25 Years of Purple

Stone Temple Pilots' second, and best, album, Purple, arrived 25 years ago to high acclaim and strong sales, but it made a bigger impact on rock radio and the direction of modern rock than most other albums released within the months following the death of Nirvana’s Kurt Cobain. After breaking through with their debut LP, 1992’s Core, STP had a great deal to prove with their second release, and far more than the standard sophomore jinx superstitions. Throughout the Core album era, the band simultaneously gained a strong rock and even pop following yet endured criticisms that elements of their sound, musically and vocally, recalled the first and second wave grunge rock bands such as Pearl Jam, Soundgarden, Alice in Chains, and others. While there were moments that could be compared, broadly or specifically, they were certainly not going to sound like anyone else on their next batch of songs.

Purple is almost the band starting over after experiencing the success of their first album and singles. Rather than ‘90s grunge and metal production styles, Purple reaches for tones and textures that are more at home in the classic rock of the ‘70s, which has always been the heart of STP in each of their album eras. Because the production on Purple was so strong and so successful, nearly all the band’s further work seemed to be filtered through the general feel of ‘70s-based music, such as Led Zeppelin, John Lennon, David Bowie, later Doors, and many others.

Late vocalist and lyricist, Scott Weiland, opens up in a new and very different way compared to the songs on Core, and a blend of honest introspection, diary-entry songs, and character-based metaphors weight each track on Purple in a realm of earnest seriousness and deeply personal, passionate honesty, whether positive or negative. Brothers Dean DeLeo (guitar) and Robert DeLeo (bass) contribute most of the music and additional percussion and vocal tracks alongside Eric Kretz’s consistently solid drumming throughout, and over the album’s 12 songs, up-tempo, mid-tempo, and ballads alike each are featured in a well-arranged order and flow. The album’s cover is STP’s most abstract, and the album’s title is not written anywhere on the cover or even the spine, leading many to believe the album was self-titled for several years. Even the album’s back cover had no added text or a track listing. (The band’s third album, 1996’s Tiny Music…Songs from the Vatican Gift Shop, didn’t have a track listing on the back either.)

“Meatplow” opens the album with a strong, rocking mid-tempo but establishes the overall tone of the album well in just a few minutes with wide-ranging changes between the verses and choruses. “Vasoline”, the album’s most popular and successful song, is one of the bands hardest and best rockers with a verse riff and guitar sound that helped to define ‘90s rock. “Lounge Fly”, where the band experiments lightly with electronic loops and jams with Butthole Surfers guitarist, Paul Leary, became the background music on MTV’s news breaks for almost as long as that wicked Megadeth bass line from “Peace Sells” could be heard at the end of those news segments. “Interstate Love Song”, aside from being a beautifully-written and performed ‘90s rock classic, was the album’s second-biggest hit and one of the first STP songs to feature a deeper, autobiographical introspection from Weiland, lyrically. That personal tone continues into “Still Remains”, one of the band’s most-beloved ballads, followed by the excellent acoustic jam, “Pretty Penny”, performed beautifully at the 1994 MTV VMAs.

Side two opens with the album’s hardest rocker, “Silvergun Superman” which also features a broad range of moods and sounds in it’s few minutes of length. “Big Empty”, which had already been released as a single from The Crow soundtrack earlier in the year, fits perfectly with Purple’s other tracks and matches the tones of those songs, as they were all written and recorded around the same time. That track’s slide guitar work from Dean DeLeo stands as some of the most memorable moments of STP’s entire catalog. “Unglued”, the grungiest or even punkiest song on Purple, was a radio single later in the year, and it got a fair amount of airplay on the strength of the previously-released hits. It was also featured on one of the best-ever performances from The Late Show with David Letterman. “Army Ants” maintains the hard rock vibe as the album winds down to its closing tracks, the haunting ballad, “Kitchenware & Candybars”, and the unlisted joke-track, “My Second Album”, the first song from another artist’s album who had recorded just prior to STP in the same studio.

While STP would continue to evolve in different directions and would continue to explore other sounds, styles, and instruments, Purple was STP at their absolute commercial, creative, and influential peak, and along with Core, they rode its success through the end of their classic line up, and they continue to ride on the success of those songs even now in a new incarnation (for better or worse). As Weiland began to run into a series of issues with substance abuse and related incarcerations near the end of the Purple album era, it became much harder for STP to function as well or as consistently in the years that followed. Purple is the band’s last collection of songs written and recorded before experiencing those difficulties, and despite those later dramas, and others, it is one of the best albums of the ‘90s and in all of rock history.

Other albums celebrating 25 years:

Bush-Sixteen Stone
Oasis-Definitely Maybe
The Cranberries-No Need to Argue
Toadies-Rubberneck