By the summer of 1993, Stone Temple Pilots could afford to laugh off the snarky 'Stone Temple Plagiarists' comments which greeted the 1992 release of their debut album, Core.
Buoyed by strong support at radio and MTV for singles Sex Type Thing and Plush, on July 3, 1993 the album reached number 3 on the Billboard 200: by the time Atlantic Records released Creep as the third single from the album in November '93, Core was already creeping towards three million sales in the US alone.
Understandably, 'breaking' Britain wasn't exactly an obsession for Atlantic once momentum kicked in for the San Diego quartet on home soil: indeed, while promoting Core, Stone Temple Pilots would play just seven shows in the UK, six headline dates and a mid-afternoon slot on Reading festival's main stage on August 27, below Babes In Toyland, but above Bad Brains, Gallon Drunk and openers Tool.
By way of contrast, vocalist Scott Weiland, guitarist Dean DeLeo, his bassist brother Robert DeLeo and drummer Eric Kretz, would rack up 128 gigs in the US before putting the record to bed.
Still, the group's relative anonymity in the UK meant that Weiland and Dean DeLeo were completely ignored when filmed sitting on a bench in central London's Soho Square for a segment on ITV's late night music show The Beat. Which meant that there was no-one to be outraged when Weiland told interviewer Gary Crowley that the band formed after he met the DeLeo brothers at a "bisexual orgy", and, even better, no-one to interrupt proceedings when America's newest rock stars performed a spine-tingling al fresco acoustic take on Plush.
Watch the footage below:
