Stone Temple Pilots have shared when they think late frontman Scott Weiland “took a turn” towards addiction.
The artist, who was also the singer in Velvet Revolver, died in 2015 at age 48. It reported that the cause of death was an accidental overdose due to the vocalist taking a “toxic mix of drugs”.
Now, his Stone Temple Pilots bandmates Robert and Dean DeLeo have shared some insight into what the dynamic was like in the band, and explained when they saw a shift as the singer got more involved in drug use.
“I think it was after doing that ’93 tour with the Butthole Surfers. I think that’s when Scott kind of took a turn,” Robert told The Smashing Pumpkins singer Billy Corgan on the Magnificent Others podcast.
“Gibby [Haynes, Butthole Surfers’ frontman] was his own circus. But Scott hung out with Gibby. And I think he was introduced to some things there that maybe tickled his addictive fancy.”
He continued, explaining how the addiction had a huge effect on the band from the start, and led to some of their early albums nearly being left on the shelf.
“Believe it or not, and we don’t say this a lot, but a few of those records were almost not finished,” Robert added. “It was a sit down with Brendan [O’Brien, producer] going, ‘What are we doing, guys? What are we doing here? Are we going to finish this record?’”
While Weiland’s struggles with addiction led to the band breaking up in 2003 – with him going on to join Velvet Revolver and the DeLeo brothers forming the Army Of Anyone band – they did come back together in 2008. This, the brothers shared, was a decision that they were hesitant to make.
“There was definitely some trepidation,” Dean said in the interview, while Robert added: “[But] there was a lot of history there… I think we just stepped into it lightly.”
“[Weiland] didn’t show up the first day of rehearsal in very good health, and we’re like, ‘Alright. Should we pack this up?’,” he continued. “It brought up a lot of ghosts. I remember just going, ‘You know what? I’m fucking going home.”
The members eventually went ahead with the reunion, and they stayed together between 2008 and 2013.
While the coroner has ruled that Weiland’s cause of death was due to accidental overdose, the claims have been contested by the singer’s widow, Jamie Wachtel Weiland.
Speaking on the Appetite for Distortion podcast last year, she said: “I feel like when he died, everybody was kind of like: ‘That’s tragic, but of course he overdosed, which – he didn’t fucking overdose. I tried to get that point across. He didn’t.”
She continued: “But the truth is, Scott died because the main artery in his left ventricle was 95 per cent blocked,” she continued. “That came from 10 years of heroin use, that came from an entire adult life of chain smoking. His heart stopped.”
Shortly after Weiland’s passing, his wife also penned an open letter and urged fans not to “glorify” his death, and it was later shared that David Bowie tried to reach out to the singer shortly before they both died, in a bid to offer advice and be there to listen if he wanted to talk about his struggles.
Last year, it was shared that Noah Weiland – the son of the vocalist – was reworking unreleased vocals from his father on a new song called ‘Time Will Tell’, after an apparent blackmail attempt.
At the time, it was reported that Scott had worked on an unfinished demo of the song before his death, although this was secured by an unknown individual who had threatened to leak it online unless Noah handed over $2,000.
In a tribute from NME, Weiland was hailed as a “flawed rock ‘n’ roll genius”, listed five of his most iconic moments, and shared: “it is sad to see yet another flawed musician passing away in such sad circumstances”.
