Exclusive: Scott Weiland Shares His Troubled Past in Archival Interviews

(photo: The Wrap)

Usually when rock stars die, their fans are deeply saddened. That’s certainly the case for former Stone Temple Pilots and Velvet Revolver singer Scott Weiland, who died Thursday in his sleep in Bloomington, Minnesota, while on tour with his latest band, Scott Weiland & The Wildabouts. But while those who followed Weiland are heartbroken, they’re not necessarily surprised.

The talented artist reportedly died of a heart attack, but he had a long history of depression and addiction, along with the volatile behavior that often accompanies such conditions. He was kicked out of Stone Temple Pilots for the final time in February 2013 for being late to shows and exhibiting a lack of interest, and he was let go from Guns N’ Roses-associated supergroup Velvet Revolver in 2008 due to personality conflicts.

Related: Fall to Pieces: Remembering the Late Scott Weiland’s 10 Greatest Musical Moments

However, for all his flaws, Weiland was a gifted songwriter and a charismatic frontman. His raspy voice fell into the realm of the “Seattle sound,” but he was just as interested in classic rock artists like the Beatles, David Bowie, and Pink Floyd, and his sinewy stage moves and flashy sense of style were always captivating.

Weiland was plagued by demons, bounced in and out of rehab, and abused heroin – he said – on and off until 2004. His last criminal wrangle with drug abuse came in 2007, when he crashed his car in Los Angeles and was charged with being “under the influence of a drug.” Yet both before, during, and after his battles with drugs, Weiland created some great post-grunge and alternative rock records. He played on six well-received albums with Stone Temple Pilots and two discs with Velvet Revolver, and he was prolific as a solo artist, releasing four eclectic studio records, including one with the Wildabouts, Blaster, just this past February.

Photos: Remembering Scott Weiland Through the Years

The following Q&A with Weiland was compiled from archival interviews conducted 10 years apart, in 2004 and 2014, and sheds some insight on the singer’s tortured past and struggle to overcome his career setbacks.

YAHOO MUSIC: You’ve suffered from depression for years…

SCOTT WEILAND: I was on medication for a manic depressive disorder, which hinges on the depressive side. It’s been an issue for the past 20 years.

Stone Temple Pilots was your first real taste of success. Was the adulation overwhelming, and did that lead you to start using drugs?

I would just say drugs worked for me until they didn’t. They were fun until they were absolutely heinously nightmarish. I used to self-sabotage myself right before we used to make records. Every STP record after the first one – Purple, Tiny Music, No. 4, and Shangri-La Dee Da. I self-sabotaged myself either during the middle of pre-production, or the end of pre-production, or during the very beginning of recording.

Why do you think that happened?

I didn’t realize that it was for the purpose of creating the environment by which to bring myself to that – stimulate myself to that point where I could become so depressed in a narcotic-based depression, so that I would end up having something to write about from that perspective. And it happened every time. Things would be all right, and I would feel sort of a little uninspired, or I would be writing certain songs from a certain perspective, and then I’d feel the need to dig deeper, and I’d end up falling off the wagon. I didn’t realize it was a subconscious decision, but it happened every time.

Why did Stone Temple Pilots break up in 2002?

There was a fight in the dressing room between [guitarist] Dean [DeLeo] and I over quite a few things. Things had been building up for a while. It involved a lot of jealousy, drugs, a lot of s—.

You said you used to inspire you to create for Stone Temple Pilots, but your drug abuse didn’t stop after the band broke up?

During the time STP were broken up, I was super-depressed. I thought about killing myself a lot. I didn’t attempt it, but every day that’s where my thoughts were at. Part of the problem was I got off my medication and instead decided to medicate myself with heroin, which worked for a while, but in the end it stopped working. So I was completely in a narcissistic-based, obsessive depression. And the only thing I could think about was my own self-centered dark world.

Your [second] wife [Mary Forsberg, whom Weiland divorced in 2007] reportedly gave you an ultimatum to stop using or she would leave you.

She did, and I passed. And I found friendship with my wife again… Since I had that period of sobriety for two years touring for the No. 4 album when I got out of jail, when I was in jail for six months… When I got loaded and was in that period of relapse for a year and a half, and even before that and after, I forgot how to laugh. I was in such a deep depression I couldn’t even smile.

You suffered a personal crisis when your son was born.

It was difficult when [Mary and I] had our first son, because before that my wife and I were completely everything to each other, and when we had our son, which we were looking forward to so much, it took a lot of her energy and her time away from me and defocused her as it pertained to me. And that f—ed with me. And that coincided with my sliding back into my old ways and my old partnership with drugs and alcohol. And I definitely used it as an excuse as well to go back. Well, I didn’t use it as an excuse to go back to it, I used it as an excuse to stay back to it. But it made it easier, too because it became a comfort zone. I wasn’t getting the comfort I used to get from her. I ended up taking the comfort from the opiate and the alcohol. And by that time, it ended up pulling us too far apart from each other. And then come the lies that go along with it, lying about whether you’re clean or not clean and all that.

You’ve been open and unapologetic about your past.

