Stone Temple Pilots

Stone Temple Pilots started under the name Swing, then Mighty Joe Young, before signing to Atlantic Records and adopting the Stone Temple Pilots name. Formed in San Diego in 1990 around vocalist Scott Weiland, brothers Robert and Dean DeLeo on bass and guitar, and drummer Eric Kretz, the band's 1992 debut Core rode the grunge wave hard, driven by 'Plush' and 'Sex Type Thing,' and by the decade's end had helped the band sell more than 18 million albums in the US alone.

The sound loosened into psychedelia and glam on Purple and Tiny Music... Songs from the Vatican Gift Shop, then pushed further into bossa nova and country on No. 4 and 2001's Shangri-La Dee Da before the band split acrimoniously in 2003. Members scattered into other projects, most notably Weiland fronting Velvet Revolver, before reconvening for a reunion tour in 2008 and releasing a self-titled sixth album in 2010.

Weiland's addiction problems repeatedly disrupted the band, and he was fired in February 2013. Linkin Park's Chester Bennington stepped in that May, recording the High Rise EP, before leaving amicably in November 2015. Weiland died the following month; Bennington died two years later.

In 2016 the band ran an online audition for a new singer, naming Jeff Gutt as their vocalist in November 2017. Gutt has since fronted two studio albums, a second self-titled record in 2018 and Perdida in 2020, continuing a catalogue that has moved through psychedelic rock, bossa nova and country.