaker 2>is seeing these guys on stage and saying, these guys
<v Speaker 2>are obviously well within this new alternative music that's happening,
<v Speaker 2>even though they were not a Seattle band. They're like,
<v Speaker 2>we can see the dollar signs here, good look, and
<v Speaker 2>lead singer Rough Grungey sound, let's sign these guys up.
<v Speaker 1>This is what I didn't know, or at least didn't
<v Speaker 1>realize at the time. I was well aware of the
<v Speaker 1>Seattle sound. Yeah, but the flavor of the month kind
<v Speaker 1>of in the early nineties was San Diego. So record
<v Speaker 1>companies went like flocked to San Diego to find the
<v Speaker 1>next big thing. And even though these guys, it's kind
<v Speaker 1>of misnomed that they were from San Diego. They are
<v Speaker 1>actually an LA band, but record companies were hot on
<v Speaker 1>the trail of San Diego bands. I've never even heard
<v Speaker 1>of that before.
<v Speaker 2>Yeah, So ultimately they signed with Atlantic Records on April first,
<v Speaker 2>nineteen ninety two. Yep, Dean has a day job still,
<v Speaker 2>you know. I mean, they're not making it enough as
<v Speaker 2>musicians to live, so he's got a day job. He
<v Speaker 2>goes to tell them, He's like, hey, guys, I gotta leave.
<v Speaker 2>I'm signed a record deal. And they didn't believe him
<v Speaker 2>because it was April first.
<v Speaker 1>They're like, hilarious, back to where.
<v Speaker 2>No, really, guys, really okay, guys, see you later.
<v Speaker 1>Yeah, that's crazy, man.
<v Speaker 2>You know.
<v Speaker 1>During this time, Robert worked at a guitar store.
<v Speaker 2>Yeah, he worked with Schechter Guitar Research, which was it
<v Speaker 2>started off as a repair shop back in the seventies,
<v Speaker 2>got bought by a Texas company in the mid eighties,
<v Speaker 2>went to Texas for a while and then a Japanese
<v Speaker 2>company bought him moved him back out to California. That's
<v Speaker 2>when Robert started working with him, and he built the
<v Speaker 2>prototype of what would later become his signature model when
<v Speaker 2>he was working there. It was the Scheckter Model T
<v Speaker 2>and it was his primary live instrument while he was
<v Speaker 2>with Stone Table Pilots.
<v Speaker 1>Wow, so he worked at this guitar store.
<v Speaker 2>Yeah, sorry to give you a little bit more there.
<v Speaker 1>So anyway, that's great, that's great. That's way more than
<v Speaker 1>I had. So he would work at the guitar store
<v Speaker 1>and across the street Scott was working at like parking
<v Speaker 1>cars and driving people around models.
<v Speaker 2>Yeah, he drove the models around, right, Yes, he did.
<v Speaker 1>Not a bad gig if you can get it. And
<v Speaker 1>so apparently Scott would have these little downtimes and he
<v Speaker 1>would come across the street and he would tell Robert,
<v Speaker 1>he say, hey, got this idea. What do you think
<v Speaker 1>I am smelling like a road? You know, what do
<v Speaker 1>you think about that? Okay? And he said In fact,
<v Speaker 1>they wrote the song Creep in Robert's back seat while
<v Speaker 1>parked at the guitar store.
<v Speaker 2>Yeah, he was thinking about how he was rejected a
<v Speaker 2>lot as a youth and felt like he was a
<v Speaker 2>Greef a lot of the time.
<v Speaker 1>By the way, the guy that they opened for at
<v Speaker 1>the Whiskey was Henry Rawlins. You know what band he
<v Speaker 1>was in prior to the Henry Rowlins band, tell Me
<v Speaker 1>Black Flac.
<v Speaker 2>There you go.
<v Speaker 1>How about that?
<v Speaker 2>Yeah, it comes full circle, it sure does. And as
<v Speaker 2>a matter of fact, another band that they opened for
<v Speaker 2>was Electric Love Hawks. The guitarist for Electric Love Hoggs
<v Speaker 2>was Dave Kushner, who was the founder of Velvet Revolver,
<v Speaker 2>where Scott Wiland would go after leaving stp.
