I should have stopped believing in Scott Weiland a long time ago.
There was the time I'd hoped to see him tour behind his brilliant solo debut in 1998, a tour that was suddenly scrapped when he was arrested on drug charges that June. Or the day I waited all day alongside a bunch of other fans outside a Hollywood club for a secret Stone Temple Pilots show, only to watch him arrive and do his best to completely ignore everyone in line as he ducked inside. There was the book-signing for which he showed up more than an hour late, the Grammy Museum appearance where he broke protocol by not taking audience questions during a Q&A, the interview with my local radio station that I'd been excited to hear, only to have him sound completely out of it when he went on the air.
And yet, through the very end, I still showed up, still bought his tickets, still listened to his records, still attended his shows, still somehow believed that at some point he'd turn it all around. The survival of my optimism was almost as unlikely as the survival of the man himself: in my mind, it was just a matter of time before the eyebrow-raising performances and apparent disdain for his fans that marked the last few years would magically be replaced by a lucid mind and renewed interest in making good music.
Scott Weiland's passing is perhaps the least-surprising rock-star death, ever. In fact, you could argue that the only real surprise is that it didn't come sooner. Self-destruction was practically his signature for the better part of 20 years, through most of his tenure with both Stone Temple Pilots and Velvet Revolver, as well as his solo projects. Weiland's drug problems were the stuff of both mockery and theater - a walking punchline for comedians for eons, he even acted out his own overdose in Velvet Revolver's "Fall To Pieces" video. Not surprisingly, acrimony followed him everywhere, from band breakups to marital splits to interactions with fans.
But in spite of it all, many of us still believed in him in 2015. His bandmates in the Wildabouts believed in him. The reporters who wrote stories about his new record believed in him. And the same fans he made a career out of burning still believed in him.
Weiland's history of giving people every reason to not believe had actually not really changed much at the end. The singer who performed at the Grammy Museum in October was a relatively frail man who looked far older than his 48 years. That night, his words spoke of enthusiasm for his new band, but his vacant stare, slow responses and phoning-it-in stage presence spoke volumes in indifference. As he often did in interviews, Weiland proclaimed his sobriety that evening and promised that a new album meant a new start. And, as usual, I found myself sitting there, nodding my head as I bought in once again.
My seemingly constant determination to quit Weiland, only to relapse into fandom again, reflected the singer's own well-documented personal demons. By the time he had finished playing his Grammy Museum mini-set, which included several Stone Temple Pilots songs that bore little resemblance to their original versions, I was off the Scott Weiland bandwagon. In fact, I decided on the long drive home that I'd write a blog about his upcoming tour, to warn people against spending their hard-earned dollars on someone who had long ago checked out.
But I never submitted it - despite what seemed to be a complete disregard for both his former band's legacy and my own investments as a fan over the years, I couldn't bring myself to say anything negative about the guy. Others have shown less restraint, as seen in the comments section of almost every YouTube video of a Scott Weiland performance in recent years. Which makes it all the more remarkable that, as he lay dead on a tour bus Thursday evening, fans in various parts of the country were excitedly assuming they'd be seeing him perform in the next couple of weeks.
Chances are, many of the Scott Weiland obituaries you're reading today were written a while ago and have been sitting in the can, ready to publish. That's because he'd been living on borrowed time forever, repeatedly falling back into addiction after claiming to have defeated his demons. Weiland should have been dead already. So too should have his career. And yet, up until the night he died, the singer had somehow managed to keep his life and his fans from slipping away.
Unlike some of his grunge-era counterparts who met drug-related deaths in their 20s, Weiland seemed to have beaten some very steep odds by surviving well into middle age, and while his body and voice showed signs of significant (and probably permanent) damage, he had become his generation's Keith Richards, an apparently indestructible addict who partook in copious amounts of substance abuse and lived to tell. Weiland's death may not be surprising, but to anyone who had invested any bit of themselves believing that he was going to someday grow old, it is still shocking.
Stone Temple Pilots will be eligible for the Rock and Roll Hall of Fame when nominees are announced next year, and while it would have once been thought an impossible feat for a band many wrote off as a grunge also-ran, Weiland may find himself posthumously inducted in his hometown of Cleveland in 2017. You might be tempted to bet against him, but I won't. Because despite his best efforts to chase me off through the years, I never gave up on Scott Weiland. And I'm not about to start now.