Author: Logan Rocker

Few bands have had such a chequered career as Stone Temple Pilots. Emerging during the early ’90s grunge boom and racking up two mega-selling albums in 1992’s Core and 1994’s Purple, the ensuing years saw multiple splits, reunions and, in the case of late singer Scott Weiland, struggles with addiction and run-ins with the law. In 2010, when Classic Rock caught up with them as they released their self-titled sixth album, they found the original members back together having made an uneasy truce with Weiland – although they didn’t know at the time that it would turn out to be the last they made with their original singer.

Scott Weiland is drunk. Not ‘come-and-have-a-go-if-you-think-yer-hard-enough’ drunk or even ‘you’re-my- bessht-mate-you-are’ drunk, more of a ‘sedated-puppy-dog- embalmed-in-Jack-Daniel’s-and-nicotine’ stupor. It doesn’t really bother us. It’s a beautiful sunny Los Angeles afternoon and Classic Rock is interviewing congenial Stone Temple Pilot guitarist Dean DeLeo on the stairs outside a newly constructed photo studio conveniently situated on the grounds of the Sunset Marquis hotel.

Scott Weiland is late.

This is not unusual. I have never had an encounter with the man where he’s turned up on time – although today’s excuse, it will transpire, is a little different from the usual ‘had some last minute business to take care of’.

The singer arrives and looks up at us sporting a sheepish grin.

“Sorry to hold you up, man, it’s taken me ages to find anything that fits,” he mutters in that familiar West Coast, stoned ‘Ratso’ drawl. He is definitely fuller in face and figure, looking less like the emaciated Thin White Duke of our last encounter in 2008, and more the backwoods lumberjack rocker of Core-era STP but sans red goatee.

“I’ve put on a few pounds,” he admits, pointing to his waist. “I’d like to lose a few. Rock stars always want to look skinny. The idea is to look like you’re doing drugs but not do drugs. It’s been quite some time since I’ve done them. I drink, and that puts some weight on you.”

By the time he reaches the top of the stairs he has ordered a large Scotch and reacquainted himself with the rest of the band: bass player Robert DeLeo – who like his brother, is tall, lean and surprisingly polite – and drummer Eric Kretz, an explosion of bleached curly locks and pointed features, resembling a Spitting Image puppet of Owen Wilson.

As a coterie of personal assistants, PRs and management hover manically trying to look like they actually need to be there, CR photographer Ross Halfin corrals the group into a line-up for a shot. As certain members’ eyes roll up in mock exasperation at the sight of their slightly dishevelled singer, Weiland miraculously transforms into rock star mode, staring intensely at the camera and looking uncannily like a psychotic Fight Club-era Edward Norton. He stays in this pose in-between shots, to quite unnerving effect.

The session moves outside and Weiland suddenly stops, looks down and points to his feet. “Oh, look man,” he says, “I’ve got two different shoes on.” Both shoes are black but they are, indeed, from different pairs.

He berates his beleaguered assistant for this faux pas and then heads off with Halfin, again delivering the money shot. At the end of the day he makes a quick exit with a lackey and two Johnny Walker Blacks to go.

Scott Weiland is a star – of that there is no doubt.

While everyone expected a worst-case scenario since the very public and acrimonious dissolution of Velvet Revolver, Weiland has managed to bounce back, although the last couple of years have been clouded by tragedy (the death by overdose of his brother Michael), divorce (from model Mary Forsberg) and a brief stint behind bars for driving under the influence.

And although the current STP re-formation has been a sell-out success and their latest album looks like being a career best, there have been some worrying episodes involving Scott, including incoherent interviews splattered across YouTube, a Tyleresque tumble during a show in Iowa, and another disastrous performance in the DeLeos’ home town of New Jersey where the band came on an hour-and-a-half late and fans claim to have seen one of the brothers outside Weiland’s bus screaming: “Get out, Axl!” It hardly comes as a shock when the Anglophile frontman tells me that one of his favourite artists is Pete Doherty – they both seem to be singing enthusiastically from the same hymn book.

