I was just reading some of your posts. People deal with all aspects of life differently, especially grief. There have been some divisions on this board, namely camp Deleo vs. camp Scott. But what unites us all on this board is that at one time there was an amazing rock band called Stone Temple Pilots; and even though we don't necessarily agree on at what point that band may or may not have died, we all fell in love with a band that included Eric, Robert, Dean, and Scott.
I'm sure Dean does regret some of the things he said, and I can only hope he privately got to make peace with Scott before his passing. If he didn't, egos aside, rest assured he probably will live with guilt over it for the rest of his life. I say that knowing that I sure would if I were in his shoes and an old friend passed away.
Yes, some of us including myself have said some fairly critical things about Scott on here before. I want to again say though that all of us are from different back grounds and we all deal with life in different ways. I tend to be understanding only to a point and then I am more of a tough love type. Stone Temple Pilots were some of my most sacred of rock heroes who inspired me to try my hand at the stage myself. Scott Weiland was my biggest influence in terms of stage presence and what I took from him regarding that. I hold these guys to high standards in terms of their music based on past output and performances. I've seen how great they can be when they're on.
Just because someone is critical at times doesn't make anyone a Scott hater by any means. Again, we're all here cause we love this band. We wanted to see more music from them, we wanted to see them succeed. These were our heroes. A lot of my criticisms, like many others', stem from countless let downs and frustrations. The anger over all that could have been.
The perspective from my shoes is that things didn't HAVE to go down the way they did. STP could have put out more records, better records, and still have been amazing. Mom and dad didn't have to get divorced here. Scott's skills and health didn't have to decline over time. But that's not what happened at all. Scott let himself slowly slip away and that angers me so much because I slowly watched my rock hero, the ultimate chameleon, the guy who could command any audience, control any stage, write and sing the best melodies, I watched that hero wither away into someone almost unrecognizable most of the time. I wished someone who could actually get through to him would have stopped kissing his ass for a second to stand up to him and say "dude you have all the talent in the world, you have kids, you have reasons to live, what the fuck are you doing?" Then again, maybe he alienated those who did. I don't know.
The poor guy was slowly becoming a shadow of himself ever since his second divorce and the writing was on the wall after Libertad failed commercially. The last 8 years have been tough to swallow, especially the last 3, and yet we were all here watching it before our eyes.
I remember hot button incidents in this last year like the Corpus Christi show and how they'd trigger so many polarized responses on here. We all fought over if something was wrong or not and now we payed the ultimate price to have our answer.
I didn't make fun of Richard Patrick when he called out Scott. As much as I don't necessarily really care much for Richard Patrick or his band I can admit the dude wasn't wrong. Maybe there should have been more Richard Patricks out there saying the same thing.
I don't blame Tommy Black for Scott's death. He isn't a babysitter. Scott was a grown man. That doesn't mean that I don't think Tommy is a coattail riding sleaze bag enabler though.
I dunno guys. Here we are a few weeks later and the reality still is killing me and I'm still super angry. Angry because deep inside as critical as I may have been at times I still had hope. I still had hope that things could be different, but with death comes the end of those hopes.
Having been close to addicts for most of my life I know addiction is a multi-dimensional battle and that there really is no easy solution for its demons. I also have been the one to have been directly let down and frustrated as a result of an addict's choices numerous times so maybe that only fuels my frustrations further.
Just know we're all here because we all share a love for the magic this band possessed. Scott was a part of those 6 albums and we all loved at least some portion of his life's work which we have as his legacy. That's why we're all here.
