Stone Temple Pilots relive glory years

During a recent phone call to promote Stone Temple Pilots performing its 1992 debut, "Core," in its entirety during an upcoming livestream event, guitarist Dean DeLeo gets lost in the moment when thinking about the multiplatinum album's master tapes. "I was just looking at one of the two-inch reels," said DeLeo, calling from Ventura County, north of Los Angeles. "You have 'Plush,' 'Sex Type Thing,' 'Dead & Bloated' and 'Wet My Bed.' "With 'Sex Type Thing' being the first single and 'Plush' being the second, just looking at that reel, that was lifechanging for us." The Stone Temple Pilots livestream performance of "Core" takes place tonight at 8 on nugs.tv. While the grunge album includes other hits such as "Wicked Garden" and "Creep," there are a few album tracks that required the band — which today features founding members DeLeo, bassist Robert DeLeo and drummer Eric Kretz with vocalist Jeff Gutt in the place of late Scott Weiland — to revisit before performing. "It's funny, I think the last time we played 'Naked Sunday' was on 'Saturday Night Live' in maybe 1993," DeLeo said. "Of course, 'Where The River Goes' we haven't played that in many, many years. So it's real nice creatively speaking as a guitar player to kind of jump back into that world. "What I find really interesting about it is how I played back then. My style has changed a little bit. It's just neat to hear the nuances of the stuff I did nearly 30 years ago." The impetus behind Stone Temple Pilots doing a live stream concert is that the world finds itself, obviously, in a pandemic with the concert industry basically nonexistent. DeLeo said originally the outfit had 100 gigs on the books for 2020 in support of "Perdida," which is the group's second studio release with Gutt. The first leg of a tour earlier this year was cancelled due to the singer's back injury. Then COVID-19 cancelled the remaining dates. For diehard fans, the tour setlist was also looking to be a deep dive into its catalog with DeLeo saying Stone Temple Pilots was working up "I Got You" and "Atlanta" from 1999's "No. 4" and "Hello It's Late" from 2001's "Shangri-La Dee Da." "We had been in rehearsals for a little while before things went sideways, but our stuff was sounding good," DeLeo said. "I hope to really indeed get back to that particular tour." That itinerary would have more than likely included a return to Cleveland, where the group played last fall. During the band's numerous visits to Northeast Ohio over the decades, DeLeo said the group has at different times visited the Rock & Roll Hall of Fame. "It's been a while," DeLeo said. "It seems like whenever we get into town they know we're there and somebody from our camp gets a call and we get invited down. They're very sweet and kind to us." When asked about perhaps one day receiving a different type of call from the Rock Hall, the guitarist played coy. Like clean the floors or wipe the walls down?" DeLeo laughed. It was pointed out that Stone Temple Pilots' resume as a Grammy Award-winning band with more than 50 million albums sold meets the most basic induction criteria. "Oh, gosh, I don't know," DeLeo said. "It would be nice. That would be quite an honor." Contact John Benson at Ndiffrence@att.net.