Great Rock N' Roll Concerts Coming to Boston in 2019

2019 premisses to bring some great rock n' roll concerts to the Boston area. While many including Marroon 5's vocalist Adam Levine have been quick to write off rock n' roll as dead in the last year, there are still some signs that rock is breathing life in some forms with four big classic rock bands coming to town this year between Spring and June 2019.
              Kiss the first big rock act that are coming to Boston to the TD Garden on March 26 2019 are an American Rock band that was formed in New York City in 1973 by guitarist/vocalist Paul Stanley, bassist/vocalist Gene Simmons, guitarist Ace Frehley and drummer Peter Criss. The members of the band were well known to each have their own elaborate face paint on stage, as well as fancy stage outfits. Kiss rose to prominence in the mid 1970s with their elaborate live performances that featured fire breathing, blood-spitting, smoking guitars, shooting rockets, levitating drum kits, and pyrotechnics. The band has gone through several lineup changes over the years, with Stanley and Simmons the only two original members remaining, while former drummer Criss refuses to have any contact with the other two members over unresolved song credit conflicts and royalty disputes.
Frehley had not performed with the band since a 2002 Farewell Tour because of similar disputes, but seemed to somewhat bury the hatchet with the other two members last year in October 2018 when he reunited with Kiss on a Cruise boat and performed four songs together "New York Groove", "2,000 Man", "Hide Your Heart",  and "Domino".
                 On September 19, 2018 following a performance on America's Got Talent, Kiss announced that they will be ending their career with One Last Kiss: End of the Road World Tour 2019. The tour kicks off on January 21 in Vancouver, British Columbia, Canada and currently features 74 additional dates that run through December 3 in Auckland, New Zealand.
                Kiss will be performing at the TD Garden in Boston on their One Last Kiss: End of the Road World Tour on March 26, 2018. It promises to be a great show, although don't count on it being the final Kiss show ever you will attend if you are a huge Kiss fan... Kiss have already had several Farewell Tours, and this one may just be another cash grab for Stanley and Simmons, known to be more business enthusiasts in the rock n' roll world, then actual rock n' rollers.

