Stone Temple Pilots soar in State Theatre concert
by John Soeder / Plain Dealer Pop Music Critic
Wednesday May 21, 2008, 2:03 AM
The lights went down, a roar went up from the crowd and the DeLeo brothers -- Dean on guitar and Robert on bass -- and drummer Eric Kretz took their places. Then a silhouette emerged from the darkness, the red glow of a cigarette tracing the wiry figure's path to center stage.
Apparently, nobody told Scott Weiland about Ohio's ban on indoor smoking. He struck a defiant yet dashing pose in a fedora, shades and dark suit -- part "Pal Joey"-era Sinatra, part Thin White Duke-era Bowie -- as Stone Temple Pilots kicked off a sold-out concert Tuesday evening at Playhouse Square's State Theatre with an exhilarating "Big Empty."
"Time to wait too long / To wait too long / To wait too long," Weiland sang, a hard-rocking mantra intoned by one of the finest battered croons in the business.
For STP fans, the wait finally was over. This was only the third stop on the quartet's first tour in six years. It commenced Saturday at the Rock on the Range festival in Columbus.
For Weiland, 40, the Cleveland show was a homecoming. He was raised in Chagrin Falls.
"I grew up around here," he said early on. "It's a special place, and I'll remember it for the rest of my life."
He tossed aside his fashionable hat, revealing a new blond hairdo with streaks of red. As the night went on, he shed more layers of clothing. Ironically, he was shirtless by the time the band got around to bashing out "All in the Suit that You Wear."
No stranger to the occupational hazards of rock 'n' roll, Weiland recently parted ways with Velvet Revolver, whose other members blasted him for "increasingly erratic onstage behavior and personal problems" in a statement issued last month. He spent a few hours in a Van Nuys, Calif., jail last week for a DUI conviction.
He was in top form on this occasion, however, as were his co-Pilots. Everything went smoothly -- well, at least until Dean DeLeo's amp blew up in the middle of "Sour Girl."
"That's what you get for playing on 10 all the time," Weiland teased.
Not to worry. The problem was fixed in time for STP's guitar hero to deliver a Jimi Hendrix-style solo during "Too Cool Queenie."
Weiland & Co. dusted off a handful of lesser-known selections from their back pages, including "Lounge Fly" and "Crackerman." The latter number was one of several enhanced by Weiland's ever-popular "singing through a bullhorn" trick.
Rarities were scattered judiciously among impressive reminders of just how many hits STP had at the height of the grungy 1990s. "Plush," "Vasoline," "Interstate Love Song" and other crowd-pleasers from the flannel industry's boom years turned into thundering sing-alongs.
As far as comeback bids go, this one couldn't have been more convincing.
STP performed just under two hours, capping a three-song encore with an intense "Trippin' on a Hole in a Paper Heart." "I am, I am, I said / I'm not myself, but I'm not dead," Weiland howled triumphantly.
Long may he run -- and the reunited STP along with him.
