Stone Temple Pilots - Tennis Anyone?

The question keeps coming up in conversations. "Who's your favourite band?" My all-time favourite band is Aerosmith. Of course I could qualify that and say that I'm really only talking about everything up to Draw the Line and then Permanent Vacation. But for sheer power of material and a catalogue that has no blots on the landscape, I choose Stone Temple Pilots.

I first heard a 30 second snippet of "Sex Type Thing" on an advance cassette coming out of the label managers office in the summer of 1992. I ran in there and snatched the tape to listen to the riff over and over again. In those days there was no internet yet and finding out information about unknown bands was tough. I didn't care. Over the next couple of weeks I played that snippet to whoever would listen. By the time the advance of the first STP record came in I was a full-on devotee.

A few months later the band played their first Toronto show at the Rivoli. It was jammed and it was loud. So loud in fact that they blew the PA speakers. I remember a midget crowd surfing that night. This was six months before "Plush" came out and everything changed for the band.

When Stone Temple Pilots played at the Masonic Temple (now the MTV Canada studios) on Purple, they blew the PA again. They started wondering if they were jinxed in this town. Throughout the 90's STP kept coming back to Toronto. they opened for the Stones here and they played an unforgettable Molson "Blind date" show around the time everyone had thought they had broken up.

In 2001 the band came to Toronto for the last time. We brought them to town to do press for the album Shangri La Dee Da. They were here for four days. They played in the MuchMusic parking lot and Weiland was full-on Iggy that night. We took the band out for dinner and I toasted them as the finest live band on the planet. But let's go back a couple of days...

I met the band at the airport. It was always a special treat to spend time with the DeLeo brothers so i was really looking forward to this trip. When the band came out of the terminal they were all full of hugs and ready to work. Weiland looked great. He came off the plane with a tennis sweater draped around his neck, a hat tilted to the side and a tennis racket folded under his arm. In the car, on the way to the hotel, he said he'd be looking for a game. Well, I was game and arranged a court for the next morning. he assured me that he'd be ready.

I was psyched. A chance to play tennis with one of my favourite rock singers was a treat I would cherish for a very long time. As promised I showed up at the hotel at 8:30am to pick him up and, as I should have suspected, there was no sign of him in the lobby and no answer in the room. After 4 or 5 calls to his room I called his road manager who said that they had all gone out the night before and he probably wouldn't get up until noon. Oh well. I called to cancel the court and changed out of my tennis togs. Later that day, when Weiland showed up to begin his interviews he apologized about sleeping in.

One of the amazing things about Weiland is his ability to change into the Rock Star when the time comes. When he's not "on" he can blend into any social situation and no one would notice him there but when he walks into and interview or onto a stage he becomes ten feet tall. With Weiland as the centre of attention, Dean DeLeo is able to weave a series of delectable hard rock riffs while his brother Rob and drummer Eric hold down a monster rhythm.

They showed up out of nowhere and then they disappeared. Gone but never forgotten. Long live STP!