Remembering Scott Weiland
For those of us who came of age in the early 90s and were fans of hard rock, Stone Temple Pilots and their front man, Scott Weiland, are forever burned into our memories. Along with Nirvana, Pearl Jam, and Smashing Pumpkins, Stone Temple Pilots helped set off a seismic shift in rock music that changed rock forever. They all hit the scene about the same time and were unlike anything anyone had ever heard before, and it’s likely no one has heard anything like them since. Weiland’s death at age 48 last Thursday night brought the early 90s flooding back over me in a wave of nostalgia.
I have written before about the period from 1991–1993 when a select group of new bands with a previously unheard of sound turned rock music upside down, and how I remember the exact moment I first heard Nirvana, Pearl Jam,and Smashing Pumpkins:
It was the same with STP. Stone Temple Pilots came out of nowhere when on September 29, 1992, they released their debut and seminal album Core. Core was released almost one year after Pearl Jam’s Ten, and early on fans of Pearl Jam thought Weiland was almost mimicking Eddie Vedder’s throaty, gritty vocal style. What we learned when we went deeper with Stone Temple Pilots was that Weiland may very well have had a wider vocal range and talent and the Pilots a wider musical repertoire; while every Vedder and Pearl Jam song seemed full of some kind of angst, whether in a full and front-on guitar assault like Once, Alive, or Why Go, Weiland and STP could not be so easily categorized. Their personal brand of edgy, hard core rock intermingled with reflective and introspective ballads was both new and, honestly, sort of disturbing.
The opening song off Core is Dead and Bloated, a tune with a macabre title that doesn’t get any less troubling as it proceeds. The sinister vibe continued with the second track Sex Type Thing, which was controversial due to the lyrics, “I am a man, a man/I’ll give ya something that ya won’t forget/I said ya shouldn’t have worn that dress.” It’s not important to repeat the other lyrics here, but some criticized Weiland for what appeared to be a song about date rape. He would later express frustration and say the lyrics were meant as an indictment of domestic violence: “This song is really not about sex at all. It’s about control, violence and abuse of power.” Those who got the satire never thought worse of him and never thought for an instant he was advocating the thing he was condemning: abusing and taking advantage of women. Sex Type Thing is Scott Weiland calling out men who sexually mistreat women, and his use of satire is why it is brilliant. And the music made you want to hear it regardless.
Plush was another great song with murky lyrics that you likely didn’t want to explore too deeply, but it was unnecessary because the riff was so infectious and overwhelming. But my favorite song from Core was a soft, ballad-like effort called Creep. It stood out as being 180-degrees the opposite of the other songs that raged with heavy guitar riffs and very edgy lyrics. It’s a poignant song about someone who is wounded and “half the man” he used to be:
In the end the takeaway from listening to Core was a set of conflicted feelings: This music sounds unbelievable cool, but should I be listening to this? Is there something wrong with me if I like it? On some of the biggest hits from Core, it was almost as if STP and Scott Weiland had just watched Silence of the Lambs and then written some songs for its soundtrack. But those songs standing alone or combined with the introspective Creep left no doubt whatsoever that Stone Temple Pilots were right up there with Nirvana and Kurt Cobain, Pearl Jam and Eddie Vedder, and Smashing Pumpkins and Billy Corgan. Even those who had initially mocked Weiland for trying to emulate Eddie Vedder’s style had to admit Weiland had his own unique and possibly superior set of skills.
Looking back, it was not any of the songs from Core that I most remember, but a classic song from the follow up album, Purple; Interstate Love Song was unlike anything on Core and showed their growing range of talent. The main themes of the song are the universal truths that (1) lies destroy any relationship, and (2) sometimes in bad relationships we try to be someone we are not and can eventually get to a point where we no longer recognize ourselves:
“Waiting on a Sunday afternoon
For what I read between the lines-
Your lies.
Feelin’
Like a hand in rusted shame,
So do you laugh or does it cry?
Reply?
Leavin’ on a southern train
Only yesterday you lied.
Promises of what I seemed to be
Only watched the time go by.
All of these things you said to me.
Breathing is the hardest thing to do,
With all I’ve said and all that’s dead for you-
You lied.
Goodbye.”
I don’t know why and I don’t know how to explain it, but I and many in my generation felt kindred with the music in some strange way. When I heard he had passed at age 48 a few nights ago in Minneapolis, I looked him up and found that we were born four days apart in 1967. So the stuff he was singing, literally screaming about, back in 1992 at the age of 25 put words to the angst and uncertainty I was feeling at age 25 at the very same time.
I suppose the news that he was gone shouldn’t have surprised me even though it did; he had a history of battling addiction, which is something we all are very quick to judge, but slow to understand and really care about. It always seemed that he somehow would recover and make another comeback with a new band. But apparently he finally lost the war with whatever demons he was fighting.
The song Big Empty off The Crow soundtrack epitomizes some of Stone Temple Pilots’ haunting melodies. In the wake of his death, their music and memories from that time in my life when I used it as a catharsis has come washing back over me. As I thought of how he must have gotten to the point where he was sick and tired of fighting his demons and maybe wanted to just let go, some of the lyrics from Big Empty seemed to fit perfectly:
“Too much walking shoes worn thin
Too much trippin’ and my soul’s worn thin
Time to catch her ride it leaves today,
Her name is what it means
Too much walking shoes worn thin.”
He made an unforgettable mark and impression during a transformative period of my life. As with a few select artists, I can go months or even years without hearing one of their songs, but when I eventually hear it somewhere, I am immediately transported back to that time, and I am almost literally there; that’s the impact it had.
Rest in peace, Scott Weiland; perhaps now the wounded hand can take time to heal.
