Janda (2:42)
Released on Stone Temple Pilot's second album, Purple, in June of 1994, Vaseline was a huge hit and the album went to number one on the Billboard 200 chart. But everything wasn't exactly good behind the scenes with the band the success of stp, who hailed from Southern California, always came under the shadow of the Seattle grunge gods who changed the shape of music and the music industry in the early 90s. Despite the fact that STP's debut album, 1992's Core, had been a massive commercial success with major hits like Plush and Creepy, the success came at a price for the band. Despite their popularity, the music press was often brutal, dismissing them as grunge clones or industry plans. Frontman Scott Weiland took this criticism to heart. While the rest of the band, brothers Dean and Robert DiLeo and Eric Kretz, tried to ignore the noise, Weiland felt like he in particular was under a microscope. This sense of being watched, judged and trapped became the psychological foundation for their sophomore effort, Purple. During the recording of Purple, Weiland's struggle with heroin was shifting from recreational use into a full blown dependency. The making of this album is one of the most poignant examples of the sophomore slump paradox in that on one hand, the band were about to silence their critics with a hugely successful release, while on the other hand, making it served as the backdrop for Weiland's deepening entanglement with addiction, a descent that would eventually define the rest of his life. During the recording sessions for Core, Weiland was disciplined, even athletic as a performer. However, by the time the band got together with producer Brendan o' Brien to record Purple, the pressures of sudden superstardom and the isolation of the road had taken their toll. You can hear it in his lyrics all across this album, the swirling textures of other songs like Big Empty and Interstate Love Song, both hits are retrospective evidence of the shift in his psyche and his worldview. During this time, the atmosphere in the studio was often clouded by Wyland's unpredictable state. There were reports of him being unable to perform or needing medical intervention, the beginning of a cycle of rehab and relapse for Wyland, and the beginning of the band's struggle to keep it together on the road while he careened off the rails. Despite the chaos, the music on Purple has a melodic sophistication that wasn't there on the band's debut. Weiland's vocals transitioned from a heavy growl to a more crooning style, possibly to mask the physical toll that his addiction was beginning to take. To truly understand the Stone Temple Pilot's sound, you have to look at the Engine Room, Robert and Dean DiLeo while Scott Weiland was the mesmerizing focal point, the rock star of the band, the DiLeo brothers were the architects of the band's musical identity in the landscape of 90s rock. They were outliers, musicians who were just as likely to be listening to Burt Bacharach as they were to Led Zeppelin. And the songwriting process in STP was all about collaboration. The brothers would bring in the music and Weiland would then find the melody and lyrics to fit the mood that they had created. Robert, the bassist, was often the primary songwriter. He wrote from a really melodic, jazz influenced perspective, major sevenths and suspended chords that gave STP a lush sound that was absent from the music made by their grunge peers. It was Robert who actually wrote the main riff for Vaseline, the pulsing backbone of the song, and he wrote it on a bass guitar first. His brother Dean's job was to take Robert's structures and translate them into a wall of guitar sound. His ability to layer sounds is a sonic signature on STP songs and and is one of the reasons he's often talked about as being underrated as a guitarist. What the two brothers did together gave the songs a thicker, harmonically rich texture that felt much bigger than a four piece band. To get the tone that makes Vaseline stand out, a small overdriven combo amp was used to create an almost nasal sound. Then Dean famously used a wah wah pedal as a filter, leaving it half cocked to create the honking drone in the song. It sticks so well in your head, truly. Without the DiLeo Brothers technical skill and their love of 60s pop and 70s prog rock, STP would've been just another heavy band from the'90s. But with their musical versatility providing the bedrock under Weiland's increasingly cryptic lyrics, they set themselves apart from the pack. And the lyrics of Vaseline say it all about where Weiland was at that moment. Interestingly, the title of the song and the famous line, flies in the Vaseline we are actually started as a mistake. The story goes that as a kid he misheard the lyrics to the Eagle's Life in the fast Lane as flies in the Vaseline. And it was that misheard lyric that took on a dark, literal meaning for Weiland. Vaseline goes like. One time a thing occurred to me what's real and what's for sale? Blew a kiss and tried to take it home Isn't you, isn't me Search for things that you can't see Going blind out of reach Somewhere in the Vaseline what's real and what's for sale? The life of a rock star struggling with fame, credibility and a burgeoning drug addiction getting further out of reach and it goes on two times and it has rendered me punch drunk and without bail think I'd be safer all alone Flies in the Vaseline we are Sometimes it blows my mind Keep getting stuck here all the time. Many addicts talk about how isolating their addiction is the solitary path of someone who has replaced real relationships with a chemical one. Stuck there all alone like a fly that can't free itself once it lands in a jar of Vaseline, the perfect metaphor for drug addiction. When he sings Sometimes it blows My Mind, there's a sense of disbelief. He's shocked that he's ended up back in the same trap, even though he saw it coming. It's the Groundhog Day effect of doing something you have less and less control over. The song ends, you'll see the look and you'll see the lies. You'll eat the lies and you will Lies are a huge part of an addict's problem, the need to tell lies and the shame of becoming a liar in order to feed the need to use. In his memoir Not Dead and Not For Sale, Weiland said that this song addressed the period where he began lying to his first wife, Janina and his bandmates about his drug use. And he said on VH1 Storytellers that it was written about feeling like an insect under a magnifying glass, trapped by the media's scrutiny and by his own growing internal demons.