             Fleetwood Mac have been through a lot in the last year leading up to 2019. The bad is scheduled to perform at the TD Garden on April 12 2019 with new guitarists in the band Neil Finn and also the very creative lead guitarist Mike Cambell, primarily known for his collaborations with Tom Petty in the band Tom Petty & The Heartbreakers. In early 2018 guitarist the primary songwriter of the band Lindsey Buckingham was fired by Fleetwood Mac and almost immediately replaced by Finn and Cambell, (although it has since been disclosed that it was mainly Stevie Nicks who had a problem with Buckingham not the rest of the band combined). Buckingham was her former lover in the 1970s and the two joined the band at the same time thanks to Buckingham on New Years Eve 1974. By the end of 1974 Fleetwood Mac was in total disarray having just fired guitarist/vocalist Bob Welch, Buckingham was hired as the group's seventh guitarist in seven years. Buckingham at this point had leverage in negotiations with drummer Mick Fleetwood, and convinced Mick to allow his girlfriend and recording partner Stevie Nicks to join the band as well. The addition of both Buckingham and Nicks meant the classic-era lineup of Fleetwood Mac was finally in place. This lineup would last until the early 1980s and would produce a number of Fleetwood Mac classic albums including Fleetwood Mac, Rumors, Tusk, and Mirage. 
After one final album in the 1980s called Tango In The Night, which began as a Buckingham solo project, but the band latched onto as they needed all of Buckingham's creative output to release music as he was the songwriter. With a ten week tour scheduled, Buckingham held back at the last minute saying he felt his creativity was going to be stifled if he toured and did not record more music. A band meeting at Christine McVie's house on August 1987 resulted in turmoil, as tensions came to a head. Mick Fleetwood in his autobiography claimed there was an altercation between Buckingham and Nicks. Buckingham left the band the following day. After Buckingham's first departure Fleetwood Mac replaced him with two new guitarist Billy Burnette and Rick Vito, without even auditioning either guitarist. This lineup of Fleetwood Mac  only released one studio album in 1990 titled , Behind The Mask, which only made it to Gold Sales and did not achieve the lofty multi platinum success the band had become used to with Lindsey Buckingham behind the wheel writing most of the band's material. Stevie Nicks grew frustrated with the lack of success without her x and quit the band following Behind The Mask's commercial failure in 1990. 
                      It took until 1997 to get Buckingham back in Fleetwood Mac and by that time a lot had changed in the music industry. Still the band was very popular and many of the old fans were still dying to see the band do reunion tour after reunion tour. Vocalist Christine McVie did not participate in a number of the Tours in the early 2000s but later rejoined in 2014.
                  Everything seemed fine in the Fleetwood Mac camp until early 2018. Then in the early part of January Stevie Nicks handed the band a he or me ultimatum after she felt slighted by Buckingham at a benefit concert. The band performed together at the 2018 MusiCares Person Of the Year benefit in January. Fleetwood Mac were given an award in recognition for their musical and philanthropic history at the event. As Buckingham told Rolling Stone, "a few days after the show he received a phone call from the band's manager Irving Azoff, who proceeded to list various issues Nicks had with his behavior that night, including his complaints about their intro music being Nicks' "Rhiannon" and that he may have "smirked" while she was giving her acceptance speech.
             "The irony is we have this long standing joke, that when Stevie talks, she goes on a long time," Buckingham said. I may or may not have smirked, but I look over and Mick and Christine were doing the waltz behind her as a joke." As for the choice of intro song that night, Buckingham admitted he was against it, but said Nicks took it the wrong way. "It wasn't about it being Rhiannon," he note. "It just undermined the impact of our entrance. Thats me being very specific about the right and wrong way to do something."
                 Regardless of Buckingham's defenses, Azoff gave him a direct message: "Stevie never wants to be onstage with you again." Buckingham took this to mean that Nicks was quitting Fleetwood Mac, so he emailed Mick Fleetwood to discuss the band's future, but didn't hear back, so he called Azoff for clarification. "This feels funny," he recalled saying, "Is Stevie leaving the band or am I getting kicked out? Azoff told Buckingham he was "getting ousted" because Nicks gave the band "an ultimatum: Either you go or she's gonna go."
                  Shortly after the news of Buckingham's departure was made public in April of 2018, Fleetwood said, "Buckingham's unwillingness tour this year was the reason for his dismissal. The only other public commentsBuckingham made prior to Rolling Stone's interview were at a May fundraiser where he said the band had "lost their perspective. What that did was to harm, and this is the only thing I'm really sad about-the rest of it becomes an opportunity- it harmed the 43 year legacy that we had worked so hard to build. The legacy was really about rising above difficulties in order to fulfill ones higher truth and one's higher destiny."
       It has yet to be seen how Fleetwood Mac's 2019 Tour will turn out. They are now in the midst of also battling Lindsey Buckingham in a lawsuit over how he was terminated from the band. Will people still have the same lofty expectation of Fleetwood Mac's musical ability minus the creative output of Buckingham? Is this now another greatest hits package tour of people just wanting to see Stevie Nicks belt out the hits such as "Rhiannon", "Landslide" and "The Chain" over and over again? We shall have to wait and see how it all turns out, although it is nice that Mike Cambell from The Heartbreakers now has a new musical opportunity since the death of Tom Petty in October 2017 spelled the end of The Heartbreakers illustrious musical career. Can Cambeell and Finn combined fill Buckingham's shoes for a successful 2019 Tour, or will this be another example of when Buckingham left in 1987 and was replaced by Burnette and Vito, only to have the band's next album tank big time in comparison to their previous sales? 2019 is sure to answer a lot of questions for the current state of Fleetwood Mac and their tour should be worth catching even without Buckingham in the mix.

