SCOTT WEILAND: I Can't Conceive Of Doing Heroin Again
November 5, 2004VELVET REVOLVER frontman Scott Weiland recently spoke to Steve Morse of The Boston Globe about the group's debut album, "Contraband", his drug addiction, and the near break-up of his marriage. Several excerpts from the interview follow:
Q: How is the new album different from your work with STONE TEMPLE PILOTS?
Scott Weiland: "A lot of the STP records that I wrote with Dean and Robert [the DeLeo brothers] came when I was definitely very depressed and struggling. I was at a loss to know who I was. And in not knowing who I was, a lot of the thematic elements were very dark and self-effacing. However, there was a lot of anger on the VELVET REVOLVER record, which was different. . . . My wife and I were separated, and, leading just up to the recording, we were starting a divorce. And I had just gotten arrested and was getting my chain yanked around. There was anger toward the system. It wasn't that sort of 'poor me' emotion."
Q: You're back with your wife and two children and you're back on the road. Have things really turned around?
Scott Weiland: "This has been the most happy time of my entire life. I figured out the only way to get my wife back was to stop focusing on getting my wife back and try to figure out who I was — and that's when the process really began. I had been trying to follow the same footsteps of everybody who had gotten their [act] together through traditional mediums. And I don't need to name that process because everybody knows what I'm talking about. But in trying to do that, I was continuously banging my head against the wall. . . . The thing with me is that I am an individual — I'm a square peg who can't fit into a round hole. I was allowed by the courts to get into [a program] where I was turned onto this dude who was a lifetime junkie, and he happened to have a completely different philosophy than anyone I had ever met. He took little bits from every different philosophy to make his own. For me, that made sense. That was a new place to start from. . . . And for whatever reason, I got to a point in my life where [heroin] is just something I can't conceive of doing again. I made a decision that that's not who I am anymore."
Read Scott Weiland's entire interview with The Boston Globe at this location.
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