Stone Temple Pilots bassist Robert DeLeo recently discussed grunge and how the genre term applied to the band as they made music through the ’90s.
In fact, when looking back on it, the rocker suggested Stone Temple Pilots got “caught up” in the furor surrounding the grunge tag as it became the rock zeitgeist of that era. DeLeo’s new solo album, Lessons Learned, emerged this past October.
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“I don’t think the four of us ever put any kind of name on what kind of music we were making,” the Stone Temple Pilots bassist tells 107.7 The Bone, as Blabbermouth reported.
“We happened to come out at a time when the people in this business were creating these terms — it’s all a selling point, and we got caught up, as well as other bands, in a selling point for record companies to make money,” DeLeo explains.
“You can obviously see that,” he adds, “when they start doing clothing after it.”
DeLeo continues, “It’s all pretty ridiculous. ‘Interstate Love Song,’ grunge? I don’t think so. I actually wrote that as a bossa nova song, that’s what it started out as.”
Stone Temple Pilots include DeLeo alongside his brother, guitarist Dean DeLeo, and the drummer Eric Kretz. All three are original members. Current lead singer Jeff Gutt joined 2017. Original Stone Temple Pilots singer Scott Weiland sadly died in 2015.
“It’s impossible to replace Scott, it really is,” Robert once expressed. “We created something that only the four of us could create. It’s about moving forward, but it’s also about someone honoring that and being able to get their creativity around that.”
He added, “Eric, Dean and I have something — we’ve been playing music half our lives and you can’t just dismiss that. It’s something that I appreciate and I cherish in my life and I want to continue doing that. We’ve got a lot left in the tank musically speaking.”
Stone Temple Pilots released their latest album, Perdida, in 2020. See STP tour dates here.