Ten years ago Scott Weiland left us
Scott Weilandformer frontman of Stone Temple Pilots And Velvet Revolverdied ten years ago, at the age of 48, on December 3, 2015, due to an accidental overdose, according to toxicological tests.
The now lifeless musician was found by the band’s tour manager Scott Weiland & the Wildabouts, Aaron Mohleralerted by a phone call from the singer’s wife, worried about not having heard from him. Scott seemed to be asleep in his bed on the tour bus. Mohler tried to wake him up, knowing that the singer had always been a very heavy sleeper. It was only after removing the pillow from under his head that he realized something was wrong: the man was not breathing and was stiff, in rigor mortis. Mohler immediately called the drummer Joey Castillo and then the police – 911 – telling them, “We’ve got our tour bus parked and there’s a man who… I think he’s dead. He’s not moving. He’s stiff. I mean, he’s, like, stiff as a rock right now, and he’s not moving. He’s not breathing. Nothing.”
From the police switchboard they asked if the tour bus was equipped with a defibrillator and, when the answer was negative, they gave some instructions to try to give Weiland a cardiac massage. There was nothing that could be done, he was declared dead when the officers arrived shortly afterwards. The police, in their reports, wrote that they found the vehicle in excellent condition, very tidy and welcoming. Inside, however, they also found marijuana, drugs and cocaine. The band’s entourage told officers that Weiland drank heavily – mostly tequila and vodka – and took the drug Subloxone to combat heroin addiction. They also confirmed that he had recently used cocaine and MDA (the famous “Molly”).
He certainly didn’t worry about his life being the healthiest and healthiest, behind him he had a long history of excesses – especially cocaine – peppered, moreover, with convictions, stays in rehab, trials and supervised release. He, professionally born as a rock star with the Stone Temple Pilotsduring the golden age of grunge, he never wanted to change his lifestyle, except in the very last few years. But paying a high price for it.
In 2002 it was he who broke up with the DeLeo brothers and put an end to the “first phase” of the Stone Temple Pilots: luck would have it – for him – that in the same period the escapees from Guns N’ Roses Slash, Duff McKagan And Matt Sorum were looking for a singer for their new project called Velvet Revolver. It was McKagan who remembered that guy who attended the same gym as him, who – coincidentally – also spent a certain period of time in a detox clinic together with Sorum. It was a sign of fate, and that guy, of course, was Scott Weiland.
The mid-2000s for i Velvet Revolver were a golden period, but the problems, almost inevitably, did not take long to arrive: in 2004 after a debut marked by the number one position in the rankings with “Contraband” (read the review here), the group’s second album, “Libertad”, out in 2007, it was received lukewarmly by audiences and critics. At the same time, the DeLeo brothers had it in their heads to get them back in motion Stone Temple Pilots for a series of concerts at summer festivals. Weiland doesn’t think twice about doing the most classic of quail jumps and returns to the old group. When they asked him about this move, he explained: “Everything in Velvet Revolver was cool. Then it wasn’t cool anymore…”.
Slash and his companions didn’t take it very well, but they got over it anyway. Back with his old companions, it takes Weiland very little to question everything. The Stone Temple Pilots they leave for the tour, then even deliver a new album to the annals – “Stone Temple Pilots” – after nine years of silence. Concerts around the world and records in shops: the band’s second life seemed to work. In 2012, however, i Velvet Revolver they return to action for a charity evening. And something clicks in Scott’s fickle head. “If Maynard James Keenan can do it with A Perfect Circle and Tool, why shouldn’t I do it with Stone Temple Pilots and Velvet Revolver?”: that’s what Weiland has in mind.
But they don’t like the plan, nor do they Velvet Revolverwho are a band only on paper, with Slash now completely absorbed by his solo career – in 2012 his second album was released, “Apocalyptic love” (read the review here) – nor to the DeLeo brothers, who felt cheated, blaming Weiland’s erratic conduct for the missed celebrations for the twentieth anniversary of “Core”. The spiral of tension reached its peak at the end of February 2013, when – with an official statement, almost as if it were a CEO of a company – the Stone Temple Pilots – announced that they had “terminated their professional relationship with Scott Weiland”. The co-frontman of Dei will then be called to replace him – albeit pro tempore Linkin Park Chester Bennington.
Left in the middle of the fateful road, Scott Weiland attempted a new meeting with Velvet Revolverhearing a spade reply from Slash. He then began a rich but not always defined solo career, made up of cover albums, swing Christmas albums and concerts on minor circuits. But then the unexpected happened, when he now seemed to have resigned himself to a career as a veteran, to small stages in the provinces and to audiences of die-hard fans; here comes the Wildaboutsa new project, where there are no conflicts of ego and superego to complicate things, being him, as clearly denounced by the company name – “Scott Weiland and the Wildabouts” – to lead the games.
The wheel starts turning again, but 2015 is a horrible year: first the death of the guitarist Jeremy Brownthen the cancellation of the European tour. It is also called by Art of Anarchysupergroup assembled by the (new) Guns N’ Roses Ron “Bumblefoot” Thal and the brothers Jon and Vince Vottabut even there he manages to drag along the inevitable polemical crowd, immediately distancing himself from the project (to which he had lent his voice for some studio work) when in the air his fellow adventurers raise the possibility of a more cumbersome commitment than simple divertissement.
Yes, because a Scott Weilandstage animal, one of the survivors of the last, wild West Coast rock’n’roll season, life as a rock star is starting to get tight. The world is changing, and he – born professionally in a record industry that was booming, where glasses of champagne and limousines were the minimum standard – is having a lot of trouble coming to terms with the new millennium. Above all to earn, in a historical period where tours are the only source of income, even if the most tiring and demanding. Weiland, with his 48 years under his belt, can feel it all. “We used to have marketing budgets of a couple of million dollars, now we have $75,000. You have to spend a lot of time on tour to make up for the loss of income from not selling records. I don’t enjoy it as much as I did when I was twenty. I’m happily married and it weighs on me not seeing my kids. My wife visits me on tour for a week or two at a time. This is a long nine-week tour, I miss it a lot.” This is his last interviewreleased just three weeks before leaving for his final fateful tour…