Did his previous addictions affect him and STP the first time around?

“I like to think of myself as a responsible individual,” he says, “and when I give my word that I’m going to be somewhere, I like to keep it. And when the band started being unaccountable and not making appearances it affected me, deeply. And there’s nothing worse than being helpless.”

“It wasn’t always the smoothest of rides,” agrees Robert DeLeo. “I think we all grabbed onto our vices.”

While Robert and Dean DeLeo present a more sober, cautious overview of the band’s chequered history (verbally walking on eggshells around their frontman’s temperament and peccadilloes), Weiland, as usual, dominates the proceedings with his upfront frankness and brutal honesty. At times he comes across as an equally enlightened and anxious soul that seems to find total sobriety a frightening and arduous prospect, which is probably why he took to Class A drugs with such a kamikaze enthusiasm in the first place.

“Heroin is great at the beginning, because it takes away all of your emotional fears,” Weiland agrees, while nervously playing with a packet of Camels (another vice he is trying to quit at the behest of his children). “I didn’t give a shit about anything. I used to be afraid to walk into public places, something which again I don’t like to do now since giving it up.”

By the time Scott had his first experience of opiates during a tour in 1994, STP were already a couple of years into their career. Signed to Atlantic a year after the advent of grunge in ’92, their debut album Core represented everything that was innovative and exciting about the Seattle sound in a more homogenised, commercial format. It sold millions and the band were almost instantly treated with suspicion and disdain by the critics (they were also simultaneously voted Best New Band by Rolling Stone readers and Worst New Band by the music critics).

“Obviously I’m not naive to it, the timing of Atlantic signing at the start of the grunge movement,” sighs Robert. “ I don’t think our intention was ever to be grunge. When we first got together our focus was always songs. We just wanted to write great songs.”

In a career that spanned nine years and in which they produced six albums, STP managed to baffle both fans and critics with a sound that reflected a wide-ranging sphere of influences from Zeppelin, The Doors and the Stones to bossa nova and even the Carpenters. They rapidly ascended from being predictable purveyors of generic rock to creators of sublime, anthemic, multi-textured and at times psychedelic anthems, selling shedloads of albums in the process.

Scott’s substance problems began to surface as early as the second album, Purple, which like its predecessor was recorded in a mansion (in retrospect a homage to the Stones’ Exile On Main St), this time in Atlanta. For the moment the drugs did work and although still heavy, the band experimented with different rhythms and acoustic material.

“During this period heroin gave me this ability to distance myself from the creative process and thereby gave me the strength and courage to try new things,” admits Scott. “But after years of taking it, it just becomes all-encompassing, it becomes this black ooze that covers your heart and you can’t feel the music any more. But, I don’t know… Part of me felt I couldn’t be creative unless I was high.”

Although Purple was a critical and commercial success, celebrations were muted when on May 15,1995, Weiland was arrested for the possession of a crack pipe, heroin and cocaine plus various other drug-related offences. This resulted with a mandatory stay in rehab, the first of many in the rock star’s troubled career. By now the band’s music was being overshadowed by Weiland’s burgeoning addiction which was making the headlines and attracting the attention of the boys in blue. With some very public busts it seemed like he was either enjoying his notoriety or in self-destruct mode.

“Well, I didn’t have one of those fancy Hollywood dealers that came to your house and sold you a couple of ounces,” he says with a grimace. “I’d go out into the streets where you’d drive up to a corner and be mobbed by a group of border brothers – illegal Mexicans selling heroin-shouting, ‘Chieva! Chieva! Chieva!’ and you’d go ‘Alright!’, buy it and speed off. But the cops got wise to that.”

Things got predictably worse, with more busts, cancelled dates, rehab et cetera. By the time they released their fifth album Shangri-La Dee Da in 2001 things came to a head when Weiland and Dean nearly came to blows after a show.

Scott: “We were staying in different hotels and by this time Dean was using, he was getting cocaine FedExed to him. It all culminated in this dressing room where we threw punches at each other. If it wasn’t for our minder we probably would have done some damage. I would have gotten the best of him.”

