Source Weekly Chats with Stone Temple Pilots
Creative Rocket Fuel: A chat with Stone Temple Pilots
Written by Dave Gil de Rubio
Published in Source Weekly
Frisson. Defined as a sudden, fleeting physiological response to powerful stimuli like music, art or emotional scenes, frisson causes goosebumps and a tingling sensation. It is also the kind of creative rocket fuel Stone Temple Pilots founding member and guitarist Dean DeLeo has tapped into since STP emerged from the San Diego music scene back in 1992.
Along with frontman Jeff Gutt, DeLeo’s bassist brother Robert DeLeo and drummer Eric Kretz, the elder DeLeo and his bandmates have been out on the road with Godsmack and special guest Dorothy on The Rise of Rock World Tour 2026, which includes a stop at Hayden Homes Amphitheater Sept. 22. For STP, this string of dates is a reunion of sorts with Godsmack, as the two outfits toured together back in the late ‘90s/early 2000s. DeLeo has fond memories of that experience.
“We hit it off nicely,” DeLeo recalled in a late-April interview. “It was a nice, mellow kind of scene and those cats are really, really sweet. They’ve got that East Coast [vibe] coursing through their veins. It’s always nice when you get out on a tour with someone and everything just jibes and falls into place.”
With STP having made its hay in the ‘90s as a multi-platinum act, the band has a hefty catalog of eight albums that includes such classic platters as “Core” (1992), “Purple” (1994) and “Shangri-La Dee Da” (2001). DeLeo promises a tight set with a few surprises that fans can look forward to experiencing.
“We got together and worked up a bunch of songs we haven’t played in quite some time to kind of alternate the set a little bit from night to night,” DeLeo explained. “We only get an hour, so we have to cram as much as we can in. There are certain songs that we kind of have to play. ‘Big Empty,’ ‘Plush’ and ‘Interstate [Love Song]’ are going to be in the set every night. We’re not going to mess with that. We’re going to pull other things in and out. I know Eric is saying he wants to work up ‘Pruno,’ which is always fun to play. I really dig that track.”
For DeLeo, his musical journey began in a household in the quaint New Jersey Shore town of Point Pleasant, where he and brother Robert had a very “Brady Bunch” family situation that found them being two of seven siblings, of which the remaining five came from each of their parents’ prior marriages. Suffice it to say, music was a cornerstone of the DeLeo household.
“While Robert and I were the only ones who played music, everyone was a huge fan of music,” DeLeo said. “We grew up in a household where out of my brother’s room, I was hearing [Jimi] Hendrix firsthand at nine years old. I didn’t quite understand it at that age, but I was really blown away. I had ever really heard anything like that. My brother would be playing The Moody Blues, Hendrix, The Doors, and then my sisters were playing Cat Stevens, Crosby, Stills, Nash & Young, Neil Young and a lot of the singer/songwriter stuff.”
DeLeo’s musical passions found him buying a Fender Mustang and a Danelectro amp. Growing up in the fervent South Jersey boardwalk music scene of the late 1970s/early ‘80s, both DeLeo brothers cut their musical teeth in this formidable proving ground.
The ’90s saw STP sell 18 million albums in the United States and 40 million globally over that decade. That level of success also found the band’s original vocalist, the late Scott Weiland, grappling with substance abuse issues with the band separating and reuniting until Weiland’s passing from an accidental drug overdose in 2015. While not omnipresent, the band’s first singer’s legacy was palpable when STP co-headlined with Live last year.
“For the first time in our career, the summer of ’25, we did the ‘Purple’ record, top to bottom, just as it appears on the record,” DeLeo said. “And that was really, really fun. It was a really nice tour and it just brought back a lot of great memories. You’re just up there playing those songs and feeling the nostalgia. I just can’t help but to think of Scott and feeling him. That was really fun doing that.”
The musical itch the DeLeos need to scratch has yielded different musical projects in between STP projects and tours, with Robert working on his second solo album and Dean juggling two side gigs, Trip the Witch (with Tom Bukovac) and One More Satellite (with Pete Shoulder). But STP remains the siblings’ main gig. With this year being the 30th anniversary of the 1996 album, “Tiny Music…Songs From the Vatican Gift Shop,” 2027 could very well see STP on a tour on which they’ll play that album in its entirely and possibly even work up some new material.
“I would love to do a ‘Tiny Music’ tour and do that record top to bottom,” DeLeo said. “It’s new for us because there are a lot of songs on that record we’ve never even played live.”
