Ask a casual music fan from the nineties where the biggest grunge bands came from, and you'll get a one-word answer: Seattle. It’s the standard narrative. Nirvana, Pearl Jam, Soundgarden, and Alice in Chains all carried the Emerald City flag. But then there’s the outlier.
Where are Stone Temple Pilots from?
If you look at the back of a vintage Core CD or scroll through a quick bio, the answer seems simple enough. San Diego. But like most things involving Scott Weiland and the DeLeo brothers, the reality is a bit more nomadic, a little messy, and surprisingly rooted in the East Coast.
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The Jersey-California Connection
Honestly, calling them a "San Diego band" is a bit of a stretch if you’re looking at where the DNA of the band actually started. Robert and Dean DeLeo, the architectural geniuses behind those massive riffs in "Interstate Love Song" and "Vasoline," aren't Southern California natives at all. They grew up in Montclair, New Jersey.
Robert headed west in 1984 with basically nothing but a guitar and a thousand bucks. He ended up in Los Angeles, not San Diego. That's where he met Scott Weiland.
The story goes that they met at a Black Flag concert in Long Beach in 1985. There's also that legendary, possibly apocryphal story that they realized they were dating the same woman. Instead of fighting, they started a band. It’s the kind of rock 'n' roll origin story that sounds too perfect to be true, but it gave birth to a group called Swing.
Why San Diego Claims Them
So, why does everyone associate them with San Diego?
By the late eighties, the band—then called Mighty Joe Young—was gigging hard. They found their drummer, Eric Kretz, playing in a club in Long Beach. But the San Diego connection solidified when Dean DeLeo finally joined. Dean was older, had a "real" career in San Diego, and was hesitant to jump back into the musician's life of ramen and empty bars.
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The guys eventually moved down to San Diego to be closer to Dean and to escape the suffocating "hair metal" scene that was still choking the life out of the Sunset Strip in Los Angeles.
In San Diego, they weren't just another band in a sea of spandex. They built a massive local following at clubs like the Belly Up and the Casbah. When Atlantic Records finally came knocking in 1992, the band was firmly established as a powerhouse of the San Diego circuit. They were the big fish in a smaller pond, which helped them develop that distinct, muscular sound before the world ever heard a note of "Plush."
The Great Grunge Controversy
When Core dropped in 1992, the critics were brutal.
They were called "grunge clones." People accused them of being a manufactured corporate product designed to cash in on the Seattle sound. Even Rolling Stone readers famously voted them both the "Best New Band" and the "Worst New Band" in the same year.
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The "where are Stone Temple Pilots from" question became a weapon. Critics argued that because they weren't from the Pacific Northwest, they were "fake."
It was a weird time for music snobbery. If you didn't grow up in the rain wearing a thrift-store flannel, you weren't "authentic." But STP didn't sound like Nirvana. They sounded like Led Zeppelin and The Doors filtered through a nineties lens. They had more in common with 70s stadium rock than the punk-fueled rage of the Seattle scene.
Evolution and Legacy
The band eventually shut everyone up by releasing Purple and Tiny Music... Songs from the Vatican Gift Shop.
They moved away from the heavy, churning riffs of their debut and leaned into psychedelic pop, bossa nova, and glam rock. You can't really call a band a "clone" when they're writing songs as weird and beautiful as "And So I Know" or "Big Bang Baby."
Sadly, the story of STP is inseparable from the personal struggles of Scott Weiland. His battles with addiction are well-documented, leading to various hiatuses, side projects like Velvet Revolver, and eventually his tragic death in 2015. The band soldiered on, briefly with Chester Bennington of Linkin Park and now with Jeff Gutt.
What to Do Next
If you're looking to dive deeper into the STP rabbit hole beyond the radio hits, here’s how to actually appreciate their history:
- Listen to the "Mighty Joe Young" Demos: You can find these online. They show a much funkier, almost Red Hot Chili Peppers-esque side of the band that disappeared once they got "heavy."
- Watch the 1993 MTV Unplugged Session: This is arguably Weiland at his peak—charismatic, vocally incredible, and proof that the band had serious musical chops.
- Visit the Belly Up Tavern: If you’re ever in Solana Beach, California, go see a show. It’s one of the places where the band actually cut their teeth and became the Stone Temple Pilots we know today.
Knowing where Stone Temple Pilots are from isn't just about a point on a map. It’s about a New Jersey rhythm section meeting an Orange County frontman in the middle of a dying LA hair-metal scene and finding their voice in the surf towns of San Diego. They were outsiders to the Seattle scene, and in the end, that’s probably why their music has aged better than almost anyone else's from 그 era.