A couple of days earlier the two of them had been sat in a motel sharing jokes and smoking crack, now it was all over. Everybody left in separate cars and went their own way.

“When you think about it, it’s really textbook 101 of what happens,” sighs Robert. “There’s a blueprint that follows musicians around.“

“It’s all the same shit, isn’t it?” exclaims Dean with a raucous laugh. “EGO! Fucking ego. You got to check that monkey at the door. I think it’s nothing but destruction. It’s amazing that people in their 40s, 50s and 60s are still fucking carrying on like this.”

It was at this point, Weiland claims that he hit an all-time low, when his wife Mary left him, taking their son Noah. “I’d been clean for a year and a half after the birth of my son and then I went back to using,” he recalls with a palpable shudder. “Although we used to be junkies together, Mary quit doing drugs after we had our son and she wouldn’t let me come down to see him if I was loaded. And of course if you’re doing heroin you’re loaded every day.”

A lifeline came in the form of Slash who invited Scott to join Velvet Revolver. The band, all recovering addicts and alcoholics, gave him time to sort himself out in the now very familiar surroundings of residential care, where he stayed for six months, after which he graduated to a sober living house. He credits this experience for keeping him sober for four years.

Scott’s career trajectory with Revolver was pretty similar to STP. First album Contraband debuted at number one in the US charts and went on to sell three million copies. By the time they were touring the less successful follow-up, Libertad, the cracks (and crack) began to appear. Everyone with the exception of guitarist Dave Kushner relapsed and suddenly various members were at each other’s throats. Weiland and Matt Sorum waged a war with each other via the internet and this came to head at a show in Glasgow on March 20, 2008 when the two confronted each prior to an encore.

“I was threatened physically by Matt on the stairs,” recalls Scott. “It was at that moment that I decided I’d had enough and pulled a Ziggy Stardust move and announced to the audience ‘you are very fortunate to see the last tour of Velvet Revolver’.”

Although it came to a dramatic end Scott still values his time with the band and still has a great respect for Slash. “I mostly have positive memories from that time. I’d like to think that Velvet Revolver put a bullet in nu metal’s heart. I understand where Slash is at right now doing his solo album. I read an interview where he said, ‘It’s kind of nice not having to be in a democracy right now’. Democracies can be very challenging and weathering.”

This brings us neatly to the newly reformed Stone Temple Pilots. Prior to his final tour with VR, Scott received a call from Dean telling him that a promoter had offered STP $1 million dollars to play Coachella and if this worked they could follow it with a 10-day festival mini-reunion. This was the second time that he had contact with Dean since STP folded.

“The first time I saw him was when I was recording with Velvet Revolver and it was uh… very respectful,” Scott says with a hint of sarcasm. “There were still resentments. It took a while for Dean to get sober. He called me one night and said, ‘You know what? I’m sorry that I made you a scapegoat for all those years when I was doing the same things you were’.”

Although Slash gave his blessings for the festival dates previous commitments prevented it from happening. “Scott kind of expressed that things were a little unsettled in the Velvet Revolver camp,” recalls Dean, “but I wasn’t going to get in the middle of that. I was really happy for his success in the band. I told him about the festivals and asked him how he felt about it and the next thing you know, he leaves VR and we’re on a bus doing a 65 date tour.”

Since then they have recorded a stunning comeback album, self-produced with some additional mentoring from Don Was. It’s unburdened by past luggage and has an almost celebratory contemporary retro feel, partly inspired by Dean dusting off his classic rock collection and his recent infatuation with the kitsch sub-genre Sunshine Pop.

Weiland looks and sounds like a man with a mission. “It felt like it was unfinished business,” he says of the reunion. “STP has a legacy. We sold nearly 40 million albums. It’s something that for nearly two decades now has been ingrained into people’s lives and pop culture, which is what we set out to do.”

