Purple turns 30!
To all my fellow STP fans…
This memorable album was released on June 7, 1994.
This is the cover art for the album "Purple" by the artist Stone Temple Pilots.
1994 has an argument to be one of the greatest years in music history and STP made their contribution. Their 1994 album, building on the foundation laid by the band's debut album “Core” (1992), was a major commercial success, debuting at No. 1 on the Billboard 200. It remained at the top of the chart for three weeks, eventually selling over six million copies. The album's first single, "Big Empty" [one of my favorites], made its debut at STP's “MTV Unplugged” acoustic performance in 1993. The song would later appear on the soundtrack to the 1994 Brandon Lee film “The Crow”, which also reached number one on the Billboard charts. While Purple features elements of grunge like its predecessor, Core, the album displays the band developing a sound influenced by other genres, such as the psychedelic rock evident in "Lounge Fly" and "Silvergun Superman", the country vibes of "Interstate Love Song" and blues rock elements of "Big Empty".
Source: Wikipedia.org
To this day, when I hear songs from the “Purple” album, including “Big Empty”, “Pretty Penny”, “Still Remains”, and “Vasoline”, I am immediately taken back to that memorable Summer thirty years ago. Arguably, music has a special ability to defy the restraints of space and time.
“The Summer of 1994 was a crazy, fun time in my life. Work hard, play hard... On the music front, in addition to weekly guitar lessons, I attended a half-a-dozen concerts [Stone Temple Pilots included], a handful of smaller gigs, and witnessed (albeit via MTV) Woodstock ‘94, which showcased several of the same bands that I saw live and in-person throughout that memorable summer.”
- Woodard, Anthony. “Driving with binoculars...”. Mar. 16, 2023
Stone Temple Pilots, along with Alice In Chains and Soundgarden, were (are) my favorite bands from the Grunge/Alternative Rock era. Their music served as the soundtrack for that time in my life and I will always be thankful. They inspired us, consoled us, perhaps even defined us; our generation.
“By chance, a couple of months later, while I was waiting in between classes at the student center of our local community college, I met a girl that I remembered from high school. She had an acoustic guitar [go figure...] and as we conversed, we naturally began to talk about music a little. She then showed me how to pluck the main riff to “Plush” by Stone Temple Pilots...”
- Woodard, Anthony. “For Those About to Rock…”. Feb. 16, 2023
Nearly twenty years later, that song from STP’s debut album (Core) was the first song our band ever performed live. With “Plush”, we won a local “Battle of the Bands”, along with a “People’s Choice” award!
The one that started it all…
Toxic A$$ets performing “Plush” by Stone Temple Pilots at the historic Gem Theater.
It is not lost on me that the front men for the three iconic bands mentioned above are no longer with us. The dark and mysterious undertones in their music ultimately surfaced. We will almost certainly be faced with adversity, and unfortunately in some cases, tragedy and heartbreak. The circumstances may be sudden or may have been haunting us for many years, like a stalker. How each of us address these situations or events, is a personal journey that hopefully results in recovery, and even, growth. Sadly, sometimes it doesn’t… STP lead singer Scott Weiland lost his long battle with drug addiction at the age of 48.
On December 3, 2015, he was found dead of an accidental drug overdose on his tour bus in Bloomington, Minnesota. He had been on tour with the Wildabouts. News of Weiland's death quickly spread throughout the Internet, with many of his musical peers, including his former band members, along with fans and music critics throughout the world, sharing their condolences, tributes, and memories. A day following his death, his former bandmates in Stone Temple Pilots issued a statement saying that he was ‘gifted beyond words’ but acknowledging his struggle with substance abuse, calling it ‘part of [his] curse.’ A private funeral for Weiland was held at Hollywood Forever Cemetery on December 11, 2015, in Los Angeles. Members of both Stone Temple Pilots and Velvet Revolver attended. Chris Kushner, the wife of Velvet Revolver guitarist Dave Kushner, wrote on her Instagram page following the funeral, ‘A very sad day when (you) bury a friend. He was a good man. Don't believe everything (you) read. Remember, we were all there.’
Source: Wikipedia.org
Scott Weiland
1967 - 2015
Stone Temple Pilots circa 1994; Weiland (pictured front). Photo Credit: Ken Lubas. Source: latimes.com
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