HIGH
TIMES MAGAZINE (FEBRUARY 2005)
THE FRONT LINES
Scott Weiland doesn’t want to talk about drugs.
Unless you ask.
BY DAVID BIENENSTOCK
I didn’t ask Scott Weiland if he’s been getting
high lately. Maybe you would have, but I didn’t. The
question was on my list, down at the bottom, but when the
time came, it felt rude, not to mention predictable. So predictable,
in fact, that Weiland declared a moratorium on interviews
this past May, a vow broken two months later, when he sat
down with HIGH TIMES. In a Web posting for fans, he explained
the ban: “I feel that I can no longer be a part of the
rock ‘Press Type Thing’ Although I greatly appreciate
the respect our album has been given in review, it has become
increasingly clear that in ‘respect’ to me, the
word ‘journalism’ is blurred with tabloid sensationalism
and untruths. I will not stoop to the level of these mosquitoes
in order to simply sell records. I won’t play your fucking
game.”
Not that the former Stone Temple Pilots front man hasn’t
been frank with the press in the past. Us magazine’s
Jancee Dunn asked him about heroin in 1998: how it felt when
he first tried it (“I fell in love with it right away”),
and how long it was a good experience (“About two years”).
He went on to tell her about going six months without sex,
and not caring. About “turning on” his brother,
cursing him with addiction. And then, in nearly the same breath:
“I’d love to do it right now.… If I had
some of it on me right now, I guarantee I could get you to
do it in a second.”
If you want to know more about Scott Weiland’s history
of use, abuse, addiction and occasional self-destruction,
just type his name into Google. That’s what I did. I
printed out a dossier three fingers thick: some album reviews,
some concert reviews, some interviews, but mostly news stories
about going in and out of rehab, in and out of court, in and
out of prison, in and out of hell.
I started to see his point. It painted a very one-dimensional
portrait. Sometimes there were two- or three-year gaps between
the news stories, times when nobody seemed to give a shit
what Scott Weiland was up to. The rock press still cared,
because he sold millions of records. But not the Associated
Press.
“This is just not kosher, man.” Those were the
first words he said to me, from the backseat of a souped-up
SUV. He was parked on the curb outside the posh Mercer Hotel
in downtown Manhattan, awaiting an hour’s drive over
the river and into the sticks to play a show with his new
band, Velvet Revolver—one of the last stops on a run
of small club warm-up gigs before a whirlwind through Europe,
followed by a triumphant return to the United States for a
full-on tour supporting Contraband, Revolver’s
surprise-hit debut album. Contraband went platinum
on the day in question (July 29), after debuting at No. 1
on the Billboard charts and selling a quarter of a million
copies in its first week.
For the record, Weiland is not Jewish, so we can rest assured
that he was not refusing shellfish. What was “not kosher,”
in fact, was the unlikely sounding plan in which three HIGH
TIMES staffers plus a photographer had been told to meet him
at the hotel, and to come along for the ride—literally.
Apparently, there had been a miscommunication between Weiland
and his people. He had agreed to talk to us on the phone
during his commute to work, and somehow that had gotten translated
into something resembling a shuttle bus.
Apologies were exchanged, along with a cell phone number and
the vague offer of a backstage interview. Then the SUV drove
off, and I was left standing on the side of the road, with
nothing but my Dictaphone in my hand—sure in my heart
that I wouldn’t see Scott Weiland again that night until
the stage lights went down.
That’s what I thought when we made it to the show in
our own car, and even when we made it backstage to the “Vibe
Room,” where, in quiet deference to the band’s
sobriety, O’Doul’s nonalcoholic beer cooled in
a bucket of ice on the floor. Velvet Revolver is officially
a drug-free zone (we kept the HIGH TIMES stash to ourselves
backstage), but oh, the stories they must tell on the road.
The group includes Slash, Duff McKagan and Matt Sorum, all
former members of the hard-living Guns N’ Roses, plus
Dave Kushner, formerly of Dave Navarro’s band, and of
course Weiland himself out front.
Every one of them is engaged in staying clean on some level,
but none carry the heavy weight of Weiland’s legal history,
and none but Slash even approach his fame.
“Hey, you’re the guys from HIGH TIMES—you
know he’s only talking to you,” Slash told us
when he stopped into the Vibe Room to make a call on his cell.
Then, grinning, “The only thing I want from you guys
is a subscription.”
Next, quietly, Weiland appeared. I was told we had twenty
minutes, but the interview ended up going twice that long.
He spoke guardedly at first, slowly, but became more engaged
as we went on. He made eye contact rarely, but it was piercing
and highly personal. Later, it was hard to reconcile this
cautious man with the one who stormed the spotlights of the
Starland Ballroom, an overgrown North Jersey roadhouse a few
miles outside Sayreville featuring cheap beer, TVs in the
corners and a worshipful crowd comprised of—as described
by Weiland from the stage—”sweaty guys in baseball
hats.” The reluctant rock star I’d met backstage
was transformed by these wanton masses into some other animal
entirely: shirtless, perched atop a speaker, screaming into
a megaphone and shaking his bony hips for all they were worth.
Why did you stop doing interviews?
I’m tired of talking about my relationship with drugs.
I’m tired of talking about my legal problems. I’m
tired of talking about whether or not I’m a scapegoat
or a martyr. I’m tired of talking about these things,
because my life has become so much more full and complex,
as opposed to when narcotics and the things that went with
a narcotics-based lifestyle consumed me. So when I would repeatedly
get asked questions about it, I’d try to derail the
journalist. I’d think we were off the subject; then
I’d read the story and it would get taken out of context.