<v Speaker 1>And where he was eventually fired from. It's all part
<v Speaker 1>of the same story.
<v Speaker 2>Okay. So it's summer of nineteen ninety two. They have
<v Speaker 2>got to come out with a debut album. We know
<v Speaker 2>that it comes out September of that year, but they've
<v Speaker 2>got to get started recording. So what do you do
<v Speaker 2>when you have to record an album. You hire a producer.
<v Speaker 2>Let me tell you about mister Brendan O'Brien. Okay, yeah,
<v Speaker 2>So Brendan O'Brien started off playing in bands in Atlanta.
<v Speaker 2>One band was called the Pranks. The other one was
<v Speaker 2>called Samurai.
<v Speaker 1>Catfish, Samurai cash.
<v Speaker 2>Samurai catfish with a fantastic name, right, And so he
<v Speaker 2>had a bit of success. He was a good musician,
<v Speaker 2>but he had a kid early on, so he was
<v Speaker 2>a dad who needed to take care of a family.
<v Speaker 2>So he needed paying gig, right, And so he was
<v Speaker 2>always kind of fascinated by the name that would show
<v Speaker 2>on producer lines on his albums that he loved, like
<v Speaker 2>the Beatles or led Zeppelin. You know, he sees Jimmy
<v Speaker 2>Page's producer, He's like, how did he make that sound?
<v Speaker 2>So he kind of becomes fascinated with this idea of
<v Speaker 2>being a producer and an engineer. And because he needs money,
<v Speaker 2>he works cheap and he became known as the guy
<v Speaker 2>who if you were with a small record company and
<v Speaker 2>you need an album for fifteen hundred bucks, he was
<v Speaker 2>your guy to go to interesting. Okay, So he does
<v Speaker 2>some engineering, does some mixing, and in nineteen eighty nine
<v Speaker 2>he gets together with this kind of unknown band to
<v Speaker 2>do engineering for them. Their name was the Black Crows
<v Speaker 2>and the album was Shake Your Money Maker.
<v Speaker 1>Whoa.
<v Speaker 2>And he goes from mister guy you need cheap to
<v Speaker 2>a guy in demand.
<v Speaker 1>I love that album. Of course, we gotta cover that
<v Speaker 1>the album, right, there is not a bad song on
<v Speaker 1>that album.
<v Speaker 2>Let me just touch on some of the some of
<v Speaker 2>the albums that this guy has been involved with. Right, So,
<v Speaker 2>he did Black Crows, He was an engineer for Black Crows,
<v Speaker 2>Shake Your Money Maker. He mixed Pearl Jams ten. Yeah,
<v Speaker 2>he was the mixer for Temple of the Dog by
<v Speaker 2>Temple of the Dog. You ready for this. Yes, he
<v Speaker 2>was the engineer for Red Hot Chili Peppers, Blood Sugar,
<v Speaker 2>Sex Magic, which we know came out the same time
<v Speaker 2>as Nevermind and ten Huge. He did the Black Crows
<v Speaker 2>follow up album, and then he does Stone Tipple Pilots.
<v Speaker 1>You know when you said that there is a song
<v Speaker 1>on Core that reminds me of Remedy by the Black Crows. Yeah,
<v Speaker 1>we'll talk about it when we get there.
<v Speaker 2>So on the song wet My Bad, Yes, at the
<v Speaker 2>very end, you hear a voice come in. Yes, Okay,
<v Speaker 2>what are we gonna do?
<v Speaker 1>Now?
<v Speaker 2>That's him Brendan O'Brien. If you you know, you've got
<v Speaker 2>probably no image in your head you but you probably
<v Speaker 2>have seen him if you saw the Bob Dylan Unplugged
<v Speaker 2>on MTV. He's the guy playing the him in organ okay.
