1 week Ago
guitarist Dean DeLeo will never forget the moment that he came up with the title of the song that would become one of the band’s biggest hits. Interstate Love Song, the gripping mid-tempo rock anthem taken from their era-defining second record , would go on to reach number one on the US Billboard Album Rock Tracks chart and its UK release turns 30 this month. For DeLeo, coming up with the name of the song remains one of his most treasured memories.
“We were on the bus, throwing around titles,” he told this writer last year. “This was just before we’d gotten done with the record. Some of the songs had titles but one that was missing a title was this beautiful piece.
We’re on the bus and going down the interstate and I was hearing what Scott was saying lyrically and I said to the band, ‘I have a great title for the song. . Everybody went, ‘Yeah, alright!’.
It was a real nice moment because we were all together on the bus. I was really thinking about where Scott was coming from lyrically and here we were on the interstate, and we were away from home a lot.” Perhaps it made sense that the final word on the track should come on the road given where it started.
The first time that Dean heard its warm chord pattern wasn’t in a studio or a rehearsal room, but loitering with his bassist brother Robert in a hotel car park. “We were in Atlanta and we’d just gotten up,” he recalled. “We’d spent the night in Atlanta in a very dodgy hotel and were getting ready to leave.
We were out in the parking lot and Robert had an acoustic guitar and I think we were sitting on the bumper of our Ryder truck that we were renting that was holding our gear and Robert was sitting on the bumper and I was sitting next to him.” It was at this point, Dean said, that his brother nonchalantly said, ‘Check out this idea I have’. “He played on the guitar and whistled the melody.
I remember it vividly. Robert laid that idea on me and I remember knowing deeply it was a very special song.” Their fans agreed, and remains one of Stone Temple Pilots’ all-time best tracks three decades later.
Watch the video for the classic below: Sign up below to get the latest from Classic Rock, plus exclusive special offers, direct to your inbox! “She’s a furious texter. It’s a text storm!”: Billy Corgan on where his love-hate relationship with Courtney Love is currently at 2025 Grammy nominations revealed: Metallica, Judas Priest, Spiritbox, Knocked Loose, Gojira, Pearl Jam and St. Vincent amongst metal and rock names nominated “Am I Evil? was me trying to beat Black Sabbath’s Symptom Of The Universe.
I was determined to come up with something heavier”: The story of Diamond Head’s Lightning To The Nations, the cult album that invented Metallica 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 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..
