Scott Weiland

Scott Weiland made his debut on the world stage of music with his band Stone Temple Pilots in 1992 when they released their first album, Core. I remember buying the CD only a few weeks after it came out after seeing the music video for Plush on MTV. I remember being totally blown away by Eric Kretz's great drumming (I started playing the drums only about a year after that). To this day, I still use his groove from Vasoline (off the second album, Purple) in teaching my students more advanced rock grooves. I still freak out at Dean DeLeo's guitar tones. But at the front of all that was Weiland's uncanny vocals. His style as a vocalist was such a fundamental aesthetic of STP and an iconic part of the sound emerging from the early '90s. In fact, it is sad to think comparatively and realize that one of the similarly iconic vocalists of that era, Lane Staley (Alice in Chains), also met an untimely demise as the result of drug abuse.

There is no way to measure how much influence a band like STP has had on popular rock music, but looking down my Facebook feed today, it's clear that many of my musician and industry friends were similarly influenced by Scott Weiland and STP just like I was. It's sad to me that so many great and influential musicians suffer from drug and alcohol addiction, and his death is truly a tragedy.

Here's a good memory from '94. RIP Scott Weiland.