Weiland's career was plagued by substance abuse issues, leading to various high-profile arrests and his eventual firings from Velvet Revolver and Stone Temple Pilots.

At the age of 12, while living in Ohio, he was raped by an older male who invited him to his house; he wrote in his autobiography Not Dead & Not For Sale that he repressed the memory until it returned to him in therapy decades later.

Weiland moved back to California as a teenager and attended Edison High School in Huntington Beach and Orange Coast College in Costa Mesa.

[4] Before fully devoting himself to a music career, he worked as a paste up artist for the Los Angeles Daily Journal legal newspaper.

[5][6][7] In 1985, Scott Weiland and his friends in their band Soi Disant – guitarist Corey Hicock and drummer David Allin – first encountered Robert Deleo playing live at various gigs, deciding to track him down after witnessing his shows.

[12][15] Weiland rejoined Stone Temple Pilots in the fall of 1995, but STP was forced to cancel most of their 1996–1997 tour in support of their third release, Tiny Music...

The band expressed interest in a 20th anniversary tour to celebrate the release of Core with Scott commenting on January 2, 2012, "Well, we're doing a lot of special things.

On February 27, 2013, shortly before his solo tour was set to commence, Stone Temple Pilots announced Weiland's termination from the band on their website.

[27][better source needed] Weiland criticized the band after they hired Linkin Park singer Chester Bennington as his replacement, claiming he was still a member and they shouldn't be calling themselves Stone Temple Pilots without him.

Throughout his career, Weiland had become acquainted with the four musicians; he became friends with McKagan after attending the same gym,[29][30] was in rehab at the same time as Sorum and once played on the same bill as Kushner.

[35] Weiland joined the band soon after,[29] and "Set Me Free" managed to peak at number 17 on the Mainstream Rock chart[36] without any radio promotion or a record label.

At the 2005 Grammy Awards, Weiland (along with the rest of Velvet Revolver) performed the Beatles song "Across the Universe", along with Bono, Brian Wilson, Norah Jones, Stevie Wonder, Steven Tyler, Billie Joe Armstrong, Alison Krauss, and Alicia Keys.

Weiland wrote most of the songs on the album and collaborated with several artists, notably Daniel Lanois, Sheryl Crow, Brad Mehldau, and Jeff Nolan.

[citation needed] Scott Weiland and the Wildabouts' Purple at the Core tour commenced in March 2013 with pop/rock band MIGGS as the opening act.

[68] In an interview with San Diego radio station KBZT in June 2014, Weiland stated that his debut album with the Wildabouts, titled Blaster, would be released in November that year.

At the peak of Stone Temple Pilots' success in the early to mid-1990s, Weiland displayed a deep, baritone vocal style that was compared to that of Pearl Jam singer Eddie Vedder.

He was the one vocalist that I knew had the kind of voice that would serve what we were going to do: he had a John Lennon-ish quality, a little bit of Jim Morrison, and a touch of almost David Bowie.

[76] With Velvet Revolver, Weiland's vocals ranged from his classic baritone to a rawer style to complement the band's hard rock sound.

"[46] Weiland's second solo album, 2008's "Happy" in Galoshes, featured a wide variety of musical genres, such as bossa nova, country, neo-psychedelia and indie rock.

[82] In a November 2012 interview with Rolling Stone, Weiland revealed that he was engaged to Jamie Wachtel, whom he met during the 2011 filming of his music video for "I'll Be Home for Christmas".

[89] In a 2005 interview with Esquire, Weiland said that while performing in his first bands as a teenager, his drinking "escalated" and he began using cocaine for the first time, which he referred to as a "sexual" experience.

Weiland said in an interview with MTV News in November 2008 that several songs on "Happy" in Galoshes were inspired by the death of his brother and his separation from Mary Forsberg.

[93] In April 2015, online footage from a concert raised questions about Weiland's health, as he appeared unsteady and was singing markedly out of tune and in a slurred voice.

His response was directed towards comments made by Filter's frontman Richard Patrick, who claimed Weiland was using drugs and that his fans were pushing him closer to death by "sticking up for" him.

"[96] Shortly after his death, Weiland's widow Jamie acknowledged that her husband was drinking heavily before he left on his band's last tour, but that he promised her that he would "get it together".

In its report, the examiner's office also noted Weiland's atherosclerotic cardiovascular disease, history of asthma, and prolonged substance abuse.

[109] A day following his death, his former bandmates in Stone Temple Pilots issued a statement saying that he was "gifted beyond words" but acknowledging his struggle with substance abuse, calling it "part of [his] curse.

"[110] He was remembered by media outlets as "the American musician whose mercurial vocal style was a signature of the rock band he helped start, Stone Temple Pilots, and later Velvet Revolver" and "a powerful voice.

Songs from the Vatican Gift Shop), that had got me hooked, a wizardly mix of glam and post-punk, and I confessed to Scott, as well as the band many times, how wrong I'd been in assessing their native brilliance.

"[121] In 2018, Guns N' Roses with Slash and Duff, honored Weiland during the Not in This Lifetime... Tour by covering the Velvet Revolver hit song "Slither".