LADIES AND GENTLEMAN, SCOTT WEILAND HAS FALLEN OFF THE WAGON… AGAIN
I know that some of you, including Vince, come from a “Let’s Give Scott Weiland a Hug When He’s Down” kinda mentality, but, alas, I come from a “Let’s All Point Our Fingers and Laugh When the Big Rich Rock Star Fucks Up His Life Again” mentality. So, my apologies to anyone who is offended when I say that Scott Weiland is a fuck-up.
Last week, I considered – and, for some reason, decided against – posting a story which would posit my theory that Velvet Revolver are either just about to break-up, or one of the band’s members (all of whom have been drug addicts or alcoholics at some point*) had fallen off the wagon. My reasoning was thus: the band recently had to cancel their tour of Japan due to mysteriously being denied visas, even though they’d toured the country before. But shortly thereafter, the band also postponed their Australian tour, for reasons unknown. Why would not being able to get a Japanese work visa effect a tour of Australia?
It wouldn’t, of course, nor would it effect a show in California in December, which also just cancelled. So what the fuck happened? Oh, yeah. Weiland fell off the wagon and got arrested for “driving under the influence of a drug.” The drug, of course, wasn’t identified, but… I think we can all take an educated guess what it might have been (Weiland, of course, denies that he was under the influence – he’s just saying he crashed his car for no particular reason, I guess… doesn’t really explain why he refused to take a blood or urine test after the arrest, but whatever – you can read the police report and decide for yourself.)
So why have the cancellations been staggered – why not just cancel all remaining live dates right now until Weiland gets himself cleaned up? I honestly have no idea – part of me wondered for a beat if management wasn’t trying to get Weiland just spiffy-lookin’ enough to parade him out for the band’s recently announced, $150-$100 per ticket New Year’s Eve show at the Hammerstein Ballroom in NYC; but I don’t know if one show is really that important to the band. I mean, they’re not gonna be able to avoid the bad publicity of the rest of the tour going down the pipes, are they?
Whatever the logic, you gotta laugh: all that Slash, Duff and Matt wanted was to be able to have a huge rock band without all the bullshit drama of Axl Rose, and here goes Weiland, getting a whole tour cancelled in a supremely Axl Rosian manner. Maybe the opitate of choice is different for the two front men – heroin versus, y’know, just basically being completely fucking nuts and living in a different reality from everyone else – but the end result is more or less the same.
In his recently released autobiography (which was actually written by some other dude, but whatever), the cleverly titled Slash, the guitarist talks about wanting to record a solo album with all his “dream collaborators” some day in a manner reminiscent of an infomercial: “…all I know is that I plan to call it ‘Slash and Friends.’ I’m actually looking at my wish list of collaborators right now and no, I’m not going to tell who is on it.”
Get ready, kids. I think Slash is gonna get to make Slash and Friends real, real soon.
-AR
*Well, maybe not Dave Kushner. I honestly don’t know anything about the guy other than that he went to junior high school with Slash or something. But can you really blame me? Even Slash doesn’t seem to know much about the dude – he identifies him as “Dave Kirschner” twice during the course of Slash.
