Troubled STP vocalist found dead on tour bus

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This article was published 05/12/2015 (3944 days ago), so information in it may no longer be current.

Scott Weiland, the singer of Stone Temple Pilots and Velvet Revolver who spent much of his life battling substance abuse, has died at 48.

Weiland, on tour with his group Scott Weiland and the Wildabouts, was found dead on his tour bus in Minnesota, as TMZ first reported and the Los Angeles Times confirmed with his wife. The cause of his death was not immediately known.

Much of the world learned of Weiland’s demise from guitarist Dave Navarro, who tweeted the news. A message confirming his death also appeared on his Instagram and Facebook pages.

A Toronto man who photographed Weiland’s show in the city earlier this week says “something seemed off” with the singer.

Jerry Abramowicz says while Weiland put on a great performance at Adelaide Hall on Tuesday and seemed healthy and sober, “he did not look happy” offstage.

Abramowicz, whose photography can be seen in the liner notes of the band’s latest CD, says Weiland didn’t seem under the influence of anything during the show in Toronto and seemed energetic, but “had a real sadness to his eyes” that shocked him.

Weiland came at fame sideways: his most renowned group, Stone Temple Pilots, was at first a Pearl Jam sound-alike that many thought eventually transcended tribute-band status. But once the singer found fame on his own terms, his personal demons always made it seem he could squander it at any time. As, indeed, he sometimes did.

“We were written off as the band of disastrous dysfunction with too many personal problems to survive,” Weiland wrote in his 2011 memoir, Not Dead & Not For Sale. “Or rather, I was written off as the guy whose hopeless addictions had — and would always — ruin everything for everyone.”

Weiland was born in Santa Cruz, Calif., in 1967. When his parents divorced when he was two and his mother remarried, he took his stepfather’s surname. Weiland wrote that his “new dad was a good guy whose middle name was discipline,” while his biological one was “a cool dude who drove a Pepsi truck for a living but smoked dope at night and listened to the Doors.”

The singer chose to emulate the latter. Living with his dad during the summer, he chugged his first beers in Grade 6.

Adolescence brought further troubles. Weiland was diagnosed with ADD. His mother was an alcoholic. At 12, he was raped by a high school senior.

“This was a memory I suppressed until only a few years ago when, in rehab, it came flooding back,” he wrote in 2011. “The dude raped me. It was quick, not pleasant. I was too scared to tell anyone.”

Weiland’s mother and stepfather also checked him into a mental hospital at 16, without telling him ahead of time. Two policemen and two paramedics showed up at his high school, and whisked him away without explanation.

“Just say what they want you to say, I thought to myself, and get the hell out of here,” he wrote. ” ‘I am a substance abuser,’ I said. I got out.”

All was not despair, however. A promising quarterback, Weiland was sidelined by an injury when he discovered rock SSRqn’ roll. Inspired by the Sex Pistols, the Clash and Queen, he started his own post-punk band that made waves in Orange County before he relocated to Los Angeles.

There and in San Diego, Stone Temple Pilots — or STP, as they came to be known — coalesced. And, as grunge swept the nation, the band signed to Atlantic Records in 1992.

Yet Core, STP’s debut, was widely viewed as nothing but imitation. Weiland, with a growl that came very close to that of Eddie Vedder of Pearl Jam, was the biggest target.

“Yet another SSRq70s-revival grunge-rock act, the Stone Temple Pilots sound like such Seattleites as Nirvana and Soundgarden, but like Pearl Jam they throw in a little R.E.M. just to be safe,” Mark Jenkins wrote in The Washington Post in 1992.

Core was not held back by critical slams, however, and the record went on to sell eight million copies as the band toured and Weiland indulged regularly in alcohol, cocaine, barbiturates and, eventually, heroin.

His drug use only seemed to spur STP to greater things. Their sophomore effort, Purple, became a critical darling.

But things went south. Weiland was arrested in 1995, carrying crack and heroin; STP cancelled a summer tour the following year when he was ordered into treatment. His demons also complicated recording sessions for STP’s next record.

“I was at the height — or depth — of my addiction,” he wrote. “Shooting coke. Shooting heroin. Running down the 101 every third day to L.A. to score and running back.”

The record came out, but the band, sidelined by Weiland’s addiction, couldn’t tour. By his own account, he did 13 stints in rehab between 1995 and 1997. A pattern set in that continued for the rest of the singer’s life: Weiland would enjoy success with STP or Velvet Revolver, his well-received supergroup formed with members of Guns N’ Roses in 2002, then retreat into himself to enter rehab and/or make a solo record.

In recent years, Weiland appeared to be moving away from the band that made him famous. After a reunion in 2008, he was fired by STP in 2013. No explanation was given.

At the time of his death, Weiland was on tour to promote Blaster, what would prove to be his final album. Rolling Stone’s headline summed up critics’ view: “A once-great rock frontman gets reduced to tiring self-parody.”

Weiland, who once very sincerely made a Christmas album, likely would have rejected that notion.

— The Washington Post with files from The Canadian Press