Stone Temple Pilots

I didn't realize they've now had two entire albums with their post-Bennington singer. Maybe they should have resurrected Talk Show instead.

this post came up randomly on my timeline

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=JlQKPwmw_Zs

a different scott. really sad to think what happened to him after

i was reading a bit about him and had no idea he was actually abused as a child

Agreed. It's very sad to think of just how much he degraded in the span of 25 years. A cautionary tale in what addiction can really do to you.

When Weiland passed away, I made this post on my Facebook and this thread reminded me of it...

I am pretty sure that I did the first major interview with Scott Weiland. I was writing for Creem and the label flew me out to interview Stone Temple Pilots when they were supporting Megadeth in the midwest. I forget the itinerary but it involved flying into one place, traveling for a night with the band and flying back to New York, with most of my time being spent in Missouri.

I was able to use the hang time with the band to flesh out the story of the band coming out of the chute and breaking right when Sex Type Thing was starting to get massive radio play.

I have fond memories of the trip - drummer Eric Kretz was a really great guy, I introduced those West Coasters to the wonder that is White Castle (the tour bus stopped by and we ordered like 100 of them at my suggestion - with the unheeded warning that it was the only food that would give you a hangover, man did that bus reek the next day) and I got to hear an amazing story in catering from Nick Menza about the line of cute Asian groupies at the Japanese hotel room of Marty Friedman and how he needed an ice pack on his balls afterwards.

And of course, it was cool to be right in the middle of a band exploding into the mainstream living their dreams.

The key part of the story was breakfast in a Shoney's near the band's hotel with Weiland by himself. He let me pick the Shoney's because I used to work there as one of my earliest jobs when I was a teenager.

We had a really nice chat, which made up most of the piece if memory serves. At one point, we got onto what the whirlwind was like, what he would call success.

As if on cue, some dude came by the table to say hi to the singer. The guy mentioned how he played in a cover band and they were working out "Sex Type Thing" to add to their set.

After he left, Weiland turned to me and laughed and said "I think that's a sign you've made it, when someone in a Shoney's in Missouri says he's covering your stuff." Which would up being the endtro to my story.

The band wound up becoming huge. My guess is that the trappings of that success is one of the reasons he was found dead at 48 (just two years older than I am) on a tour bus yesterday.

I was never a huge fan of the band, personally - they had a few good songs but were more derivative than I cared for - but it was cool to be a small part in helping them succeed even if it seemed that Weiland kind of lost the path a few times there.

I hope that somewhere along the line he was able to remember what it was like when having someone in a midwest breakfast chain telling him that they were doing one of his songs was one of the coolest things in the world.

I did a big piece on him for Kerrang! just as Velvet Revolver was happening, got flown out to his studio in LA and got the whole spiel on his drug addiction and losing his family and almost dying and so on. The studio was lovely, but he'd thrown a bin at the glass between the control room and the studio and it was intact but shattered, and he'd spray-painted "fuck" across it. He told me he was clean and would never stray again, because he didn't want to lose his wife and kid again. But it seemed pretty clear to me that he was in no way okay. I was supposed to meet up with some friends in LA bands that night but I felt so depressed afterwards I cancelled and just took a long bath in my hotel room that night. He seemed so sad.