“I don’t think it ever ended,” beams an ever-optimistic Dean. “I never felt that things were falling apart, I felt there was a time that we needed apart. We were shoulder to shoulder for nine years and when you’re living in such tight corners, doing the same thing for almost a decade; you grow tired of one another’s routine. But STP never ended. I think we’ll call it a respite.”

Scott Weiland is back. But for how long it’s difficult to tell. He wears the mask of celebrity well but at times it seems to melt in his face and he stops looking like he’s in control. As the interview comes to a close there is one final question: Mr Weiland, are you really that difficult to deal with?

“Absolutely not! I’m a very easy person to deal with. Nowadays I have enough confidence in myself that if I don’t like something then I won’t do it. I’m 42 years old. I still try to put on a great show. I move around like I did when we first started touring, I’m drenched at the end of the set. And mostly, regardless of what bands or journalists think of us, I want to be pleased with what I’m doing, I want to be happy.”

Originally published in Classic Rock 146, May 2010

Pete Makowski joined Sounds music weekly aged 15 as a messenger boy, and was soon reviewing albums. When no-one at the paper wanted to review Deep Purple‘s Made In Japan in December 1972, Makowski did the honours. The following week the phone rang in the Sounds office. It was Purple guitarist Ritchie Blackmore. “Thanks for the review,” said Blackmore. “How would you like to come on tour with us in Europe?” He also wrote for Street Life, New Music News, Kerrang!, Soundcheck, Metal Hammer and This Is Rock, and was a press officer for Black Sabbath, Hawkwind, Motörhead, the New York Dolls and more. Sounds Editor Geoff Barton introduced Makowski to photographer Ross Halfin with the words, “You’ll be bad for each other,” creating a partnership that spanned three decades. Halfin and Makowski worked on dozens of articles for Classic Rock in the 00-10s, bringing back stories that crackled with humour and insight. Pete died in November 2021.

Bring Me The Horizon’s rise from Sheffield deathcore malcontents to festival headlining crossover was turbocharged by 2013’s breakthrough album Sempiternal. In 2015, as the band prepared to release follow-up That’s The Spirit, frontman Oli Sykes revealed how he turned personal darkness into music.

A taxi pulls up to Hammer Towers in London, and an inky-faced gentleman exits. Clad in a baggy cargo jacket and a beanie, the unassuming figure slowly drifts towards the door. “Y’alright?” he greet us, in a Northern drawl. It’s hard to believe this man headlined Wembley Arena to more than 12,500 people in December 2014, and is preparing to release one of the biggest albums of the year. His name? Oli Sykes.

If you’ve been hiding under a rock on Mars for the past decade, allow us to provide a crash-course. Oli’s band, Bring Me The Horizon, formed in Sheffield in 2004, and released debut album Count Your Blessings two years later. It was a messy celebration of deathcore, which isolated metal purists yet introduced a legion of young fans to heavy music.

Follow-ups Suicide Season (2008) and There Is A Hell Believe Me I’ve Seen It, There Is A Heaven Let’s Keep It A Secret (2010) veered towards more metalcore territory, with added electronics. But it was 2013’s masterful Sempiternal that really saw them break the ‘mainstream’. Released through Sony, and splattered with electronic elements from new member and keyboardist Jordan Fish, it reached Number Three in the UK album charts. With lyrics such as, ‘I can’t drown my demons / They know how to swim’ (Can You Feel My Heart), it was a deeply personal affair, with Oli alluding to problems he’d struggled to ovecome. He later revealed he’d been addicted to ketamine, and had admitted himself to rehab.

Now poised to release fifth album That’s The Spirit – recorded in the gorgeous surroundings of Santorini, Greece, and self-produced for the first time – we begin by asking Oli about those dark days, and how he’s feeling now.

Before Sempiternal was released, you discussed being in a dark place, and being forced to believe in God. Can you elaborate on that now?