Chicago Coming to the Orpheum

Chicago, the self-styled rock band with horns, that throws a little bit of everything at their audience when they hit the stage—tapping into an extensive catalogue of ballads, hard-rockers, and jazz-tinged jams—are coming to Boston’s Orpheum Theatre on April 18. Songs like “If You Leave Me Now,” “Does Anybody Know What Time It Is?,” “Saturday in the Park,” and “Twenty-Five or Six to Four” remain timeless classics in the Chicago song canon and have made the band one of the best-selling American rock groups of all time. Other than The Beach Boys, no American rock band has created as many chart-topping hits as Chicago. Named for their hometown, the group’s concerts traverse decades and styles, as the musicians blaze through their audience favorites, such as “Beginnings” and “Questions 67 and 68.”

Chicago has toured for a long time without it’s famous singer, Peter Cetera, who left the band in the summer of 1985. Cetera had asked for hiatuses after tours in order to focus on his solo work (mirroring that of Phil Collins and Genesis), but the band declined. 

Cetera soon topped the charts after leaving Chicago with the songs “Glory of Love” (which was the theme song of the Hollywood film The Karate Kid Part II) and “The Next Time I Fall” (a duet with Amy Grant). Two more Cetera songs reached the Top Ten: a 1998 solo hit called “One Good Woman” (Number 4) and a 1989 duet with Cher, “After All” (Number 6).

Chicago replaced Cetera with bassist and singer-songwriter Jason Scheff, who was not nearly as popular as Cetera, causing Chicago’s popularity to wane a bit in the late 1980s and early ’90s. In May 1990, more inner turmoil caused original drummer Danny Seraphine to be kicked out of the band, further separating the fans from the original Chicago they loved. Keyboardist and vocalist Robert Lamm and trombonist James Pankow continued to carry the weight for Chicago.

In 2015, Chicago was finally inducted into the rock n’ roll hall of fame and Peter Cetera briefly said he would rejoin the band to play during their induction. As the date of the ceremony approached, a disagreement arose between Cetera and Lamm about the how the horn section in “Twenty-Five or Six to Four” would be played. Cetera dropped out of playing at the ceremony, but once again Chicago carried on without him and put on a wonderful show, playing a blistering live version of “Twenty-Five or Six to Four,” full of loud horns and high-pitched electric guitar solos.

Cetera later criticized Chicago, saying in an interview with Ultimate Classic Rock Magazine, “Every idea or suggestion I offered about how it could work musically was either rejected or changed by the show’s producers. While I sent those same emails to the group, the only reply I ever received back from them was a very snarky ‘Take a chill pill, dude!’ Whoa! Really?” Cetera also said that he had no regrets leaving the band after its bestselling album titled17. He has grown comfortable calling the shots in his own career and told the magazine, “At this point in my life I don’t care to reintroduce the same negativity, misplaced egos, and petty jealousies I left behind so many years ago.”

Now, Chicago, get ready to play Boston’s Orpheum. Everyone is waiting to hear those timeless hits played live!

Miele Live At The Midway Cafe, Jamaica Plain, 3/12/19

Miele Keyboardist Melissa Lee Niles and guitarist Joe Spilsbury

On Tuesday, March 12, Miele played a rocking set at the Midway Café in Jamaica Plain. The musicians in this talented rock band—vocalist/keyboardist Mellissa Lee Nilles, guitarist Joe Spilsbury, bassist Cedric Lamour, and newcomer-drummer Jeff Edwards—are hot on the local club scene. A year ago, they released their first, well-received album Transience.

Miele kicked off the evening with “Spring Rain,” a quiet original that opens and builds up with some very beautiful piano by Lee Nilles, followed by stellar guitar picking by Spilsbury. Lamour's bass guitar work was notable. “It’s a new release and we’re in the middle of recording it right now,” Lee Nilles informed the crowd before dipping into the opening piano chords. Following two more originals, “Anxious Ghost” and “Unfiltered,” Spilsbury broke a string on his guitar with his hard, signature strumming. While he restrung his guitar, the rest of the band went into a jazzy jam with Lee Nilles leading the beat with a piano verse that was incredible.

