“I don’t know too many people that could have handled that pressure coming at you at such speed. It can be a deadly thing”: How grunge’s ‘worst’ band wrote the hit song that silenced the critics

Stone Temple Pilots posing for a photograph in 1993.

By the spring of 1994, Stone Temple Pilots had notched four million sales of their debut album, Core, yet found themselves dismissed as the grunge scene’s arch opportunists: lambasted for claiming a place alongside the kingpins of the Seattle explosion, but coming from San Diego. In the eyes of their detractors – and there were many – this was all too convenient. Although the band tried to draw the positives from the situation, being hailed as the Best New Band of ’94 by the readers of Rolling Stone but also its Worst New Band by the same magazine’s critics is bound to screw with your head.

While out on the road on a 14-month campaign for Core, the group had written an even more colourful and inventive set of songs. With these they were confident of making a follow-up album big and important enough to free the band from the ‘grunge’ tag.