“I went to rehab and it was my second attempt. My first attempt was the Twelve-Step Program and it didn’t click with me; I didn’t think it was something in today’s society that would still hold up as a thing. The second step is to hand your will over to God and ask for his help – I thought that was madness. I’m not gonna put my trust into something that I don’t believe is real – what good is that? I can’t sit around a group of people who are trying to get better for God. Why not their family? Their friends? This is the worst way of trying to get clean; you need to get clean for yourself and your family, not for something that doesn’t exist.”

So what happened?

“I just went into a general ward, not necessarily for addiction, but there were self-harmers, people struggling with sexuality issues, people who’d been raped, schizophrenics… and for me that was a much better experience. I befriended a schizophrenic teacher, a girl with an eating disorder, a kid who was anorexic and a girl who self-harmed who was a fan of the band but wasn’t allowed to tell me. I paid a lot of money to go in there and I wanted a magic trick to get better; a trick to make me not do these drugs anymore. But all the people in there with all these different things, when you talk to them about what you’re going through, it’s exactly the same. No matter what you do – whether you’re cutting yourself or scared to admit your sexuality – you’re going through the same things.”

Did it work better than the Twelve Steps?

“They’d tell you, ‘Every day will be a struggle, every day you’re inflicted with this disease.’ To me, that’s offensive to people with actual diseases. And it’s offensive to tell someone that they will want drugs every day because it’s who they are. No, I got into drugs for fun, and it’s developed into a crutch for something else. I don’t want drugs, I don’t long for drugs. I can watch people do lines of coke and just say, ‘How’s the coke?’ I don’t give a fuck. I had to go through my own custom way of getting better, but it works, so I’m not really looking back.”

Oli recently described the new album as “a celebration of depression”. And with song themes ranging from drug culture (Oh No) to mates screwing you over (True Friends), you’d be forgiven for thinking Oli is familiar with ‘the black dog’. But that’s not necessarily the case. Instead, he’s exploring the ways we process emotion in today’s world, and how the existence of sadness could actually be affirmative.

What does the phrase ‘celebration of depression’ mean to you?

“I’m not trying to glorify or romanticise actual depression. The problem we have in society today is that it’s so easy to ignore the darkness of your mind, because we can be constantly hooked up. We don’t like to be alone; people aren’t alone. If you go away from someone, you’re straight on your phone. We’re scared of being with our own thoughts. It’s so unhealthy, ’cause if you never let those emotions take over, or you never think about them, then you can’t work through them, so if you’re feeling shit about the way you look or your job or whatever, and you don’t process that information, it just sits there in this big dark cloud that hangs over you forever. Instead, you’re letting all this shit build up, and I think people would be so much happier if they just let themselves feel.”

Where does the album title come from?

“‘That’s the spirit’ to me is a depressing thing to say to someone, ’cause you say it when you haven’t really got an answer. When they’re in a bad place and they’ve just got to get on with it, you say, ‘That’s the spirit’, and that’s the world – we’re trying to be happy in all the wrong ways. I think sadness can be just as memorable and profound an experience as happiness. That’s what the album is about – it’s about making light of the dark and showing how the shit we go through can be turned into a positive. Happy Song is a social commentary about how we’re all connected in sadness. Sadness is the one emotion we can definitely say everyone has – not everyone gets the privilege of being happy, but we all get the privilege of being sad.”

What has been your darkest moment?

“Just getting to that point of going to rehab. I was never suicidal to the point where I wanted to kill myself, but I was suicidal in the fact that I didn’t give a shit. I clearly had no care if I lived or died.”

New song Avalanche includes the lyric, ‘I feel like suicide’. Does that relate to your don’t-give-a-shit attitude?

“Avalanche is about being diagnosed with ADHD [in rehab]. The way the lyrics are written, it’s like talking to a doctor, and it’s about not feeling like I was wired for this world, feeling like something’s wrong, and an avalanche describes the overwhelming feeling I used to have with stuff. It’s as much about having ADHD as the cure having its own problems.”

Was there any therapy or medication after rehab?

