Today marks the 20th anniversary of Stone Temple Pilots’ well-known show at the House Of Blues in Las Vegas on August 12, 1999. The show was recorded for MTV Spankin’ Live and parts of it were aired shortly after the concert in a tumultuous year for the band that ended with Scott Weiland behind bars.
Scott had spent the first half of 1998 as a solo artist touring his ’12 Bar Blues’ album, admittedly spiraling more and more out of control on heroin and cocaine as the tour went on, until his very public May 31 arrest in New York City. The tour was over. The solo career was over – for a while. He went off to Rehab.
STP reunited in January ’99 with a sober Scott and started writing and rehearsing for their next album. They were cautiously hopeful at the start, playing an unannounced invitation-only show at the Viper Room on March 16 to let the world know the band was back together. However, the work on ‘No.4’ stopped and restarted several times as Scott fell and got back up again.
STP was finally finishing the recording of the album over the summer when Scott overdosed on heroin on the 7th of July. It was near-fatal and he was hospitalized and detoxed in rehab. Surprisingly, STP played an unannounced 7-song set at the Dragonfly in Hollywood just ten days later on the 17th.
The overdose and hospitalization were a violation of his probation on a 1997 possession conviction and Scott had to appear in Judge Larry Paul Fidler’s Los Angeles County courtroom early in the morning of August 13.
Despite Scott’s legal issues, STP played the House Of Blues in Las Vegas on August 12, for Miller Genuine Draft’s “Blind Date” series, in which contest winners are taken to shows by surprise performers.
Dean DeLeo remembers the look on Weiland’s face at the final rehearsal: “It was obvious what was going through the guy’s mind. He was a wreck, and it takes a lot for Scott to look like a wreck. We threw the crew out of the rehearsal room and said, ‘Is there anything you want to say? Can we do anything?’ He just goes, ‘I can’t think of three people I’d rather be with on my last night of freedom.'”
At the time, there was only one fan review submitted to Below Empty. Jason said:
“Epic, what a great show. Tenacious D was booed off stage as no one really knew who or what was going on at that time. We were flown in from all accross the country and had rooms at Mandalay Bay. Miller provided free beer for everyone, a bucket full in our rooms, several at the pre party at RA followed by 5 beers at the show. One of the highlites was the parade of chaos as they walked us from RA to the House Of Blues. Over 1000 drunk people walking the tunnel from hotel to hotel had to be one heck of a sight.”
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.
Lollapalooza ’92 Tour Poster
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!).
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.
Arizona Daily Star, September 4, 1992.
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.
Los Angeles Times, September 10, 1992.
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. “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.”
excerpt from OC Weekly, October 2018
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.
Questions? Comments? Additional information? Please leave a message! Thanks!
Back in 2004, a few weeks before RCA Records released Velvet Revolver’s debut album ‘Contraband’, popular peer-to-peer filesharing networks were flooded with audio files that had names of songs from the album. Everyone who downloaded them got a little surprise: this was definitely Scott Weiland’s voice, but the music didn’t sound anything like the Velvet Revolver songs that we knew then.
It was actually a strategy for record labels and big name artist management at the time to flood the internet with fake files, to make it virtually impossible to download illegal copies of the real thing once the album ‘leaked’. Keep in mind that in 2004 there were no valid online platforms to purchase or stream digital music legally like there are today. People bought CD’s. And if you wanted mp3’s, you had to rip them from your discs or download them from sources like Kazaa and Gnutella.
The “Contraband Poetry” was produced and recorded at Lavish Studios by Scott Weiland (vocals), Douglas Grean (keyboards, programming, guitar) and Michael Weiland (guitar, bass). The six recordings, initially posted as loops with different random running times, were never included on any commercial release.
The fragments are:
“My Thoughts Are All Diseased” (1:18)
“You Pushed My Buttons” (1:36)
“On A Cold Winter’s Night” (2:54)
“You Give Me Mixed Messages” (0:40)
“On A Cold Winter’s Night” (2:54)
“If I Were A Woman” (0:34)
Lyrics and YouTube links are posted below:
“My Thoughts Are All Diseased” (1:18)
My thoughts are all diseased I carry them all like cancer they spread like syphilis and they’re sold like cigarettes and then judged like heretics
Burn, witch, burn! You’re a God of men A nothing, a void I need a way out now There is no way out
Give my life to save my children But need to live for them to thrive
Is happiness really a warm gun, or warm rum?
“You Pushed My Buttons” (1:36)
You pushed my buttons I pushed the steel throught my skin I’m under siege, the war begins
You take my rights, I’m at the brink We attack, we bleed I hate the hate, that war has caused
Only love can stop it now.
But fear the seven nation army bent on destruction and it knows no fear and it knows no fear and it knows no fear and it knows no fear
“On A Cold Winter’s Night” (2:54)
On A Cold Winters Night I Lost My Soul And I Try To Justify All Those Who Die In The Name Of Him And His Flag
Hmmmm Hmmmm Hmmmm Hmmmm
You Got To Know It’s Coming You Got To Know It’s Coming You Got To Know It’s Coming Down
“You Give Me Mixed Messages” (0:40)
You give me mixed messages My broken heart is stitched together
I’m strung out on you Ripped, wrecked, roped and hung Blowing in the wind
The representative flag of the United States of Altered Consciousness
“Money Owns Money” (0:32)
Money owns money Used to own dreams First class piece of journalist me Don’t know ‘m self Don’t know ‘s name The gist shipped and back off to the warfront again
“If I Were A Woman” (0:34)
If I were a woman, I’d be a Jezebel Junkie And told the nuns that washed me clean of all of my sins:
I’d give my life to the lord Jesus Christ Or maybe have a child And then meet myself in the mirror again”
I just recently found out that the February 26, 1993 performance for “2 Meter Sessies” (a 90’s tv show in The Netherlands) is the same as the one for “Countdown Cafe” (radio show). I had been looking for years for a separate set of ‘Creep’ and ‘Plush’ from the latter show, but was unable to find it. Now I know why.
Also found out something even more interesting. This session was recorded when Scott and Eric were on a promotional tour of Europe, the band was not touring there at that time. There’s more than a handful related European music magazine interviews with either Eric or Scott or both, none with Robert or Dean.
Now about this “2 Meter Sessies” performance, I have never been able to find video footage, even though I know it has aired locally back in 1993. It must exist on some Dutch person’s old VHS tapes from ’93.
I read about it again in an article from a Dutch magazine Aardschok Metal Hammer (full article here). Eric says:
AMH: You also did an acoustic performance for ‘Countdown Cafe’.
Eric: “Yeah, that was fun. I played guitar instead of drums. A song like ‘Plush’ was written on acoustic and it’s always refreshing to be able to play a song for people in its original form. If it sounds good on acoustic, it will sound good through amps as well. It can be quite different the other way around. I love Ministry, but feel that any one of their songs won’t have the same effect when it’s done acoustically.”
I quickly looked up the audio recordings from this performance. And immediately I noticed something that totally went unnoticed before: The guitar. It’s not Dean’s style of playing. Not Robert’s. Hell, even some of the chords are not totally right. But it’s Scott singing. And also Scott singing the backing vocal overdubs usually sung by Rob (on ‘ Creep’). I Still have to check out the details of the guitar work on Creep. Must be Eric also.
Check out the performance of ‘Plush’ and ‘Creep’ here:
All in all something worth mentioning on here. What do you guys think?
