10 years after his death: Stone Temple Pilots’ Scott Weiland was a brilliant frontman – until drug addiction destroyed his life. A review.
Scott Weiland, known as the singer of the Stone Temple Pilots and Velvet Revolver, died on December 3, 2015 at the age of 48. He was a charismatic frontman, a gifted singer and artist – even if he made it hard to recognize it. A look back.
The performance the world should see is there on YouTube – the Stone Temple Pilots live at Rolling Rock. In front of the stage, the people have melted into a sweating, screaming lump. A fiery red rooster with peroxide blonde hair fluffs himself up on stage: Scott Weiland. He spins around, dances on his tiptoes, cocks his shoulders cheekily upwards like a drag queen. His upper body is shiny, naked and skinny, and his head seems about to explode as he spits the words into the audience: “I’m not dead and I’m not for sale!”
This performance is worth seeing because it shows many facets of Scott Weiland that have been forgotten or never really seen over the years: his fury, his charisma, his dedication, that powerful voice. Among the many great singers of his generation, Weiland was the most versatile. He sang greasy and rough, switching effortlessly between rock, blues and the Great American Songbook, between Bowie, Lennon and Cobain, whom he equally admired. He was irreplaceable for his unfortunate bandmates, who had to put their careers on hold again and again as Weiland pursued his greatest passion outside of music: drugs.
Success and curse at the same time
It’s the eternal rock ‘n’ roll tragedy: It begins with a young man being kissed by success too soon. When the Stone Temple Pilots released their debut album CORE in 1992, Weiland was only 24. The record was released a year after Pearl Jam’s TEN and Nirvana’s NEVERMIND and climbed to number 3 on the Billboard charts in the wake of these two bands – both a blessing and a curse for the Stone Temple Pilots. They could no longer shake the reputation of grunge copyists. With their second album PURPLE (1994) they developed in completely new directions: bluesy slide guitars and summer-drunken choruses could be heard, a Zeppelin-esque acoustic ballad and “12 Gracious Melodies”, the best swing song ever hidden at the end of a record.
PURPLE sold six million copies and the band was at its peak. And that’s where the trouble began. Weiland, who had snorted cocaine off and on in high school, began injecting heroin. He was arrested for the first time in 1995 for crack possession. He later locked himself in a hotel room in LA with Courtney Love for a month to do drugs. At some point he had squandered his entire fortune. “I would have sucked cock for one hit on a crack pipe,” he once said.
No serious attempts to get clean
He escaped death more than once. His many attempts to get clean failed because he was never really serious about giving up drugs. He loved this lifestyle, the money, the parties, the models. The stupid, testosterone-charged video for “Fall to Pieces” (2004), his second, stupid, testosterone-charged band Velvet Revolver, shows how much that was part of it for him. Weiland collapses in despair. Broken heart, some substances in the system. Then his bandmate and male friend Duff McKagan comes, drags him backstage and beats some sense into him. The whole thing seems like a 15-year-old’s wet rock ‘n’ roll dream. In any case, it did not seem as if Weiland had developed any serious awareness of the problem with his addiction.
In general, the Velvet Revolver project was a step in the wrong direction. After the Stone Temple Pilots broke up the band for the second time in 2003, unnerved by Weiland’s constant antics, he made it easy for himself. As a replacement for Axl Rose, he took the shortcut back to the big stages with the former members of Guns N’ Roses. The music was uninteresting blues-rock, but that didn’t seem to matter. Weiland had to earn money to pay alimony for his ex-wife and children. He only pursued his artistic ambitions as a solo artist, for example on the great 12 BAR BLUES (1998) and the at least trying “HAPPY” IN GALOSHES (2008).
Falling out with everyone
In the end, Weiland fell out with everyone. With the Stone Temple Pilots, who finally showed him the door after a third reunion and then tried their luck with Chester Bennington from Linkin Park for a while. And with Velvet Revolver, who at some point no longer wanted to continue playing through the old Axl Rose drama. So Weiland resorted to truly pathetic measures, recording a Christmas album and a covers album and going on tour alone to perform CORE for die-hard 90s nostalgics.
As long as he lived, he had to listen to accusations of copying other musicians. At first he sounded like Eddie Vedder, then he put on Rob Halford’s leather suit. In the video for his solo single “Barbarella”, he played David Bowie’s man falling to the earth. Weiland played these roles with ease, but he too rarely found his own identity in them. And at the very end he reminded us again of a great musician. However, involuntarily. When he stood on stage with his last band, the Wildabouts, he looked like Brian Wilson. Lost and stiff, shoulders hunched as if the next breeze might knock him over. A spirit that could no longer find its way back into its body. Music magazines were amused by the fact that he could no longer hit the notes. “I don’t give this guy a year,” wrote one user in June under a YouTube video of a particularly disastrous performance.
Too early to reconcile
Unfortunately, this cold forecast was correct. All his lives were used up. Recovery excluded. Weiland died in 2015 at the age of 48. Too late to at least reap the fame of the tragic heroes of his time, this broken generation around Kurt Cobain, Layne Staley and Andrew Wood, who systematically injected themselves to death out of suffering and a thirst for life. Too early to reconcile with his friends and companions. He wasn’t able to prove himself again as the great artist he once was, but you can find him in his early work. Let’s remember Scott Weiland like this, angrily defying his demons, curiously emulating his idols. With an unbridled love for Rock ‘N’ Roll. Not dead and not for sale.