<v Speaker 2>He also played keyboards for Pearl Jam and Neil Young
<v Speaker 2>on their Mirror Ball tour in Europe. More recently, like
<v Speaker 2>twenty years ago, he won the Grammy for the Rising
<v Speaker 2>by Bruce Springsteen throw back to Bruce Springs Yes Bruce
<v Speaker 2>Springsteen episode. In twenty fifteen, he produced Higher Truth, which
<v Speaker 2>was Chris Cornell's final album before his death, Interesting Intending,
<v Speaker 2>and most recently he's done Power Up by ac DC,
<v Speaker 2>came out in twenty twenty, same year that we did
<v Speaker 2>our ac DC versus Guns n' Roses Appetite for Destruction.
<v Speaker 1>Hey back you black versus Appetite for Destruction. Come on,
<v Speaker 1>that's that's a really good matchup.
<v Speaker 2>So this is the guy who was primarily responsible for
<v Speaker 2>the sound of the music of the nineties. And the
<v Speaker 2>thing that all of these songs seemed to share is
<v Speaker 2>this piccolo snare. It's this really and I can remember
<v Speaker 2>I can remember early nineties is when I was in
<v Speaker 2>high school band talking to my drummer about stuff, and
<v Speaker 2>I'm like, can you can you make the drum sound
<v Speaker 2>more high pitch and more poppy. It's that piccolo snare
<v Speaker 2>that has that high pitched kind of echoe sound, and
<v Speaker 2>Brendan O'Brien is the guy who's responsible for us. As
<v Speaker 2>I mentioned at the beginning of the episode, everybody including
<v Speaker 2>my brother, thought one of these guys sound like Pearl Jam. Well,
<v Speaker 2>Brendan O'Brien produced all of the Pearl Jam albums except
<v Speaker 2>for ten, and he produced Core, so he's the one
<v Speaker 2>tie between these two bands. It's just interesting because this
<v Speaker 2>is a guy who until we did the research on this,
<v Speaker 2>I had no idea who he was. But he's the
<v Speaker 2>guy who gave us the sound of the nineties, and
<v Speaker 2>he talked about how in the eighties things had gotten
<v Speaker 2>so hi fi and people were done with that, and
<v Speaker 2>so the nineties he was the perfect guy to come
<v Speaker 2>in and do low fi sound.
<v Speaker 1>You know who else thought they sounded like Pearl Jim,
<v Speaker 1>I hate to keep bringing this up. David Spade on
<v Speaker 1>Saturday Night Live.
<v Speaker 2>I've heard the episode, let's listen to it here.
<v Speaker 1>And in Music Stone Temple Pilots were on tour. They
<v Speaker 1>were great the first time I saw him when they
<v Speaker 1>were called Pearl Jam, David Spade, hilarious.
<v Speaker 2>Yeah, but Beavis's buttead two.
<v Speaker 1>Yeah. Scott Wiland really bristled at that. I'm sure, I
<v Speaker 1>mean really bristled at it.
<v Speaker 2>Yeah.
<v Speaker 1>So the guy from the Butthole Surfers who they toured
<v Speaker 1>with the last date of this concert was when Scott
<v Speaker 1>Wiland started Heroin for the very first time. But the
<v Speaker 1>guy for Butthole Surfers was on with Ricky Rackman on
<v Speaker 1>MTV and the guy for Butthole Servers said, you know
<v Speaker 1>who they sound like, don't you? And Ricky Rackman said,
<v Speaker 1>who don't they sound like? And because of that state,
<v Speaker 1>Scott Wiland was super pissed at MTV. Yeah, whend come
<v Speaker 1>on any of their stuff. They came to rick your
<v Speaker 1>reckman and they're like, you have got to go and
<v Speaker 1>apologize to him.
<v Speaker 2>Yeah. And it's interesting because Headbanger's Ball is where you
<v Speaker 2>get the live version of Plush, which I mean, that's
<v Speaker 2>my favorite version of the song.
<v Speaker 1>Yeah, I love that. Well, that got as much radio
<v Speaker 1>play as anything I know, because it's fantastic. It's fantastic. Yeah,
<v Speaker 1>although I like the I like the.