“Being diagnosed with adult ADHD was a massive stepping stone. As we got toward the end of it all, they were starting to treat me as someone that was self-medicating rather than an addict. We tried a bunch of medications and we found one, and it changed my life really – I’ve got a lot to owe to that. It’s funny that I’ve got to take a drug to stop doing other drugs.”

Have you ever thought about quitting the meds?

“I have cut down on my medication; I’m trying harder. If I’m off it for just a day, it’s like the old me times a million, like I’m just stupid. But as soon as that hits, I’m just working and have no time for fun, so I always make sure I come off it every so often and have a few days of being silly and fun. Quitting is out of the question right now; it’s something I wouldn’t dare toy with ’cause it’s done me too much good. I don’t think if I stopped taking it I’d fall back into where I was; it’s just great for working, and the album wouldn’t have been written without the medication.”

Oh No is about drug use. Do you hate that world now?

“I don’t regret taking drugs, and I don’t know if I should say it, but everyone should do drugs at some point in their life. You shouldn’t go through your life without experiencing acid – in my opinion. It used to be fun, it used to be an adventure, that’s why I did all those drugs, but after a while it stops being awesome and that’s the reality. But it’s a hard reality to accept.”

li seems to be in a much better place now. Where Sempiternal dealt with anger, apologies and struggles, That’s The Spirit takes a more objective look at what makes us human, and the actions we take in life. In fact, Oli says of writing the album, “I’ve always had a drug addiction, or a scandal, or something to kick against. This time, personally, I don’t have anything I can make a concept out of.” He’s a changed man – he has a growing empire with clothing business Drop Dead, and married longterm girlfriend Hannah Snowdon earlier this year. Now, at 28 years old, Oli Sykes has found some stability.

Has it become more difficult being in the music industry, which isn’t exactly secretive about drug use?

“It’s not hard. Drugs aren’t something that interest me, and if they did I’d take them again, ’cause I’m in a place now where I’m not worried about becoming an addict. The way I got was because of my insecurities that I don’t have anymore, because I dealt with them rather than taking a drug to stop thinking about them. Sometimes it’s hilarious when you see people on drugs and they don’t think you know, but sometimes it’s not the situation for me. Being in a club is just not me anymore.”

You seem to have calmed down. Follow You is about a submissive sort of love, which is at odds with usual BMTH songs…

“When you’re in a relationship, you have those moments like, ‘Why am I putting myself through this?’ Because when you’re in a relationship like that, your emotions are together; if they’re in a bad way, you’re in a bad way. If they’re angry at you, you can’t go on with your life like it doesn’t matter. I carry it, so I carry whatever Hannah’s carrying. Follow You is about not wanting to do it any more, but realising that, no matter what happens, you’ll never turn away, ’cause the alternative is worse than what could ever happen in a relationship. And for me, being without her is much worse. It’s an emotional song for me and my wife.”

Before Sempiternal, you said you hated yourself. Is that no longer true?

“I’ve dealt with stuff I hadn’t dealt with, and I’ve accepted things. I see it with my wife Hannah now, who’s getting more popular with her tattooing, doing photoshoots and having people idolising her – I can see her struggling with the same things that happened to me. Thankfully, I can be there to say, ‘That’s normal, this is how you deal with it’, which I didn’t have back then. At risk of sounding like a whiny little bastard, dealing with the way you look in a magazine or the way people think you are, after a while you start trying to be that. You start trying to be that Photoshopped cool guy, and every day you wake up and you’re not him, ’cause no one is; no one looks as good as they do on a cover or comes across as cool as they do in a video. People start thinking about you that way, and you feel like a letdown when you’re not.”

How did you deal with that?

“A turning point for me was accepting that it’s two different people. I want to be perceived in magazines as me, rather than someone else. I want to be me in both as much as I can. It’s finding that balance of not going too far one way and becoming this unrealistic thing, but realising that, whatever you do in this job, it is unrealistic.”

