There’s a lot of mystery and misinformation about Stone Temple Pilots’ participation in the Lollapalooza 1992 tour. In the first part of this blog article I will give some background information about the festival and STP’s alleged links to it. The second part consists of factual information, newspaper articles and quotes that shed light on the band’s actual performances on this tour.
Lollapalooza 1992 was a traveling music festival in North America between July 18 and September 13 of that year. It featured Red Hot Chili Peppers, Ministry, Ice Cube, Soundgarden, The Jesus and Mary Chain, Pearl Jam, Alice in Chains and Lush on the main stage.
When you do a Google search or read Wikipedia about Lollapalooza 1992, chances are that you will find quite a lot of references to Stone Temple Pilots, who are listed as one of the acts on the ‘Side Stage’ of the festival, along with Rage Against The Machine, Porno for Pyros, Basehead and Cypress Hill, among many others. STP is also mentioned on the official poster for the festival. It would make you think that the band was very much part of Lollapalooza ’92.
I, too, was fooled and misled by this information. 1992 was a couple of years before I first heard of STP and their music. I have no firsthand knowledge of what happened back then. There was no internet, there were no social media. So if you want to find information from those days, you start at the surface and slowly dig deeper.
The first sources of information you will find now, were typed up in the last decade by people reminiscing of a magical tour from way back when. I’m sure most of them looked up what they could find online about this tour before they wrote their piece. The second source of info is available from a handful of newspaper print archives that shed some light on the situation through (p)reviews and articles that were written at the actual time of the tour. I’ve read the newer stories and researched the original newspaper articles over the last few months. I’ve debated the findings with Plushman, who also had done his own research on the subject. And the more we read, the more we became convinced that a lot of the ‘facts’ on the internet got muddied up along the way.
You get things like Brian McDonald’s review (in 2014, on favoriteconcert.com) of the Reston, Virginia stop of the tour on August 14, 1992. He mentions STP:
“The side stage was incredible as well with Cypress Hill, House of Pain, Ice-T, Porno for Pyros, Luscious Jackson and Stone Temple Pilots. Some of the bands setlists are recorded and I did not get to see all the bands, which happens at large festivals.”
At least he states that he did not get to see all the bands. But he does mention Stone Temple Pilots, while I am 100% sure based upon my research that STP did not play that date. When asked if he specifically remembers STP, Brian said:
“I cannot recall if they were at that show or not. Stuck to the main stage mostly because the lineup was so stellar. Did hit the side stages in between early sets, but couldn’t really tell you what was there.”
Matthew Jeanes posted a review (in 2007, on zeroplate.net) of the Orlando, Florida stop on August 23, 1992 in which he states:
“The second stage was a great idea and in later years I would find myself much more interested in the acts on it than on the main bill. Somewhere on this tour, Rage Against the Machine, Stone Temple Pilots, and Porno for Pyros also played the second stage, but the only one I might have seen this day was Perry Ferrel’s band”.
I like how Matthew said: ‘Somewhere on this tour’. It implies what I already suspected: STP did not play Orlando.
It doesn’t help that on the 15th of June 2015, user ExecutiveChimp on setlist.fm added 33 dates to STP’s concert history: all of a sudden, it looked like STP played all North American dates of the Lollapalooza ’92 tour. That is definitely not the case, but has been a base for others since then to build claims upon.
How many shows did STP actually play on the Lollapalooza ’92 tour? I’d say: two. One in Phoenix and another in Irvine. I strongly believe that all other mentions of Stone Temple Pilots performing are based upon their listing as a side-stage act on Wikipedia. People just copy-and-pasted the acts mentioned there. Over the years, it contaminated listings on setlist.fm, various concert listing websites and, as I said before, also Below Empty.
How do I get to just two shows? Let’s see what STP’s band members have said in interviews over the years about Lollapalooza (which is not a lot!).
In a Q&A with Chris Mundy from Rolling Stone Magazine in 1994, Scott stated that he blew his voice out in rehearsals for ‘a couple of the Lollapalooza shows on the side stage’:
RS: What’s the worst gig you ever played?
Scott: “The first show we did right before the record came out. We got this offer to play a couple of the Lollapalooza shows on the side stage. I hadn’t sung all summer, and in rehearsals I blew my voice out. We went to do the show, got in the van, and when we got onstage, I had no voice. We only played three songs, and we left the stage, and I felt humiliated.“
Rolling Stone; February 10, 1994.
There are a couple of interesting things about this quote. ‘The record’ that Scott is referring to, is obviously the band’s debut ‘Core’, which was released through Atlantic Records on September 29, 1992. So the ‘couple of the Lollapalooza shows’ that he mentioned, have to be around September 1992. In addition Scott states that he ‘hadn’t sung all summer’, which implies that STP did not perform on any of the 28 dates this tour had in July and August of 1992.
The first four shows in September were in Atlanta (9/1), New Orleans (9/4), Rosenberg (9/5) and Dallas (9/6). None of the newspaper reviews of these shows mention STP. However, an article on page 82 of The Arizona Daily Star from September 4 specifically mentions STP as one of the second-stage acts for the Phoenix stop on September 8.
According to Robert DeLeo in a 2002 interview with KNAC.com, this was the band’s first show as Stone Temple Pilots:
“I remember the first gig we played as STP, and it was second stage in ’92 at Lollapalooza in Phoenix.”
Robert DeLeo, KNAC.com
This is most likely the show where the band only played three songs, according to Scott. Robert’s quote in itself should already put the matter to rest about all the Lollapalooza shows before Phoenix. The day after, they played a set at The Mason Jar in Phoenix.
The next specific mention of STP at Lollapalooza comes in the Los Angeles Times on September 10. This article specifically mentions the acts on the second stage for the last three stops of the tour in Irvine on September 11, 12 and 13. STP is not listed for the 11th and 13th, but only for the 12th.
All in all, there’s only real evidence of Stone Temple Pilots playing two shows on the Lollapalooza ’92 tour. Those two shows are:
- September 8, 1992 – Phoenix, Arizona @ Desert Sky Pavilion
- September 12, 1992 – Irvine, California @ Irvine Meadows
Fun fact: STP also played a second set on Saturday night 9/12 at the Newport Roadhouse in Costa Mesa, where they were on the bill with Green Apple Quickstep and opening acts Godhead and Black Creek. Robert DeLeo also mentions this in an interview with OC Weekly in October 2018:
And to be back in Orange County, CA is really special DeLeo says, as a particular performance at Irvine Meadows early on marked a high point at the beginning of their career.
excerpt from OC Weekly, October 2018
“There are a few venues that stick out and Irvine Meadows is one of them,” he says, “Because you know, that’s kind of where we got our start. We did Lollapalooza ‘92 in the daytime there and right after we did that we played a place in Newport Beach called the Roadhouse and we left to go on our first tour.”
Together with the club show at The Mason Jar in Phoenix on September 9 and the Newport Roadhouse on September 12, the two Lollapalooza dates are the first four known shows that the band played as ‘Stone Temple Pilots’ and are listed as such in the Below Empty Concert Chronology.
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