RIP Scott Weiland: My Thoughts

I've been thinking about Scott today, I woke up this morning, saw the news and it just knocked me sideways. I wasn't a huge fan of Scotts and I know he's had his problems but he was one of the most talented frontmen in our community. Stone Temple Pilots broke on to the scene just after bands like Nirvana and Pearl Jam and a lot of people immediately wrote them off as jumping on the grunge bandwagon. But shortly after that they gained a following by killing it in live shows and writing great songs. I really dug Vaseline but Big Empty floored me. The line "to much tripping and my souls worn thin" is so poetic. I can remember having conversations with others about it. Was he talking about it physically? or maybe he's talking about the drugs? Obviously it was both.

My favorite memory of Scott was when he was in Velvet Revolver. They played an impromptu show at the Orlando Hard Rock Live venue. Hard Rock Live holds about five thousand people but because it was such short notice no one knew about it and only about two- three hundred people showed up. And the entire band, knowing full well that this was probably one of the smallest crowds they would play to came out and killed it. They played like they were playing in front of a sold out stadium, and they never let up. Scott's powerful baritone, as well as throwing strange shapes with his body up on the stage was what made that band a new band, otherwise it would have felt like an 80's throw back band. He had an amazing stage presence and while I'd always thought he was a good singer I realized that night what an incredible front man he was. To hear later that he wasn't in to it and only did it for the money was sad, but he went out and still killed it anyway. There's a lesson in there for all of us.

 Some people hear about something like this and say "he was weak". Maybe that's what they say to themselves because they don't want to spend to much time thinking about it. But Scott wasn't week, he had pulled himself back from the gutter to many times for me to think of him as weak. Some will say he didn't want to change bad enough. That's total BS. Most of us have something in our lives that stays there even if we want it to change. But something that I don't understand drove him to self destruction time and time again. And that "something that I don't understand" doesn't mean that he's weaker than me, it means I don't have a clue as to what drives someone to almost kill themselves again and again. And so I have no judgment on it. I don't know anything about it, so how can I, how can any of us?

In the end it's another tragedy for some and another statistic for others. I feel for those who were close to him. I feel for those who tried to make it work with him and couldn't. RIP Scott, I hope you now have peace.