With the band whole again, Miele launched into “Hold it Together,” one of their best jams that dates way back in Miele’s song canon. It sounded fantastic with Spilsbury’s heavy distortion guitar leading the way, and Lee Nilles voice reaching high levels of wailing in the chorus. “Such an energetic song,” she declared at the end of the tune, and yes, the song has a ton of flow and energy to it!

Other notable songs in the latter part of the set were a politically driven anti-Trump song, “We Don’t Care,” and the popular Miele set closer “Slip Away.” In “We Don’t Care,” the song goes through several cool transitions, beginning with a slow, distorted drive and gradually picking up. The riff by Spilsbury is highly original, and I hope this song gets played at more of their upcoming shows. The song closes with several minutes of incredible musical wails by Lee Nilles—“Ahhh, ahhh, woo, woo,” followed by the music slowing down and then picking up again with Lee Nilles singing over and over again, “We don’t care.”

Miele bassist Cedric Lamour

Then the show wrapped up with Lee Nilles thanking the audience: “Thank you, so much everyone, this is going to be our last song—it’s called ‘Slip Away.’ If you guys like our music we have CDs in the back. Thanks so much to Lockette for inviting us to be here. It’s always fun to play a show with other badass ladies. I want to see more of that in the scene.”

“Slip Away” is one of Miele’s heavier originals with fewer transitions than some of their other songs. It follows a more continuous flow of rhythm. The piano, drums, and guitars all keep a steady rhythm that syncs nicely with Lee Nilles vocals. At the end, the song gets heavier, then slowly fades out with Lee Nilles’ piano, and once again picks up for a final chorus. Spilsbury strums one last powerful chord on his guitar to close it out.

This Boston-based band is what Boston is famous for producing—original and amazing musical talent. The musicians have said that they strive to “celebrate the emotions, spirit, and wisdom that live and breathe in all of us, as well as the rage, the desire, and the chaos that erupt out of us when we cannot give them voice.”

Miele’s next concerts are at Boston’s New Music Showcase at Union Tavern, Somerville, Friday, April 5, and Club Bohemia, Central Square, April 20. For updates about other concerts that continue to be added to their spring and summer schedule, check Miele’s website or Facebook page: www.mielemusic.com,www.facebook.com/mieletheband.

Miele live at the Midway

Fleetwood Mac Concert Preview

 Fleetwood Mac is scheduled to perform at Boston’s TD Garden on April 12, 2019, with two new guitarists, Neil Finn and the very creative Mike Campbell, primarily known for his collaborations with Tom Petty in Tom Petty & the Heartbreakers. In early 2018, Fleetwood Mac’s guitarist and principal songwriter, Lindsey Buckingham, was fired and almost immediately replaced by Finn and Campbell. Later it was disclosed that it was mainly Stevie Nicks who had a problem with Buckingham, and not the rest of the band. Buckingham was Nicks’s former lover in the 1970s, and the two joined the band on New Year’s Eve 1974. At that time, Fleetwood Mac was in total disarray, having just fired guitarist/vocalist Bob Welch. Buckingham became the group's seventh guitarist in seven years. He also had leverage with the band’s drummer Mick Fleetwood and was able to convince him to allow his girlfriend and recording partner, Stevie, to join the band as well. The addition of Buckingham and Nicks led to the classic-era’s lineup of Fleetwood Mac. This lineup would last until the early 1980s and would produce some outstanding albums, including Fleetwood Mac, Rumors, Tusk, and Mirage. 

