LOST & FOUND

“You probably wouldn’t believe me, but I wrote ‘Meatplow’ [from 1994’s Purple] on an acoustic. It’d be the last song on earth you’d think started out that way, but I happened to be sitting there, I felt this little kind of thang come overme, I grabbed the nearest guitar, and out came that lick.” — Dean DeLeo

STONE TEMPLE PILOTS’ new record, Perdida, is the first full-length effort from the long-running rock act to have been written and recorded primarily on acoustic instruments. But as bassist (and sometimes guitarist) Robert DeLeo explains, even when the band is at their electrified heaviest, their music always beats with an unplugged heart.

“For me, all songs start on an acoustic,” DeLeo says. “Even going all the way back, whether it was ‘Plush’ or ‘Interstate Love Song,’ I wrote those on acoustic and that’s where it all began.”

His brother, STP guitarist Dean DeLeo, concurs. “You probably wouldn’t believe me, but I wrote ‘Meatplow,’ on an acoustic,” he says, referencing the excessively grungy leadoff track to the band’s smash 1994 album, . “It’d be the last song on earth you’d think started out that way, but I happened to be sitting there, I felt this little kind of come over me, I grabbed the nearest guitar and out came that lick.”