Stone Temple Pilots hitting Vegas stage after troubled start

Well, they waited this long, what’s another hour and a half?

For fans of grunge-era radio staples Stone Temple Pilots, it’s been five long years since the band went on an indefinite hiatus.

In January, news broke that STP would be getting back together again, but with notoriously troubled singer Scott Weiland at the helm, it’s always promised to be a bumpy ride, and already, tensions have mounted less than a month into their current summer tour.

At a recent show at the PNC Bank Arts Center in Holmdel, N.J., the band reportedly took the stage some 90 minutes late and slogged through a ragged, poorly received set.

According to a review of the show in The New York Times, Weiland looked “bedraggled and bushed, like a scarecrow” while the band’s performance was described as “desultory and joyless.”

Radio personalities Opie and Anthony, who were backstage at the event, claim to have witnessed an altercation between Weiland and STP bassist Robert DeLeo, with DeLeo angrily confronting Weiland about his tardiness outside his tour bus and calling him “Axl,” in reference to flighty Guns N’ Roses singer Axl Rose, who’s notorious for showing up to gigs late and whom Weiland has feuded with publicly in recent years.

Weiland later apologized onstage, amends seem to have been made, and the tour goes on.

Still, with a band this volatile, nothing is ever truly set in Stone.

See the band at 8:30 p.m. Saturday at The Pearl at the Palms, 4321 W. Flamingo Road. Tickets are $70-$100; call 942-7777.