Stone Temple Pilots Soundgarden Easy Like Sunday Morning

Songfacts®:

• The lyrics 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.

• The title never appears in the lyric, which is also true of the Core tracks "Sex Type Thing" and "Naked Sunday."

• The line, "Where you going with the mask I found?" is often misheard as "Where you going with the master plan?" >>

  Suggestion credit:
  Elliot - St. Louis, MO

• 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."

• This won the 1993 Grammy Award for Best Hard Rock Performance with Vocal. It's the group's only Grammy win.

• Core was the only STP album where vocalist Scott Weiland was identified only by his last name. Some critics took this as a sign of pretense, mocking it in reviews that compared the band unfavorably to the likes of Pearl Jam, Soundgarden and Nirvana. With many grunge bands being snatched up by record labels and foisted on the public at this time, it's understandable why critics were wary, but the Core album would later be vindicated as a classic of the era.

• The video was directed by Josh Taft, who also did the videos for "Sex Type Thing" and "Lady Picture Show." The "Plush" video got a lot of airplay on MTV and earned Stone Temple Pilots the MTV Video Music Award for Best New Artist in 1993.

• When they made the Core album, Stone Temple Pilots were motivated by fear they wouldn't get a chance to make another one. "When you get signed to a major label, it's scary, and you don't know what's going to happen next," Robert DeLeo told Songfacts. "So it was great that that first record allowed us to make a second one, and a third one. I look at that as a really good time right then. Ambitious."

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Source: https://www.songfacts.com/facts/stone-temple-pilots/plush

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