Stone Temple Pilots - Plush
Lead singer Scott Weiland wrote Interstate Love Song about his relationship troubles and his growing heroin addiction. When he wrote it, he thought about what kind of a liar he had become towards his fiancé, Janina Castaneda, and how he had promised to stay off drugs when they went to Atlanta to record Stone Temple Pilots' second album, Purple. He didn't keep that promise, but in phone calls, would tell Janina that everything was OK. The song is written from Janina's perspective, with Weiland imagining her seeing right through his lies.
In Stone Temple Pilots' appearance on VH1's Storytellers, Scott Weiland explained that the band would travel in a Winnebago that pulled a trailer with their equipment. When band members wanted some quiet, they would go in the trailer with a walkie-talkie. Robert DeLeo was back there with his guitar one day when he came up with the music for the song, and he used the walkie-talkie to call to the band and play it for them. Weiland added: "The words are about the lies I was trying to conceal while making the Purple record."
Like many STP songs, the title is not mentioned in the lyric. It was an "interstate" love in the literal sense because Scott Weiland wrote it in Atlanta while his fiancé was back in California.
The band's bass player, Robert DeLeo, wrote the music to this song. He says it started out as a bossa nova.
"Interstate Love Song" is one of Stone Temple Pilots' biggest songs. It was huge on the various "Alternative" radio stations that were cropping up in the early '90s, and it also got a lot of airplay on Top 40 stations, where it shared space on playlists with the likes of Gin Blossoms and Sheryl Crow.
At this time, the band's songs weren't sold as singles in the United States, which encouraged album sales. Their label, Atlantic Records, still meticulously promoted the singles to radio stations in an effort to keep STP on the airwaves as long as possible.
To play up the liar theme, the music video features a man who emerges into the modern day from a silent film, and finds his nose growing throughout the clip. Kevin Kerslake, who also did the STP video for "Vasoline," was the director. From: https://www.songfacts.com/facts/stone-temple-pilots/interstate-love-song
The lyrics to Plush were inspired, in part, by an unfortunate news story in Stone Temple Pilots' hometown of San Diego, California about a missing young woman who was later discovered dead by local law enforcement ("And I feel, when the dogs begin to smell her..."). At a concert in Columbus, Ohio on May 17, 2008, lead singer Scott Weiland said that he and STP drummer Eric Kretz wrote the lyrics in a hot tub after hearing the story. Weiland has described the song as "a metaphor for a lost obsessive relationship."
This was STP's breakthrough hit off of their major label debut album. Like all of their songs of the era, it is a band composition. When Songfacts spoke with drummer Eric Kretz in 2013, he said it was a very collaborative and energetic time for the band in terms of songwriting. "There was enthusiasm and excitement and everyone was in the room and participating creatively, artistically," he explained. "It's the most fun time to be in a band when everyone has the same ideas and everyone has the same goals."
Bassist Robert DeLeo came up with the riff for this song in the back of a U-Haul truck the band was using for a local tour. The song's instantly recognizable chord structure was inspired by DeLeo's love of ragtime music.
The most widely broadcast version of this song is an acoustic rendition that starts with Scott Weiland saying, "This is a song called 'Plush.'" Thanks to "Sex Type Thing," the group was invited on the MTV metal show Headbangers Ball for an interview. Guitarist Dean DeLeo suggested that he bring his acoustic guitar so they could perform this song on the show, and the network agreed.
The show was recorded on December 5, 1992 after the band had finished a month of concerts opening for Rage Against the Machine. They took a plane to New York and ingested some pills to help them sleep. When they got to their hotel, DeLeo and Weiland both got sick, but they made it to the MTV Studios for the 6 a.m. taping, as Weiland recalled, "high as zombies."
In this altered state, DeLeo and Weiland performed the song, delivering a far more relaxed and poignant version than is heard on the album. This version also turned out to be quite radio-friendly, and lots of stations started playing it. This version made #39 on the US Airplay chart on August 14, 1993 and stirred a great deal of interest in the band, although listeners who bought the Core album expecting similarly mellow fare were in for an unpleasant surprise. In America, no singles from Core were made available for purchase, since Atlantic Records liked selling $16 albums more than $2 singles.
Scott Weiland told the English music publication NME that the band's name came from Scientifically Treated Petroleum - petrol. He explained: "STP came from the image of STP oil treatment, which was always a powerful image. Richard Petty, the famous NASCAR racing driver, had the STP logo on his car and he was always a sort of renegade. We were Shirley Temple's Pussy but we had to change. I think it was Dean (Deleo - STP guitarist or Robert (DeLeo - STP bassist) who said, 'How about Stereo Temple Pirates?' and then we decided on Stone Temple Pilots. It wasn't a very quick process." From: https://www.songfacts.com/facts/stone-temple-pilots/plush
