Stone Temple Pilots released their debut album, Core, on September 29, 1992. Working with producer Brendan O'Brien, Scott Weiland, Dean DeLeo, Robert DeLeo and Eric Kretz recorded 12 songs that ranged from the force of “Sex Type Thing” to the acoustic passages of “Creep.” “Plush” would become the album's Grammy winner, but the group initially resisted making it their introduction to the public.
The band had already spent time working out material in a North Hollywood rehearsal room, recording demos on Robert's eight-track Fostex before entering Rumbo Recorders in Canoga Park. Dean recalled those sessions in a 2017 interview with Guitar World, describing the excitement preserved in the musicians' conversations between takes. Robert, who worked at Schecter, used a blue bass built there and a borrowed G&L L2000 for Core. As he explained in a separate Guitar World interview, he had little studio experience and depended on O'Brien to translate the sound he could describe into a recording.
O'Brien kept the process moving. Robert remembered his bass being recorded through an Ampeg SVT with a Sennheiser 421 microphone, with the producer ready to start as soon as the setup was in place. The priority was the part and its place in the arrangement. “It's the song first,” Robert told the magazine, explaining that his instrument, tone and playing all had to serve the composition. Recording Core helped him learn how to turn those choices into the sounds he wanted.
To record the opening of “Dead & Bloated,” Weiland sang into the treble pickup of Dean's plugged-in Les Paul. Dean recalled that the band knew pickups could behave like microphones and decided to try it. The take became the distorted, unaccompanied voice listeners hear before the rest of the band enters.
Kretz also pushed for sounds O'Brien might otherwise have left out. Recalling “Plush” for Modern Drummer in 2017, the drummer said the producer disliked the China cymbals he used in the introduction. Kretz responded by setting up two, one on either side of his kit. On “Creep,” he changed the character of the drums more substantially, using a vintage Ludwig kit instead of the Yamaha Rock Tour Custom heard on much of the album.
“Plush” itself grew from Robert's guitar exercises. He told Rolling Stone in 2017 that he combined a country figure with ragtime chords, then gave the idea a darker weight on electric guitar. The music was largely established before the words were finished. Kretz remembered helping Weiland complete the lyrics after a recording session, sitting in the hot tub at the Oakwood Apartments where they were staying. Their conversations found their way into a song about uncertainty, the people they loved and what lay ahead. Dean's guitar performance on the finished track was recorded live with Robert and Kretz playing in front of him.
Atlantic wanted “Plush” as the first single. The band chose to hold it back and place it ninth on Core, concerned about becoming known for one hit before listeners understood the rest of their music. “Sex Type Thing” went first. The decision delayed the song's introduction, but “Plush” still became a major part of the album's success and won Best Hard Rock Performance With Vocal at the 1994 Grammy Awards.
By their November 1993 MTV Unplugged session, Stone Temple Pilots were already reshaping the material again. They played acoustic arrangements of “Wicked Garden” and “Sex Type Thing” alongside a cover of David Bowie's “Andy Warhol.” The same performance introduced “Big Empty,” a song that would appear on their second album, Purple, in 1994.
