It's been about two weeks since Scott Weiland was found dead on his bus, and not a moment too soon for Dave Mustaine to take credit for the band's early success.
Mustaine was recently interviewed by Loudwire, and naturally the outlet asked Mustaine about his thoughts on Weiland and his most notable band, Stone Temple Pilots. He starts off by offering a backhanded compliment to the band:
"It’s really peculiar the way things went down with me and Scott, because I was in Finland doing a ‘rate a record’ thing for a magazine one time and they had given us the ‘Core’ record to review. And I was listening to it and I thought, ‘Either this is a really bad joke or these guys are gonna be massive, because they’ve got a sound that’s very similar to a lot of the great bands that are in the alternative scene right now, but I don’t know if it’s a parody or if it’s the real deal. And the more I listened to it, the more I really grew to respect his vocals, and I thought that Robert [DeLeo, bass], his playing was really great too."
He then mentions how Megadeth were the first band to take out Stone Temple Pilots, even though people weren't digging them and Mustaine credits himself with showing the band how to construct a proper setlist and how that is the key to their success:
"And I talked to our manager and I said, ‘I wanna take these guys out.’ And the manager said, ‘Well, you know, people just aren’t digging on ’em.’ And I was, like, ‘I don’t care. I wanna take ’em out.’ So in 1992, on the ‘Countdown To Extinction’ tour, we took Stone Temple Pilots out. And they were doing pretty good, and there was something that was just off a little bit. And I said, ‘Hey, do you guys mind if I help you with your setlist?’ And we talked a little bit about rearranging the songs and climaxing and settling down into a groove in the middle. And there was one part… it was really funny… They have an instrumental song, and Scott just stands out there on the stage, and I said, ‘What’s this song?’, knowing full well what it was. And he goes, ‘Well, it’s an instrumental.’ And I said, ‘And? Why are you standing out there?’ I said, ‘Go off to the side of the stage.’ And I told him the song where he does — I think ‘Crackerman’, with the bullhorn thing — ‘use that as your opener because it’s kind of cheeky and it’s a cool way to kind of start the set.’ And they took off after that. Their setlist was great. The pulse, the timing and everything was perfect.”
But wait, there is a bit more. Mustaine blames himself for warning Weiland about the dangers of heroin (having been a recovering addict himself at the time) and says he wishes he used a little reverse psychology:
“The thing that I regret was at the end of the tour, I told him, I said, ‘Look, Scott, you’re gonna be huge. You’re gonna have money, you’re gonna have drugs, you’re gonna have pussy, and it’s gonna be everywhere.’ And I said, ‘If you do anything, stay away from heroin.’ And I probably should have said, ‘Do as much as you can,’ because he did the exact opposite.”
Don't blame yourself, Dave. He didn't try it because of you (unless you referred him to your old dealer.) We went into much more detail about these statements (in hilarious fashion) about an hour into last night's edition of the RIP a Livecast.
All kidding aside, Mustaine did make a point that we've said all along… Weiland, with his demons, should not have been on the road, but was being propped up by enablers:
“The sad thing is that anybody that knows Scott and that was around him was aware of what was going on. Just like the guy that was in Milli Vanilli, they took him out of rehab and put him on the road, and he wasn’t even done with the rehabilitation process. And he died.
“No song, no performance, no amount of money is worth a human life. And I think that the music industry suffered a tragic loss. But as much as the onus is on Scott for doing it, there are other people that are responsible for that.”
On this point, I wholeheartedly agree with Mr. Mustaine.
[via Metal Insider]
