Like most bands clumped under the ‘grunge’ banner, by late ’95 Stone Temple Pilots were sick of their perception. “Y’know, play tennis, drink margaritas, ‘I just had an idea, let’s go jam…’”

“Recording and living together in a house just lent itself to a more playful atmosphere,” he says. But Kretz too is at pains to point out that when the days at Westerly Ranch were good, they were some of the band’s happiest times. It falls to Kretz to give the full picture, to explain the heartbreak and frustration when what he calls the singer’s “demon” took charge. And to hear the guitarist’s rose-tinted account of making Tiny Music, you might imagine these sessions as a blissful summer camp without a cloud in the sky. Before our interview, we are asked by management not to push for the gory details of Weiland’s addictions. DeLeo doesn’t want to talk about the lows. It was this unsettling stop/start pattern that bled into the sessions for Tiny Music. In June, in a Rolling Stone interview, he was repentant: “I’m going to do something about it before it kills me or fucks up everything in my life.” He escaped lightly, with just a year’s probation. Weeks later, in May, he was arrested for possession of cocaine and heroin. In April 1995 the recently married singer told Spin magazine that “drugs fuck things up… I’m trying to make the best out of the time that I do have right now”.

At the time of Tiny Music… Songs From The Vatican Gift Shop, Weiland could be either side of the coin, depending on the day.

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