Whether you’re a drug addict or not doesn’t have anything to do with who you are as a person. Who you are as a person has to do with what you think and how you feel. It has to do with how you love and how you care for people. It doesn’t have anything to do with your penchant for drugs or your penchant for alcohol or whether you’re an overeater or whether you gamble too much, and just because society says it’s the wrong thing to do too. ‘Cause society says that putting a needle in your arm is bad – well, that’s what society decides. Why is it OK with society for someone to have six drinks a day, but someone who’s a drug addict and just decides that they’re addicted to painkillers or they snort or smoke heroin or they snort cocaine, society says that’s wrong, they’re bad, that goes against the moral code? In the end, I don’t need to apologize because I don’t regret anything I’ve done. Nothing. Every single thing I’ve done has made me who I am today. The only thing I would take back is hurting the people that I love, and the people who I love have already read my lyrics and heard my apologies. But the rest of the world, I don’t need to apologize to them. My life doesn’t have anything to do with the rest of the world.

What led to your dismissal from Velvet Revolver?

I was on tour with them and then Dean [from Stone Temple Pilots] called me and said, “Hey, we have an opportunity to play some festivals in the summer and make a lot of money.” And I said, “Well, that sounds cool, because Velvet Revolver’s going to be taking a break.” So I went to talk to [Velvet Revolver’s] Slash and he said it was cool with him. But then there was this big, blown-out announcement that STP was back together again and our agent went in and started getting offers for a lot more than just those festivals, and the guys in Velvet Revolver got pissed off. [VR drummer] Matt [Sorum] almost got in a fight with me backstage. We were pulled apart before anyone got hurt, but that left a real bad taste in everyone’s mouth when we had to go onstage. So during the show I said to the crowd, “You’re all lucky in a sense, because I think you’re seeing the last tour of Velvet Revolver.” We only had a few more shows. We finished up that tour. I don’t know why things had to turn out that way. I can’t control what our agent did. I hadn’t accepted those other offers. But I had already quit.

It seems like you’re a victim of circumstance. You’re not in Velvet Revolver because STP had all these offers, and now you’re not in Stone Temple Pilots, either.

There has just been a lack of communication all around. When bands got really big and sold a lot of records back in the day and did really well on the road, everyone developed a certain ego. And there’s a certain entitlement that comes with that. And it stops people from communicating the way you used to communicate when you were in a band together and it was all for one, one for all.

If you weren’t doing drugs or abusing alcohol, what was it that drove a wedge between you and the rest of Stone Temple Pilots in September 2012? They said you were unpredictable and weren’t showing up to concerts one time. They implied you were using again.

Backing up a little, there’s been circumstances in the past where that’s happened. We had three shows booked in 1997 for New Year’s Eve and New Year’s and the day after. One was in Anchorage, Alaska and then two shows in Hawaii. I had mentioned to the band I had just started getting high again. I’d abuse on and off. I’d go through a period of using for a while, but then I’d go get clean and stop and that whole cycle of rehabbing that became very expensive – more so than the drugs ever were. And at that time, I went to an addiction specialist and got medication to be able to maintain and be fine for those few days we were going to be gone. And then I planned on detoxing when I got back. But if you’re a person that’s been using opiates, you can get restrung-out in just three days. That’s the three-day rule: Never use three days in a row. It’s ludicrous, because I hardly know anyone that was able to maintain that kind of discipline. There’s even a song by Jane’s Addiction about it. We were ready to go. I was packed up waiting for a limo to pick me up. We had a private plane waiting and then I get a call from my manager and he said, “The car’s not coming. The rest of the guys canceled the tour.” And then they did a press conference and outed me publicly, which was completely unnecessary.

So, why did STP kick you out of the band?

It was more of the same. There are things I can own up to. I had an issue with being late to shows. I can admit that. And it’s not just shows; I have a time problem in general and I’m working on being closer to right on time to the dentist or to a business meeting. I’ve always had a problem with it, and my friends call it “living on Weiland time.” But it’s rock ‘n’ roll. I remember going to shows and I never showed up right on time because I always knew the band was always going to be late. When it’s over 20 minutes – and there were some occasions where I was an hour late. And one time I stayed back when we had a day off to watch a Notre Dame football game. And then a hurricane started to blow through. And I couldn’t take the flight that night, so I had to take a private plane the next day. The rest of the guys had flown commercial the previous day at the end of the day off to get to the next city. So things like that came up.

There were reports that you were “going through the motions.”

I thought we were getting ourselves burned out because we were playing the same set every night. We were supposed to do the 20th anniversary show for the release of [debut STP album] Core in the summer of 2012. We were going to play the record in its entirety and I was doing a lot of press to promote that. Then at the 11th hour the rest of the guys decided they didn’t want to do it. So I really looked like a fool, and the promoters who thought that’s the show we were going to perform were really upset. They had made these offers that were really big because they had judged towards the pre-ticket orders that were looking really strong. And it fell apart. We ended up doing the same greatest-hits thing and I got really burned out on it. I told the guys in the band we should take some time off, recharge our batteries, and make a new record so there’s something creative to promote and a reason to tour and have it be exciting. It felt like we were just being a cover band of ourselves. We were being about the past and not the future.

How did you find out they were writing new material with Linkin Park vocalist Chester Bennington?

I heard about it through social media… I couldn’t believe it because I had been friends with Chester and his ex-wife for quite some time. I knew he was a big fan of STP and I was a big influence on him musically. So it was strange having to find out third-hand through the media.

Do you look at your solo career with the Wildabouts as a new evolution of your career that you’re content with, or are you bitter about what’s happened?

Well, I’m bitter about the STP thing. I think it would have been cool if we could have gotten back together for at least one more album and a tour or if not, just a tour. There are a lot of feelings that are hurt there. But you gotta look towards the future, and there are a lot of positive things about giving a real identity to the band that I play with now and writing a new record with them.