“After years of taking heroin, it becomes this black ooze that covers your heart and you can’t feel the music any more": How Stone Temple Pilots and Scott Weiland gave it one last chance with their self-titled sixth album

Stone Temple Pilots posing for a photograph in front of a wooden door in 2010.

Few bands have had such a chequered career as Stone Temple Pilots. Emerging during the early ’90s grunge boom and racking up two mega-selling albums in 1992’s Core and 1994’s Purple, the ensuing years saw multiple splits, reunions and, in the case of late singer Scott Weiland, struggles with addiction and run-ins with the law. In 2010, when Classic Rock caught up with them as they released their self-titled sixth album, they found the original members back together having made an uneasy truce with Weiland – although they didn’t know at the time that it would turn out to be the last they made with their original singer.