A few days ago, we received the news about singer Scott Weiland’s passing and, while we still aren’t 100% sure what was the cause of his death, the fact that drugs were found on his tour bus, from cocaine to Xanax and other sort of pills, many assume he died out of an overdose.
Many have expressed their thoughts on the subject, including Weiland’s ex-wife who wrote a heartfelt letter about the consequences of having a rock-star life and someone who knows very well about that life and was close to Weiland decided to speak on the matter and that’s Megadeth’s Dave Mustaine.
During an interview with loudwire, Mustaine spoke about the late frontman and his first encounter with him and Stone Temple Pilots, which you can read on the following transcription by Blabbermouth.com:
“It’s really peculiar the way things went down with me and Scott, because I was in Finland doing a ‘rate a record’ thing for a magazine one time and they had given us the ‘Core’ record to review. And I was listening to it and I thought, ‘Either this is a really bad joke or these guys are gonna be massive, because they’ve got a sound that’s very similar to a lot of the great bands that are in the alternative scene right now, but I don’t know if it’s a parody or if it’s the real deal. And the more I listened to it, the more I really grew to respect his vocals, and I thought that Robert [DeLeo, bass], his playing was really great too. They were called MIGHTY JOE YOUNG at the time. And I talked to our manager and I said, ‘I wanna take these guys out.’ And the manager said, ‘Well, you know, people just aren’t digging on ’em.’ And I was, like, ‘I don’t care. I wanna take ’em out.’ So in 1992, on the ‘Countdown To Extinction’ tour, we took STONE TEMPLE PILOTS out. And they were doing pretty good, and there was something that was just off a little bit. And I said, ‘Hey, do you guys mind if I help you with your setlist?’ And we talked a little bit about rearranging the songs and climaxing and settling down into a groove in the middle. And there was one part… it was really funny… They have an instrumental song, and Scott just stands out there on the stage, and I said, ‘What’s this song?’, knowing full well what it was. And he goes, ‘Well, it’s an instrumental.’ And I said, ‘And? Why are you standing out there?’ I said, ‘Go off to the side of the stage.’ And I told him the song where he does — I think ‘Crackerman’, with the bullhorn thing — ‘use that as your opener because it’s kind of cheeky and it’s a cool way to kind of start the set.’ And they took off after that. Their setlist was great. The pulse, the timing and everything was perfect.”
He continued: “he thing that I regret was at the end of the tour, I told him, I said, ‘Look, Scott, you’re gonna be huge. You’re gonna have money, you’re gonna have drugs, you’re gonna have pussy, and it’s gonna be everywhere.’ And I said, ‘If you do anything, stay away from heroin.’ And I probably should have said, ‘Do as much as you can,’ because he did the exact opposite.”
Mustaine added: “The sad thing is that anybody that knows Scott and that was around him was aware of what was going on. Just like the guy that was in MILLI VANILLI, they took him out of rehab and put him on the road, and he wasn’t even done with the rehabilitation process. And he died.
“No song, no performance, no amount of money is worth a human life. And I think that the music industry suffered a tragic loss. But as much as the onus is on Scott for doing it, there are other people that are responsible for that.”
While the obvious comes to mind and some may think is not necessary to warn someone about doing heroin, the context here is that when you’re becoming a rockstar of the magnitude Stone Temple Pilots did, it is a relevant advise to take because all that will become easily accessible and can end up in this.