<v Speaker 2>Real one better. I know you do. Okay, so we
<v Speaker 2>need to do our Shirley showcase. Now we have our
<v Speaker 2>dear friend and fellow podcaster mister Jeff Johnson, who is
<v Speaker 2>going to give us his thoughts on this matchup. And
<v Speaker 2>Jeff is a little younger than us, so this was
<v Speaker 2>more like right in his sweet spot.
<v Speaker 4>I think.
<v Speaker 1>Yeah, I can't wait to hear what Jeff has to say.
<v Speaker 1>Jeff has knocked it out of the park and all
<v Speaker 1>the Shirley showcases so far, So Jeff, no pressure. Here
<v Speaker 1>you go.
<v Speaker 4>Hello Shirley fans. This is Jeff Johnson from a film
<v Speaker 4>by podcast and I'm here to do a quick set
<v Speaker 4>before d and Jason take the stage. In nineteen ninety two,
<v Speaker 4>Alison Chains and Stone Timble Pilots both put out albums
<v Speaker 4>that would ultimately become their highest selling I want to
<v Speaker 4>offer a final judgment on what I feel is the
<v Speaker 4>best album though, the first time I heard Sex Type
<v Speaker 4>Thing on my local radio station, I knew two things.
<v Speaker 4>I wanted to hear it again and I wanted to
<v Speaker 4>hear what else did these guys got With their debut
<v Speaker 4>album Core, The Stone Tible Pilots deliver a message about
<v Speaker 4>social injustice with songs like Naked Sunday and Wicked Garden.
<v Speaker 4>They shed some light on the hypocrisies of our values
<v Speaker 4>and some of our beliefs. Meanwhile, hard hitting tracks like
<v Speaker 4>Dead and Bloated gave you an idea of what kind
<v Speaker 4>of attitude this band had, while Where the River Goes
<v Speaker 4>ensures that they know how to close an album out
<v Speaker 4>the right way. As for Alison Chains, we knew what
<v Speaker 4>to expect and we wanted more of it, and they
<v Speaker 4>provide with their follow up Dirt. Songs like Wood and
<v Speaker 4>Down in a Hole have a way of just pulling
<v Speaker 4>you in. Your eyes are closed and you're kind of
<v Speaker 4>swaying with the music. Plaine's vocals are more like a lullaby,
<v Speaker 4>beckoning meat to come with him on a journey, but
<v Speaker 4>it's a dark journey into the depths of addiction, self
<v Speaker 4>harm with little reconciliation. Ultimately, choosing the best album is
<v Speaker 4>very difficult, but not impossible. As for myself, I'm gonna
<v Speaker 4>go with the one I feel I can play from
<v Speaker 4>start to finish and more importantly sing along with. And
<v Speaker 4>that is why I'm gonna go with Core. Jason d
<v Speaker 4>roll out of that birthday deathbed, have a piece of pie,
<v Speaker 4>and find out Where the River Goes. I'm Jeff Johnson
<v Speaker 4>from a film by podcast Thank You, Good Night.
<v Speaker 2>Hey knocked it out of the park again. That's fantastic
<v Speaker 2>it so obviously he is a big STP.
<v Speaker 1>Fan right coming strong with Core Yeah, Jeff, Thank you
<v Speaker 1>so much. Jeff is a great friend of ours. Go
<v Speaker 1>check out his podcast, A film by Podcast.
<v Speaker 2>Well, I think it's time to jump into the album.
<v Speaker 1>That brings us to September twenty ninth, nineteen ninety two,
<v Speaker 1>the release of Core and Dirt. But next week we're
<v Speaker 1>gonna go track by track through each one of these
<v Speaker 1>songs off Core.
<v Speaker 2>Yeah, with our good friend and supporter Brad More. Thank
<v Speaker 2>you guys for listening to the whole episode. We look
<v Speaker 2>forward to seeing you again when we go through this
<v Speaker 2>album track by track and give you our final judgment
<v Speaker 2>as to which of these two albums, in our opinion,
<v Speaker 2>is the best. Is it Dirt? Is it Core? Tune
<v Speaker 2>in next week to.
<v Speaker 1>Find out sounds good. We'll see you guys then