One final album came in the ’80s, titled Tango in the Night, which began as a Buckingham solo project, but became the band’s, as they needed Buckingham’s creative output to release new music. With a ten-week tour scheduled, Buckingham refused to go at the last minute, saying he felt his creativity would be stifled if he toured and did not record more music. A band meeting at Christine McVie’s house on August 1987 resulted in turmoil, as tensions came to a head. Mick Fleetwood, in his autobiography, claimed there was an altercation between Buckingham and Nicks. Buckingham left the band the following day. After Buckingham’s first departure, Fleetwood Mac replaced him with two new guitarists, Billy Burnette and Rick Vito, without even auditioning them. This lineup of Fleetwood Mac released only one studio album in 1990 titled, Behind the Mask, which only made it to Gold Sales and did not achieve the lofty multi-platinum success the band had become used to with Lindsey Buckingham writing most of their material. Stevie Nicks grew frustrated with the band’s lack of success and quit following Behind the Mask’s commercial failure.

It took until 1997 to get Buckingham back in the band, and by this time a lot had changed in the music industry. Still, Fleetwood Mac continued to be hugely popular with many of the old fans who were eager for the band to do a reunion tour. Vocalist Christine McVie did not participate in a number of the reunions in the early 2000s, but later joined in 2014.

Everything seemed fine in the group’s camp until January 2018, when Stevie Nicks handed the band a “he or me” ultimatum after the MusiCares Person of the Year benefit concert, where she had felt slighted by Buckingham. As Buckingham told Rolling Stone, "A few days after the show he received a phone call from the band's manager Irving Azoff, who proceeded to list various issues Nicks had with his behavior that night, including his complaints about their intro music being Nicks' ‘Rhiannon,’ and that he may have ‘smirked’ while she was giving her acceptance speech.” (The band received an award that night.)

"The irony is we have this long-standing joke, that when Stevie talks, she goes on a long time," Buckingham said. I may or may not have smirked, but I look over and Mick and Christine were doing the waltz behind her as a joke." As for the choice of intro song that night, Buckingham admitted he was against it, but said Nicks took it the wrong way. "It wasn't about it being ‘Rhiannon,’" he said. "It just undermined the impact of our entrance. That’s me being very specific about the right and wrong way to do something."

Regardless of Buckingham's defenses, Azoff gave him a direct message: "Stevie never wants to be onstage with you again." Buckingham took this to mean that Nicks was quitting Fleetwood Mac, so he emailed Mick Fleetwood to discuss the band's future, but didn't hear back, so he called Azoff for clarification. "This feels funny," he recalled saying to Azoff. "Is Stevie leaving the band or am I getting kicked out? Azoff told Buckingham he was "getting ousted" because Nicks gave the band an ultimatum: “Either you go or she's gonna go."

Shortly after the April news release of Buckingham's departure, Fleetwood said, "Buckingham's unwillingness to tour this year was the reason for his dismissal.” The only other public comments Buckingham made prior to Rolling Stone's interview were at a May fundraiser, where he said the band had "lost its perspective.” He went on to say, “That harmed the 43-year legacy that we had worked so hard to build. The legacy was really about rising above difficulties in order to fulfill higher truths and one's higher destiny."

It has yet to be seen how Fleetwood Mac's 2019 tour will turn out. They are now in the midst of battling Lindsey Buckingham in a lawsuit over “how” he was terminated from the band. Will people still have the same lofty expectations of Fleetwood Mac's musical ability minus the creative output of Buckingham? Will this be another “greatest hits package tour” for people just wanting to see Stevie Nicks belt out such hits as "Rhiannon," "Landslide," and "The Chain"? We’ll have to wait and see how it all turns out, although it’s nice that Mike Campbell from The Heartbreakers now has a new musical opportunity since the death of Tom Petty in 2017. Can the combination of Campbell and Finn fill Buckingham's shoes for a successful 2019 Tour, or will this be similar to Buckingham’s departure in 1987, when replaced by Burnette and Vito the band's next album tanked big time? 2019 is sure to bring revelations about the current state of Fleetwood Mac, and their tour is worth catching despite the loss of Buckingham.

