BAND'S UNITY SOLID AS A ROCK : WHY L.A.'S HOT STONE TEMPLE PILOTS WON'T TOUR AGAIN UNTIL TIME IS RIGHT.

Byline: Steve Morse Boston Globe

The greatest rock bands have a unity that's hard to describe. The word often used is ``chemistry.'' It explains why the Rolling Stones have endured. It explains why R.E.M. refused to tour with a replacement drummer when regular member Bill Berry suffered a brain aneurysm last year. And it explains why Stone Temple Pilots - a Los Angeles band that has become a big seller in recent years - won't tour again until singer Scott Weiland can conquer his drug problems.

``Believe me, there's nothing more that any of us wants to do than tour, but we also don't want a fatality on our hands,'' said Stone Temple Pilots guitarist Dean DeLeo. ``We're just not sure when we can tour. It's a very big issue. ... Our plans are to sit tight for a while, but I hope just a little while.''

In the interim, as Weiland battles demons that led to his arrest last year for heroin and cocaine possession, STP has made a gritty but sparkling new album, ``Tiny Music ...,'' now in record stores. It follows the band's first two multiplatinum discs, ``Core'' and ``Purple,'' which had such hits as ``Sex Type Thing,'' ``Interstate Love Song'' and ``Vaseline.''

The new disc already has one of the nation's top album-rock radio tracks in ``Big Bang Baby,'' which typifies STP's mix of punk attitude and Led Zeppelin-style, metal-rock crunch. The song, and the album, show just how strong STP remains musically, despite the fragility of Weiland, who has been in and out of drug rehab centers in the past year.

``Chemistry,'' said DeLeo, summoning again that age-old rock talisman. ``I don't have any magical, mystical explanation for it, but it's just something really special that we share. ... We'd have to be the stupidest people on Earth to ever let that fall apart.''

Clearly, STP has made its most expansive album yet. Some critics have wrongly labeled the group Pearl Jam clones, but the new disc should banish those notions for good. It not only includes jolting hard rock (the Jimmy Page-influenced ``Trippin' on a Hole in a Paper Heart''), but also the Beatles-esque ``Lady Picture Show'' and the surprisingly jazzy ``And So I Know,'' which sounds like a lacy Pat Metheny tune.

``I absolutely adore Pat Metheny,'' said DeLeo, flattered by the analogy. ``I own seven or eight of his records.''

DeLeo also cites other jazz-guitar inspirations - Wes Montgomery and Barney Kessel - to go along with obvious rock heroes such as Page, Jeff Beck and Aerosmith's Joe Perry. ``There are so many facets to guitar - and I like to explore them all,'' says DeLeo.

STP consists of DeLeo and his brother, Robert, on bass, together with Weiland and drummer Eric Kretz. Typically, the DeLeos and Kretz come up with the music, then Weiland adds lyrics and tinkers with the melodies. His lyrics can be controversial - the group's first hit, ``Sex Type Thing,'' was about date rape, while one new song, ``Love's Pop Suicide,'' obliquely says, ``I'm in love pop suicide, about a pop star homicide.'' Nothing further is explained, nor will DeLeo amplify on it. ``I'd like for people to get their own thing out of it,'' he said, alluding to the band's lyrics in general.

``When Robert and Eric and I give a song to Scott, then he runs with it lyrically and melodically; and we never second-guess him,'' says DeLeo. ``What's really uncanny is that when we give Scott a song, it's amazing how he taps into it. Without us even discussing it, he taps into the feeling any of us had when we were writing the music. It's been that way since `Core.' I don't know how to explain it.''

The new album is humorously subtitled ``Songs From the Vatican Gift Shop.'' Says DeLeo: ``That's actually something I coined when we did our first record. `Core' was almost called `Vatican Gift Shop.' It just conjured up an image of society. It had no religious content. It wasn't attacking anybody or the Catholic Church or anything. It was just a play on words - how everything basically revolves around the almighty dollar.''

And the new album's official title, ``Tiny Music ...,'' is also a play on words. It's a dig at all the celebrities capitalizing on success, whether they're musicians trying to become actors, or actors trying to become musicians, or whatever they can do to expand their celebrity. ``It's just that when you really get down to it, it's all tiny,'' says DeLeo, who doesn't exempt his own band from the game.

To make the new album, STP set up recording equipment in a 24,000-square-foot Italian villa on 100 acres of land in remote Santa Ynez, east of Santa Barbara. ``Now if that isn't punk rock, I don't know what is,'' DeLeo said with a laugh. ``We basically lived out there for two months. ... There were also tennis courts, so you were able to play tennis or stickball until 2 a.m., then come back in and fire up instruments at 3 in the morning without bothering a soul.''

When told that such communal conditions sound like the way the Rolling Stones have worked, DeLeo answers, ``Actually, the Stones did (their album) `Tattoo You' not far from where we did our record.''

The villa's many rooms also were put to good use. ``We had unlimited rooms to use for different guitar sounds and drums and things like that. And there were just tons of closets, and you know how great a bathroom can sound with all the tile in it,'' he said. ``All it really took was a 50-foot cable to get the mike wherever we wanted.''

On the new single, ``Big Bang Baby,'' STP even set up drums on the villa's front lawn. ``We tried a couple of rooms on the drums, but they were just a little too ambient. We needed absolutely no reflection, so we said, `Let's put the drums on the front lawn.' And that's where the track went down.''

Apart from the recording, STP members also took some time off from one another. Robert DeLeo spent two weeks writing songs with Aerosmith's Steven Tyler and Joe Perry in Perry's basement in Duxbury, south of Boston. ``It was quite an honor for Robert to have his childhood icons call him in to write,'' said Dean.

But the goal of the moment is to get Weiland back in shape for an STP tour, which would be the band's first in two years.

``Scott these days is doing very well,'' DeLeo adds. ``I'd have to say that I hope he's on a road to recovery. But it did delay the band, should I say, tragically. I would have thought we'd have been working on our fourth record by now. But it's really not fair of me to explain the reasons why we can't tour yet. We just need to wait and tour when the time is right.''

CAPTION(S):

Photo

Photo: ``There's nothing more that any of us wants to do th an tour, but we also don't want a fatality on our hands,'' says Stone Temple Pilots guitarist Dean DeLeo, second from right, pictured with brother Robert, left, Scott Weiland and Eric Kretz.