Stone Temple Pilots will let fans watch them make their fifth album – but don’t expect a personal invitation to their rented Malibu home.
STP filmed a behind-the-scenes documentary as they recorded the LP in their beach villa-turned-recording studio.
“It set out to be like a modern-day ‘Let It Be,'” Chapman Baehler, the film’s director, said Thursday (April 5), referring to Michael Lindsay-Hogg’s 1970 Beatles documentary.
The film follows singer Scott Weiland, guitarist Dean DeLeo, bassist Robert DeLeo and drummer Eric Kretz through the record-making process, from hammering out songs in preproduction to putting the tunes down on tape.
“It’s got a lot of really beautiful, moody shots – these art shots with either Dean or Robert playing an old organ in a really beautiful space, to Dean and Scott playing acoustic, to some totally awesome rock-out live stuff in the main recording space,” Baehler said.
An established rock photographer who has shot STP for years, Baehler was working with the band on a coffee-table book when they approached him about the documentary. The project is Baehler’s first venture into filmmaking; all of the footage was shot by him and his sister, Rebecca Baehler. Both the book and the film should be out later this year, he said.
STP moved into the Malibu house in January to work on the follow-up to 1999’s platinum No. 4. The band is now mixing the album in Atlanta with longtime producer Brendan O’Brien, Baehler said.
The always ambitious Weiland said late last year that the band planned to make the recording a double album. Shortly after work got underway, Robert DeLeo said that goal looked realistic.
“Scott’s in a space right now where we’re not cramming to just get a single record done – he’s in a space where I think a double record is possible.”
There was no word at press time about the status of the double-album plans, but a source at the band’s label, Atlantic, said the label is hesitant about the idea.