Just for the sake of glorifying an article.
What do they get wrong about you?
I don’t know, man. It’s not necessarily a matter
of what do they get wrong about me. I guess I sell magazines.
I’m a marketing tool. They focus on one aspect of my
life and they have no interest in parts of my life that are
interesting and fulfilling to me. Since they don’t want
to talk about those parts of my life, I don’t really
feel like talking to them.
The band being obvious, what else is important to
you right now?
My wife. My children. And that stuff is only fodder for Good
Housekeeping and Ladies’ Home Journal,
shit like that.
What are some of the unique challenges you face as
a father?
How to balance my time with work, and with all the rigors
of what I do for a living. I have to work very hard and go
on the road a lot. Also, I’ve made a lot of mistakes,
and I don’t want my children to make the same mistakes.
People have seen me get in trouble with the law on TV because
of my drug problems, and then they think of me as some sort
of outlaw. But that’s a big misconception: Scott Weiland
the outlaw. I actually live by a pretty high moral code of
honor. I’m not a liar. I’m not a cheat. I’m
not a thief. And I’ve never been. If you take away the
drug aspect, and any of the problems that go along with that,
I’d be a saint.
To me, the portrayal in these stories is always too
black and white: Either this person is the worst person in
the world because they did drugs, or now aren’t they
great because they stopped.
Why would somebody be the worst person in the world just because
they did drugs? I started doing drugs because it felt good
and I found the people who took drugs interesting. The writers
and musicians who I thought were brilliant, who were the most
intriguing, who were influential to the musical society that
I wanted to be a part of—those were the individuals
who seemed to have experimented with narcotics, and a lot
of times were habitual users of narcotics.
Who influenced you in this time?
William Burroughs. A lot of the Beat poets and writers. Allen
Ginsberg. Those cats. Also, listening to music and starting
to dig deeper and find out the reason why that music happened.
What was the inspiration? And drugs seemed to be a common
thread, a common component.
Was it a part of your early creative process?
At first, with weed, I found that it was creatively stimulating,
but it had a short burn. And then it became distracting. Hallucinogens
never worked—they were overstimulating, and I was never
able to let go. But with opiates, for a long time, they worked
for a lot of reasons. They were a warm blanket. They eased
pain. And for creative purposes, they gave me objectivity.
If I was working on a song and I wanted to push a boundary,
where normally the component of fear would have set in, the
opiates allowed me to have more objectivity and allowed me
to not be as emotionally connected to the art that I was working
on. I could see it a little more cerebrally. That allowed
me to take more risks, but what ended up happening a few years
down the road—not too many, because I indulged pretty
quickly—that objectivity grew farther and farther away,
and the emotional strings of the heart also grew farther and
farther away, to the point that I had so much objectivity
that there was no emotional connection. That sort of became
evident on my solo record. It started out a beautiful sonic
adventure and emotional catharsis to exorcise all the demons
I was going through in my life, but it ended up almost as
if I had gone into space and had lost my lifeline. My air
tube had snapped.
There’s obviously a unique dynamic in this band.
Why was that more attractive than remaining a solo artist?
It wasn’t necessarily more attractive. It just became
a situation that I couldn’t pass up. [Prior to forming
Velvet Revolver], I owed STP a few months of allegiance, but
nothing seemed to be happening. There were just so many resentments.
Finally, some opportunities arose to do songs for soundtracks
with these guys, before we even had a name. We weren’t
a band yet, just a project. And I decided to go out on a limb
and jump into this, because you never know if a group of guys
can become a band or not until you jump into it. And then
there was chemistry. It’s really a special thing that
we have; it’s a viscous, sexual, living, breathing fuck
machine. That’s what it is.
What would you say to STP fans who are coming out
to the show?
This is a lot dirtier, a lot sexier. It’s not as dark,
it’s not as gloomy, it’s not as depressed.
Does that reflect changes in your own life?
Yeah. It’s also the influence we all have on each other
in this band.
Can you describe that influence? Is this band about
music, or is it about a new way of living for you guys?
I think it’s both. We have a genuine camaraderie. There
are genuine friendships. As men, as actual men, we
have a lot of interests in common at the age we’re at.
And musically we have a lot in common as well. Whereas in
STP we had a lot in common at earlier ages, but we sort of
grew apart. And yet we were trying to hold it together.
When was the last time you listened to any STP?
I break those records out every once in a while.
And what’s the experience of that?
[Sings] “Meeeeemories . . .”
Was there ever a time you thought about giving up
music? Or at least a music career?
Never. I can’t do that. Music is everything that I’m
about. I hate the music business, but I love music. I can
deal with the music business by making music.
Slash said in an interview, referring to you: “Everyone
in this band has a sordid past; he just got caught.”
Why do you think that is?
I’ll tell you this: I got caught because there’s
a certain electricity that comes along with going into the
front lines. There’s an excitement that goes along with
that. And the front lines are always down in the inner city.
That’s where you find all the junkies, the hypes, the
prostitutes, the crackheads and all that—that’s
where the proliferation of all the narcotics is, and everyone
knows it. And it’s allowed to be that way in every city.
They do their sweeps one day a week, just to say they enforce
the law.
As someone who’s spent a lot of time dealing
with our legal system, how do you feel you’ve been treated?
A lot of people think there’s special treatment given
to celebrities who have gotten themselves in a jam, but that
has not been my experience at all. I’m still under the
microscope right now, so I don’t want to get myself
in too much hot water.
|