Kiss Concert Preview

2019 promises to bring some great rock ‘n’ roll concerts to the Boston area. While many—including Maroon 5's vocalist Adam Levine—have been quick to write off rock ‘n’ roll as dead in the last year, there are still signs that rock is alive and well, with four big classic bands coming to town this spring.

Kiss is the first big act and will play in TD Garden on March 26. The band formed in New York City in 1973, with guitarist/vocalist Paul Stanley, bassist/vocalist Gene Simmons, guitarist Ace Frehley and drummer Peter Criss. These musicians were well-known for their elaborate face paint and fancy stage outfits. They rose to prominence in the mid 1970s with their live performances that featured fire-breathing, blood-spitting, smoking guitars, shooting rockets, levitating drum kits, and pyrotechnics. The band has gone through several line-up changes over the years, with Stanley and Simmons the only two original members remaining. Former drummer Criss refuses to have any contact with the other two members over unresolved song credits and royalty disputes.

Frehley had not performed with the band since a 2002 Farewell Tour because of similar disputes, but appears to have since buried the hatchet as he reunited with Kiss this past October to perform four songs on a cruise boat: "New York Groove," "2,000 Man," "Hide Your Heart,"  and "Domino."

Earlier, on September 19, following their performance on America's Got Talent, Kiss announced that they are ending their career with One Last Kiss: End of the Road World Tour 2019, which kicks off January 21 in Vancouver and currently includes 74 additional dates that run through December 3, in Auckland, New Zealand. 

At TD Garden, Kiss will perform its One Last Kiss: End of the Road World Tour, and it promises to be a great show—although don't count on it being the final Kiss show you’ll ever attend if you are a huge Kiss fan. The band has already staged several Farewell Tours, and this one may be just be another cash grab for Stanley and Simmons, known to be more business enthusiasts in the rock ‘n' roll world, than actual rock ‘n' rollers.

December 3 2018 Marks the 3 Year Anniversary of the Death Of Scott Weiland

December 3, 2018: Three years have passed since the tragic death of Stone Temple Pilots and Velvet Revolver frontman Scott Weiland passed away from a cocaine overdose on his band’s tour bus in Bloomington, Minnesota. His death shook the entire rock world as a grunge legend was forever lost. 
On the anniversary of his death, Weiland's widow Jamie, as well as members of his former band Stone Temple Pilots, Velvet Revolver and his former Wildabout bandmate Tommy Black have all paid tribute to him online. 

          Scott Weiland's widow Jamie posted a photo writing "Three years."
          Stone Temple Pilots posted on Twitter, Scott, we think of you always and miss you even more. We send our love and know you are looking down at all who love you."
          STP bassist Robert DeLeo posted on Instagram, "Rest easy my Brother..."                                                Velvet Revolver drummer Matt Sorum wrote on Instagram, "Remembering Scott Weiland today December 3rd he left the planet. Thank you for all you left us and your artistry. 1967-2015."
          Duff McKagen tweeted, "Rest in Peace Scott W..."
           Slash posted on Instagram, "RIP Scott Weiland."
            Former Wildabouts bassist Tommy Black who served as the best man at Scott Weiland's wedding to Jamie in 2013, shared a never before seen photo of the two them hugging. Black wrote next to the photograph, "Just three years ago and it seems like decades. What a sad day! Miss you and think of you every day my friend. So many good adventures and so many good songs. Your memory is strong and you are always in all our hearts."
          Former MTV host Matt Pinfield wrote on Instagram, "3 years ago today we lost a friend and one of the best frontmen in rock Scott Weiland. This picture was taken when I did the interview to launch his autobiography. 500 people showed up at the Barnes and Noble at NYC's Union Square location. The day he died I did a 4 hour live broadcast on Sirus XM Lithium and took phone calls from his broken-hearted -fans. It was a sad day."
       Pinfield interviewed Matt Sorum on that broadcast, and Sorum cried on the air mourning his late bandmate. "I don't know how I felt initially. I can't say it was a shock, but it was definitely… I wasn't expecting it because I felt like Scott was gonna be here hopefully longer than this," Sorum said. "When I started to kind of process the feelings-I mean people know that in the end, obviously we had our differences and the band split up. But the wave of emotions that you feel is more like a family member. It's like if you had a family member that maybe you didn't get along with great, but you still love them. That's the feeling, " he explained.

