Scott Weiland, former lead singer of Stone Temple Pilots and Velvet Revolver has died. According to a statement on his Facebook page, his body was discovered on the tour bus for his current band, The Wildabouts while in Bloomington, Minnesota. He was 48. According to the post, apparently Weiland died in his sleep. “At this time we ask that the privacy of Scott’s family be respected,” the post says.
Dave Navarro, guitarist and member of Jane's Addiction (and former band mate of Weiland's in the rock supergroup Camp Freddy) first tweeted the news at 9:01 p.m. PT on Thursday night: “Our friend Scott Weiland has died.” (the tweet has since been deleted).
Weiland, a former Huntington Beach resident, attended Edison High School and Orange Coast College.
The Bloomington, Minn. Police Department issued a statement at 11:15 p.m. PT detailing the events as such: On Dec. 3rd at 8:22 p.m., officers responded to a report of an unresponsive adult male in a recreational motor vehicle located in the 2200 block of Killebrew Drive. “Officers arrived and determined the adult male was deceased,” read the release, which did not identify the deceased.
The Hennepin County Sheriff’s Office and the Hennepin County Medical Examiner’s Office will continue investigating the death with updates to come.
Weiland formed the band Stone Temple Pilots with brothers Robert and Dean DeLeo in Long Beach and saw huge commercial success in the 1990s in the hey day of grunge. In 1993, the band’s debut album Core peaked at No. 3 on the Billboard 200 followed by an even bigger achievement a year later in 1994, when STP released the No. 1 album Purple, which contained several radio hits including the songs “Big Empty,” “Vasoline” and “Interstate Love Song.”
The band would eventually land 11 top 10 hits on the Alternative Songs chart, including the three-week No. 1 “Between the Lines” in 2010. “Interstate Love Song” led the Mainstream Rock Songs chart for 15 weeks.
Featuring Weiland’s growling, lower register vocals (a symbol of grunge in the '90s) STP went on to sell 13.5 million albums in the U.S., according to Nielsen Music, but they eventually broke up due to infighting.
After Weiland left the band, he teamed with former Guns N' Roses members Slash, Duff McKagen and Matt Sorum to form supergroup Velvet Revolver. Reinvigorated by the hit rock band, Weiland became an ‘00s icon. Still, he struggled to keep a handle on his addictions and was in and out of rehab. He and Velvet Revolver parted ways in 2008.
He soon reunited with Stone Temple Pilots, but his bandmates ousted him in 2013.
Stone Temple Pilots would carry on in various incarnation in the coming years. Most recently, the group recruited Linkin Park singer Chester Bennington to handle frontman duties. He left the group on Nov. 9. Weiland's death is the second for The Wildabouts. Last March, Weiland's guitarist in the Wildabouts, Jeremy Brown, died of multiple drug intoxication at age 34 according to the LA County Coroner, just one day before the release of the group's debut album Blaster.
Weiland is survived by two children, Lucy and Noah, with his former wife, Mary Forsberg Weiland.
Footage of Weiland's final show with the Wildabouts on Dec. 1 at Adelaide Hall in Toronto has surfaced. Fans cram up to the front of the stage as Weiland grabs the mic to sing “Vasoline” to a room full fans.
