Variety reports that Weiland was found unresponsive in Minnesota on his tour bus.
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Stone Temple Pilots experienced massive commercial success in the ’90s, selling almost 40 million albums worldwide, though the band frequently went on hiatus as a result of Weiland’s substance abuse.
Weiland’s former Stone Temple Pilot bandmates – Eric Kretz and brothers Dean and Robert DeLeo – released a statement Friday thanking the singer, ‘for sharing your life with us’.
The San Jose native fronted the alt-rock mainstay Stone Temple Pilots, which formed in 1989 and released their multi-platinum debut “Core” in 1992. Stone Temple Pilots began in the late 1980s, when they performed under the name Mighty Joe Young. It proved a tough sell to Stone Temple Pilots fans and the public at large, but its woozy sojourns into psychedelic cabaret-rock – of which the single “Lady, Your Roof Brings Me Down” is probably the best known – solidified Weiland’s reputation as an artist more three-dimensional than first assumed.
But Mr. Weiland’s time in Velvet Revolver also ended in chaos.
Bloomington police said the death was being investigated by the Hennepin County Medical Examiner’s Office. Detectives collected several items of evidence from inside the bedroom where the singer was found, including a small quantity of suspected controlled substance that field tested positive for cocaine. The website showed the event was canceled.
Weiland then hooked up with former Guns “n” Roses members Slash, Duff McKagan and Matt Sorum, serving as frontman for Velvet Revolver.
“The guy has just been battling addiction and it’s sad to hear that he passed”, Raskob said. While the group disbanded in 2002, they reunited in 2008 and put out another album in 2010, but the band fired Scott Weiland in 2013.
Weiland’s addictions were the continuous thread throughout his life and included heroin but his drug of choice was crack cocaine for which he was arrested and convicted of buying crack cocaine and sentenced to a years probation. He also spent five months in jail for heroin possession in 1998 and was later charged with domestic abuse for assaulting his then-wife.
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Velvet Revolver released a follow-up two years later, Libertad, which Weiland claimed to the Daily Mail was “the first record I’ve made in years where I haven’t been shooting dope or smoking crack”.