Many fans thought Weiland was clean when he started touring with his last band Scott Weiland And The Wildabouts. Then the tour was scattered with shows where Weiland was struggling to perform the songs live because he was clearly under the influence of something. In Houston, on Tuesday, March 21 2105, Weiland staggered though a performance onstage, where he struggled to stand on two feet, often sitting down by the drum riser to rest. Weiland gave a less than stellar performance of the Stone Temple Pilots 1994 hit “Vasoline” during The Wildabouts show, which caused great concern among fans at the time. “Alright this is a new song. We just worked it out today,” the 47-year old rocker told the crowd before launching into a monotone and lackluster version of the more than 20-year-old tune.

               A rep for Weiland at the time told TMZ that drugs were not a factor in the singer's poor performance in Houston, claiming it was a perfect storm of Weiland being tired and having a few drinks before the gig.

Fast forward a few months to December 3, 2015, and Weiland and his band were still trucking on a U.S. Tour that had them scheduled to play a show at the Medina Entertainment Center in Medina, Minnesota. Then at 8:22 PM police in Bloomington, Minnesota, responded to a call about an unresponsive male on in a Tour Bus. When authorities arrived, they found the man, Weiland, was dead. Initial reports suggested he died in his sleep from cardiac arrest, but toxicology results conducted by The Hennepin County Medical Examiner in Minneapolis and released on December 18, 2015, determined that Weiland died from an accidental overdose of cocaine, alcohol, and methylenedioxyamphetamine (MDA). The report also mentioned that Weiland had a history of cardiovascular disease, asthma and multi-substance dependence, which may have contributed to his death. 

                  The day Weiland died, police in Bloomington announced that they had found a small quantity of cocaine in the band's tour bus in the bedroom area where Weiland's body was found. Wildabouts bassist Tommy Black was arrested for possession, but released the next day.

                   After learning about Weiland's death his former bandmates in Stone Temple Pilots (Weiland's most famous band) posted a letter on Facebook: "Dear Scott, let us start by saying thank you for sharing your life with us. Together we crafted a legacy of music that has given so many people happiness and great memories. The memories are many and they run deep for us. We know amidst the good and the bad you struggled, time and again. It's what made you who you were. You were gifted beyond words, Scott. Part of that gift was part of your curse. With deep sorrow for you and your family, we are saddened to see you go. All of our love and respect. We miss you brother- Robert, Eric, Dean." 

                  Weiland had a long history of drug and alcohol abuse. In 1995, he was convicted of buying cocaine in Los Angeles, California, and sentenced to a year of probation. Over the next four years, Weiland was arrested for a DUI as well as a domestic violence charge. By 1998, Scott Weiland was in rehab. He spent five months in jail in 1999 after violating his probation on an August 1998 conviction for heroin possession. After Stone Temple Pilots disbanded in 2002 Weiland claimed to  have kicked drugs following a sour split after the bands Shangri La Dee Da Tour.

              Weiland told Loudwire in September 2013, "Drugs worked for me until they didn't. They were fun until they were absolutely heinously nightmarish. But that's all way in the past. I'd abuse on and off. I'd go through a period of using for awhile, but then I'd go get clean and stop and I'd go through that whole cycle of rehabbing that became very expensive-more so than drugs were."

         In another interview with Loudwire that ran on June 4, 2015 Weiland reiterated that he had been clean for 13 years. The comment came after accusations from Filter frontman Richard Patrick that Weiland was still using.

