Stone Temple Pilots guitarist Dean DeLeo
“You know that thing your mom used to say to you when you were little?” Dean DeLeo asks Guitar World with a Iaugh. “It’s true—time really does fly.”
In this case, the amount of time that the guitarist is referring to having flown by is exactly 25 years, which is how long ago his band, Stone Temple Pilots, released their smash debut, Core.
In celebration of the milestone anniversary, the album is now being reissued in a 4CD/DVD/LP Super Deluxe Edition that features a remastered version of the original 12-track effort along with rarities, unreleased demos and B-sides, live recordings, music videos and other goodies.
First released on September 29, 1992, Core arrived in the days just after hard rock had transitioned from the big-hair, shred-crazed approach that characterized the music in the Eighties to the grunge and alternative sound that dominated its early Nineties iteration. And Stone Temple Pilots—which also included DeLeo’s younger brother, Robert, on bass, drummer Eric Kretz and frontman Scott Weiland (known at the time by his surname only)—quickly became one of the biggest rock bands of that moment.
Throughout 1993 the band racked up hit song after hit song, from the darkly aggressive and excessively grungy “Sex Type Thing,” to the swirling technicolor alt-rock of “Plush,” the downcast acoustic balladry of “Creep” to the throbbing grooves of “Wicked Garden.” Core, meanwhile, to date has sold more than eight million copies.
On the heels of that breakout success, Stone Temple Pilots went on to dominate the rock scene for much of the remainder of the decade; their follow-up to Core, 1994’s Purple, debuted at the top of the Billboard charts.
The 2000s, however,