Scott Weiland – Barbarella

When I woke up yesterday, it was the first thing I saw. It shouldn’t have been such a shock, like Layne’s death wasn’t, not really. Both were inevitable in many ways, but this felt wrong. Scott was the king of comebacks. STP put out one of their most interesting albums during his most turbulent period (1996’s Tiny Music…), two incredible but underrated gems after reuniting with Stone Temple Pilots, and years later, after working with Velvet Revolver and releasing a second solo album, they reunited yet again. We all knew there were issues, we all knew about the drugs, but he kept coming back. As my colleague Matt Belair notes, he seemed invincible. We knew how the story had to end, but even the recent information, the videos of one of 90s rock’s iconic voices going toneless and wavering, it didn’t seem real. It had to be a lie. It would be a matter of time before the man himself was bellowing in a megaphone in front of the band he was meant to front. Even the recent parting of ways between the DeLeo side of STP and Chester Bennington seemed to signal hope.

Hope never did come.

It’s funny that our view of Scott Weiland is rarely as an original like many of his peers, but he was as unique as any of them. He was in some ways among the most hard rock, in others the most glam and androgynous. His early hits were all cock-rock bombast, his later work often fragile and introspective. This is a man who wrote songs like “Sex Type Thing” and could just as deftly handle the campfire singalong of “And So I Know” or the goofily sweet “I Got You”. The DeLeo brothers never got the credit they deserved for their songcraft, which also ranged from growling, chugging riffs to complex jangling chords. Listening to songs as early as Purple’s “Pretty Penny” will confirm the interesting ways that the group could play with rhythm, while also showing a more tender side compared to the testosterone fueled hits of Core. From there on out, there simply wasn’t a standard STP sound. Every album felt different, and each album went different directions. Tiny Music… starts with coarse garage rock and ends with the blues jam of “Daisy” and the psychedelia of “Seven Caged Tigers.” While No. 4 begins with heavy Drop-D chords and has enough MC5 influence to name a song after them, it also ends with “Atlanta,” where Jim Morrison’s ghost is channeled into a beautifully dark ballad. Shangri-La-Dee-Da begins similarly with “Dumb Love” but branches into some of the most diverse and fragile work STP ever released. This is a band that put out an impressive body of work that went largely ignored for not delivering on the promise of “Plush,” and as much as the band itself cannot be ignored for its contributions, it has been fairly obvious in Weiland’s absences that STP needed Scott to be a viable hit. As we stated back when Chester fronted the band, this is a group far greater than the sum of its parts.

Over the course of the day, I felt the easiest way to grieve was to share my favorite STP songs on our Facebook page… to share a legacy too easily ignored as “one more band” in the glut of talent that came out of the early 90s. I couldn’t help but pause on Shangri-La-Dee-Da: it was a moment that felt super special when I first heard it, and just thinking of it hurt in light of Weiland’s passing. After the perfunctory “standard rock” of the first few songs, the album breaks into “Wonderful”, a simple love song that reflects on the end. Songs like “Black Again” and “Hello, It’s Late” show a more tender Weiland, not to mention “A Song For Sleeping,” which is heartbreaking today. “There’s so much I could teach you if you only have the time,” Weiland sings to his son, Noah. It’s a guileless, innocent, sweet song that never feels overly saccharine, but right now it humanizes the loss in exactly the hardest way… whatever the relationship Weiland may have had with his son in the ensuing years, it’s not Noah who didn’t have time enough for his father.

Still, even in these more comfortable and stable moments, Weiland inserts the naked “Bi-Polar Bear,” where he admits: “I left my meds on the sink again… my head will be racing by lunch time.” Scott had no illusions about where things were going, even if he could walk the walk of the confident rock star whenever needed. The very first thing we heard from Stone Temple Pilots, if we consider someone who might have picked up Core on a whim, was a song called “Dead and Bloated”. “Still Remains” is full of death imagery, right down to the lovely “pick a flower, hold your breath and drift away”. Tiny Music… is full of conflicting death imagery, from “Trippin’ on a Hole in a Paper Heart”s “I’m not dead and I’m not for sale” to “Adhesive”s extended death metaphor. “I Got You” is a love song about “the spoon” and “the roses on my grave.” Scott may have been a fool for his addictions (though his bandmates rightly noted today, in the sort of heartfelt, conflicted message that could only come from working with someone like Weiland, that part of what made him great was also what laid him low), but he was no fool about where they might lead him.  The more he cheated death, the more he seemed to acknowledge it… his awareness may even explain such choices as ending his sophomore solo album Happy In Galoshes with a church hymn, “Be Not Afraid.”

Indeed, it’s the solo albums that I feel I need to explore most in the aftermath of a turbulent life. After all, this is where so much of Weiland’s most fragile moments exist.  Consider the final verse of “Barbarella,” already one of his most self-loathing tracks:

For the rest of us, though, we have to cry foul on such a thought. What Weiland was as a father or husband or friend is certainly fraught with complication. That his addictions ended up being more important to him than his passions has lasting effects for those who have been affected by his music. But for the fans, it’s not really true. For all the pain Weiland has given, and all the pain his loss will cause to family, friends and fans, he also gave a lot of himself through his music. That may never be enough for the people who truly knew him, but for the fans, it might hurt, but I think we all knew it was a matter of time. I think many STP fans looked at the oncoming train in the same way STP themselves did. It really doesn’t make it hurt less.When STP put out a Greatest Hits package, it was entitled Thank You. I’d like to turn that back on you, Scott. Music history may never give you your due, but I know a generation of people who dug deeper and got it, or at least tried to. Your biggest fans, the ones that really loved your work in all its forms, appreciated you from your peacocking to your staying at home as the mouse. You’ve helped us with our own demons. We regret that nothing could calm yours.