         Although Weiland was a powerful singer and a charismatic frontman, his problems with drugs uprooted his career on numerous occasions. He fronted Stone Temple Pilots from 1986 to 2002, performing on five multi-platinum albums before his personal issues led to the band's break up.                    After leaving Stone Temple Pilots, Weiland joined Velvet Revolver and recorded two albums with the super group before leaving to reunite with Stone Temple Pilots in 2008. The band released and eponymous album in 2010 and toured through 2012.    

                                                                       

 In February 2013, Stone Temple Pilots fired Wieland for "erratic and irresponsible behavior" and hired Linkin Park vocalist Chester Bennington. "I had an issue with being late to shows," Weiland said at the time never saying that drugs were the issue. Still Scott did not believe that the rest of the band had to the right to kick him out, so he sued them, and did not win the case. S.T.P. was allowed to carry on without him with Bennington as the lead singer. 

           In addition to his work with Stone Temple Pilots and Velvet Revolver, Scott Weiland released two solo albums 12 Bar Blues and Happy In Galoshes, as well as the Scott Weiland and The Wildabouts-Blaster record released in 2015, the year that he passed away. He also recorded vocals for the debut Art Of Anarchy album, released on June 2, 2015. It was the final album to feature Scott Weiland before his death. Weiland distanced himself from the record saying it was a cash grab at the time and that he preferred to focus all his work with his band The Wildabouts, with which he had also released an album with in 2015 and was touring with.

                Weiland was buried at a private funeral on December 11th at Hollywood Forever Cemetery in Los Angeles. Members of Stone Temple Pilots and Velvet Revolver were there to honor their former bandmate. On the one year anniversary of his death, the members of Stone Temple Pilots paid tribute to Weiland with the following post. "Here we are. A year has passed since you've been gone. We often think of you and are reminded of you daily with many memories. Then there is the music the four of us carved out allowing us to listen and feel how brilliant you are. There was a time when we looked up to one another. Each wanting one another's approval. the songs we wrote had to have complete impact on us in order for them to shine. When it did... It was unearthly. Perhaps you are in a place now to better describe it. We miss you Scott."

Christopher Thorn Reveals What Blind Melon Song Shannon Hoon Paid Tribute To Kurt Cobain

Blind Melon guitarist Christopher Thorn revealed that the band's song "Soup,"whose lyrics were written by the late frontman Shannon Hoon, paid tribute to Kurt Cobain. The lines at the end of the song, "I'll pull the trigger and I'll make it all go away," were a direct reference to Cobain's recent suicide. Thorn was quoted by Music-Iluminati as saying about the song's recording, "I specifically remember the moment we finished the song "Soup." I wrote the music, and I think Shannon had three-quarters if not more of it finished lyrically and melodically. I just remember finishing the end with him and it was a really heavy moment. Kurt Cobain had died recently, and we were all affected by that, obviously, and that kind of came out in the end of that song. That's probably one of my favorite memories. There's many with Shannon because he kept us entertained quite a bit. I have endless great memories of him." Thorn went on to say, "For me my favorite memory is after we had looped the world a few times, and we had time off after the very first record, when we were getting ready to make the second record. Shannon and I went to Mammoth in California for a couple of weeks. I remember the first week we were there we snowboarded all day and wrote songs. I think a few days later, Rogers (Stevens) came up, and it was just the three of us. It was just a great time/ That was one of my favorite memories with Shannon because I had him all to myself for a bit. It was just me and Rogers and him, and it just was a great time for us to go, "Holy shit! What just happened to us? My God!" You know what I mean? It was like that/ It was like. "Did that really just happen to us, all that stuff, or did we just dream that?"
Every day we snowboarded, and every night we came back, made dinner, built a fire and wrote songs. It was just one of the most amazing experiences. Some of those recordings are on the Internet. I think they're labeled the 'Mammoth Sessions' because I brought in a recording rig. I traveled with--I say portable, but it was literally 5 feet tall--so it was a giant road case that had recording gear in it. So I traveled with that, and I brought that into Mammoth, which is a ski resort in California. It was just a great time."