Originally published in Metal Hammer issue 275, September 2015

Luke Morton joined Metal Hammer as Online Editor in 2014, having previously worked as News Editor at popular (but now sadly defunct) alternative lifestyle magazine, Front. As well as helming the Metal Hammer website for the four years that followed, Luke also helped relaunch the Metal Hammer podcast in early 2018, producing, scripting and presenting the relaunched show during its early days. He also wrote regular features for the magazine, including a 2018 cover feature for his very favourite band in the world, Slipknot, discussing their turbulent 2008 album, All Hope Is Gone.

The hinges on the revolving door of Smashing Pumpkins line-ups were beginning to be put through their paces as the band began 2000. Drummer Jimmy Chamberlin has been sacked and reinstated, just in time to see bassist and founder member D’Arcy Wretzky on her way out to be replaced by former Hole member Melissa Auf Der Maur. Around the same time, Sharon Osbourne had also checked in and checked out as the band’s new manager, memorably declaring, “Unfortunately I must resign due to medical reasons – Billy Corgan was making me sick!”.

Despite the upheaval and turmoil, though, the Pumpkins still managed to creatively rally themselves at points, and nowhere is that more evident than on Stand Inside Your Love. It’s 25 years ago next month since the soaring alt-rock anthem was released as the first cut from the group’s fifth album Machina/The Machines Of God and it remains their last classic single, the final word on their hit-laden imperial phase. It is also, Corgan claimed in an interview filmed for the VH1 show Storytellers, the only time he had ever written a song for his partner.

“Every once in a while a song comes and it comes so fast that you can’t remember how it happened,” said The Bald One of the track’s creation. “You almost feel guilty because you feel like you don’t own the song – of course you still take credit – but this song, Stand Inside Your Love, I had written the music and it was more new wave and when the band first came back together to record the Machina album, I threw this up as an idea I had. We tried to play it the new wave way and it didn’t work. Suddenly it mutated into what I would call “Classic Smashing Pumpkins” in the sense that it sounds like it could come from any album.”

Corgan arrived home from that rehearsal, he recalled, determined to put lyrics and a melody to the blossoming new song and, reading a book the next morning, the line, “Who wouldn’t stand inside your love?” came to him. “I can’t say I really even knew what that meant at that moment,” he continued. “It’s the strangest feeling because all of a sudden it’s like a faucet opens up in my head and suddenly I can understand the whole song. The lyrics were literally written in 10 minutes. It all just came out in this stream of consciousness. It’s probably one of the only love songs I’ve ever written.”

In a very Corgan-esque twist to the tribute, the man who seemingly (at the time) had to have at least one person in the world annoyed with him at any one point added: “I dedicate to my friend and partner Yelena. She doesn’t like me very much right now, it’s true. The reason I say that is when I sing this song it reminds me of how precious love is and how important love is, in all of our lives. Even though I wrote this song for a person, I would say to anyone who likes this song, I also write it for you in the sense that I’m trying to express that feeling when you really try to explain to someone how much you care about them. So maybe she’ll forgive me.”

Released on 21 February 2000, the song became the last thing the Pumpkins could count as a “hit”. Future versions of the group would make some fine records and songs here and there to match some of their original output but the band’s days as a mainstream concern were coming to an end. Just a few months later, they would announce their split.

No-one knows if Yelena Yemchuk ever did forgive Corgan. They eventually split too, with the Ukrainian photographer and painter going on to marry and have a family with The Bear actor Ebon Moss-Bachrach. She’ll always have Stand Inside Your Love if she ever fancies reminiscing about her old flame though:

Niall Doherty is a writer and editor whose work can be found in Classic Rock, The Guardian, Music Week, FourFourTwo, on Apple Music and more. Formerly the Deputy Editor of Q magazine, he co-runs the music Substack letter The New Cue with fellow former Q colleagues Ted Kessler and Chris Catchpole. He is also Reviews Editor at Record Collector. Over the years, he’s interviewed some of the world’s biggest stars, including Elton John, Coldplay, Arctic Monkeys, Muse, Pearl Jam, Radiohead, Depeche Mode, Robert Plant and more. Radiohead was only for eight minutes but he still counts it.