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Closer to the Edge
'Things that kill other people don't kill me,' the now-sober Velvet Revolver singer Scott Weiland says
Three years ago, Scott Weiland pushed his wife from in front of a door in a Hard Rock Hotel room, while he and his band, Stone Temple Pilots, were preparing to play at the hotel. She was trying to keep him from getting a prescription filled. He was arrested, and he pleaded guilty to domestic battery.
Since then, Weiland, 41, has claimed sobriety and changed bands. He sings in Velvet Revolver, a new group that also features ex-members of Guns N' Roses.
When Velvet Revolver toured earlier this year, Weiland had to submit urine tests before every show. Now he submits urine tests only weekly -- a "more normal life," he calls it.
Times are pretty good for him. Velvet Revolver has been a hit on modern-rock radio, and the band just earned three Grammy nominations for best rock album, song and performance.
Tonight, Weiland returns to the Hard Rock to play a New Year's Eve show. Does he have plans while he's in the city?
"Yeah, try to avoid the law," he says.
This is a joke, sort of. Weiland talks with no fondness for that fight for his wife. He doesn't romanticize his prior drug use. But he does still value his ardent approach to living life.
"My life is amazing. I'd say I'm pretty well-grounded. But still, I am who I am -- I have my right foot firmly planted in reality, but my left foot is always hanging over the precipice. But that's the way I like it," he says.
"That's how I keep my edge. I would never want to become boring, because that would make me like every other boring, lazy sod. And I would fear that would take away my ability to write good songs."
Weiland has been sober since he's been in Velvet Revolver, and that's good for him musically, he says.
"You definitely don't need to ingest major quantities of narcotics or alcohol to write good songs. In fact, my last few years of my narcotic-mix adventures, it became increasingly harder to tap into that cosmic musical stream of consciousness."
Weiland thinks of himself and other songwriters as having a sort of radar that picks up good songs that are "always sort of floating out there." While on drugs, "it became harder and harder to tap into those" songs, he says.
"After a while, drugs are just like a big, wet blanket that sort of keeps you from feeling the raw emotion of the music. So in a sense, being clean is actually being closer to the edge."
Weiland took drugs to self-medicate his bipolar condition, he says.
"Having bipolar condition is enough of a problem all in itself, but it's also a blessing in dealing with being an artist. And that's enough of a roller coaster ride. It keeps life on the edge."
"I can go through a period of time where I'm completely stable, and I don't have any idea when I'm gonna flip out. And it can happen during a show, and it has happened."
He calls such moments "an internal combustion, and I lose it."
"Those are a lot of the reasons I self-medicated (for) so long. I've probably taken more narcotics than a small country has. It's weird, 'cause I don't know why I'm still here today. Things that kill other people don't kill me. Despite everything, I'm a survivor. I can only suppose I possess the kind of mentality and psychological makeup that I can handle it. I guess I come from very tough stock."
Weiland was diagnosed as bipolar about a decade ago, he says.
"It wasn't a shock at all, because when I was a kid, probably 6 or 7 years old, I was diagnosed with ADD (attention deficit disorder). My mom never wanted me to take Ritalin or any of those forms of stimulant-oriented medications. ... I was always a real creative kid with a very overactive imagination, which is why the arts always appealed to me -- arts and entertaining. So here I am, making a living."
While in Stone Temple Pilots, much of that band's varied take on rock, metal and pop was due not to Weiland as much as it was to bassist Robert DeLeo, guitarist Dean Kretz and drummer Eric Kretz, he says.
"Robert was really a wild card. His musical influences went everything from the songwriter Jimmy Webb, who wrote the great hits of early Glen Campbell, to Latin jazz to '60s pop, Herman's Hermits, and just really obscure stuff, and of course Led Zeppelin."
DeLeo is the man who got Weiland to really listen to Led Zeppelin in 1988. Weiland had grown up with no older brothers to turn him onto the band in the 1970s, he says. Instead, he was into post-punk rock.
"I didn't grow up going to arena-rock shows singing Aerosmith," he says. "My first rock and roll shows were sneaking into sweaty, dirtbag clubs."
So the marriage of Weiland's post-punk leanings with STP's varied influences is what birthed that band, he says.
"You basically take jazz chords and a whole lot of volume and distortion, and a big John Bonham backbeat, pretty much from Eric Kretz, and that's pretty much the sound."
"With Velvet Revolver, it's not quite as complex a monster. It's a little bit simpler, but it's very vicious, it's very sexual and you know what you're gonna get. It's pure rock 'n' roll."
Initially, Velvet Revolver was a big question mark, he says. He knew the other band members were working together and looking for a frontman.
"I didn't want to just be involved in a super group," he says. "I had a huge amount of respect for the guys in the band, and I had a feeling it could be a big moneymaking venture. But coming from a band that had just made such a huge mark on rock 'n' roll and popular music ... I didn't want to get involved with something that would detract from that."
But Velvet Revolver worked out well on the album, "Contraband," and it has toured well with positive media reaction, he says.
"It was a real barnstormer right out of the gate. It was like a neutron bomb, and I think it's gotten a lot more streamlined since then, and a lot more sexual.
"But this band has a lot of personalities in it," he says. "And I think there are times when we are getting along fabulously, and there are times when we seem to be on the edge of an internal explosion."
That potential destruction is why the band's shows are good, he says.
"I think that's what made up great bands from the beginning of rock 'n' roll," Weiland says. "What were the odds of that happening twice, of finding a band where you can have that sort of combination, that chemistry?"
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