Formed in 1989, Stone Temple Pilots would go on to release their debut studio album in 1992 (titled Core) and become a popular name in the world of grunge.
But… is Stone Temple Pilots really grunge?
Per band bassist Robert DeLeo, the band only got the genre label slapped on them as a “selling point.”
During a recent conversation with San Francisco’s 107.7 The Bone’s Chasta Michaelis, DeLeo was asked about the band’s grunge label.
Specifically, he is asked if he feels the band was “fairly” labeled as part of the grunge boom of the ’90s. Here is what the Stone Temple Pilots bassist had to say in response (the following quotes were transcribed by Blabbermouth):
“I don’t think the four of us ever put any kind of name on what kind of music we were making. We happened to come out at a time when the people in this business were creating these terms.
“It’s a selling point — 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.
“And I think when you can obviously see that is when they start doing clothing after it. It’s all pretty ridiculous.”
DeLeo then goes on to add, “‘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.”
What do you make of DeLeo’s points about the band’s grunge label? Do you think the band is deserving of the label? You can check out the full interview with the bassist via the video player below.
At the time of this writing, the band has released eight studio albums. Those albums are as follows:
Core (1992). Purple (1994), Tiny Music… Songs from the Vatican Gift Shop (1996), No. 4 (1999), Shangri-La Dee Da (2001), Stone Temple Pilots (2010), Stone Temple Pilots (2018), and Perdida (2020)
