It was not unusual for opening acts for thrash metal’s Big Four to suffer at the hands of the audience, not all of whom shared the tastes of the headliners who had hand-picked their support.
Alice In Chains stuck out like a sore thumb during the epic all-star Clash of the Titans Tour of 1991. Queensrÿche and the Cult would tell you that the late ’80s Metallica crowd were a rowdy bunch. One show in Helsinki saw Queensrÿche being showered in bottles. Those were tough gigs.
Dean DeLeo of Stone Temple Pilots can relate. The Californian alt-rockers were just getting started when they got the invite from Dave Mustaine to come out and open for Megadeth. Core was in record stores. MTV picked up Sex Type Thing. Things were moving for the band.
Speaking to Guitar World in 2017, the STP guitarist said the Megadeth tour was a huge chance to prove that their sound could translate from the club to an ice rink enormodome.
“It was our first introduction to playing arenas. All of us had been playing clubs from a very young age – in our teens, so we had had our fill of that,” said DeLeo. “And then when STP hit the road we played our fair share of clubs globally. And when we came back we got all these offers to go out with other bands.”
In the early days, Rage Against the Machine took STP out. But it’s the Megadeth gig DeLeo remembers from that time. Mustaine, he says, was a gent. The crowd, once they had filed in, did not have the patience to sit through a support act, nor the manners to humor them.
“Megadeth asked us to go out with them, and I’ll tell ya, Mr. Mustaine was very, very kind to us, man. Very supportive,” recalled DeLeo.
“Nobody knew who we were. We were simply the opening band. We would come out to an arena that was only a third full. And then we’re trying to do our thing, and you’ve got little pimple-faced boys with Iron Maiden shirts just giving you the finger all night. Like, ‘Man, this sucks!’ They just wanted to see Megadeth.”
This did not go down well with Mr Megadeth himself. Dave Mustaine took umbrage that his fans were not pleased at his choice of support act, and if the fans let it be known that they were unhappy, so too did the Megadeth frontman. DeLeo says Mustaine would intervene and call for order.
“Dave Mustaine would sometimes come out,” said DeLeo, “and he’d grab the mic and go, ‘Listen, you fuckers. I personally picked this band to be here. Fucking listen!’ It was like, ‘Holy shit!’ Mustaine was amazing to us.”
And STP returned none the worse for wear. Core was hot. By the summer of ’93, it was charting at number three on the Billboard 200. Creep, Plush, and Wicked Garden joined Sex Type Thing on MTV, on the radio, and ultimately shifted more than eight million copies in the US alone.
