Just a few years ago, the music world lost two great musicians in a very short time when Stone Temple Pilots’ Scott Weiland and David Bowie passed away within weeks of each other. Now, a new biography notes that Bowie tried to save the troubled rocker in the weeks leading up to his passing.
In December of 2015, former Stone Temple Pilots frontman Scott Weiland was found dead in his tour bus as the result of a drug overdose. However, as famed rock journalist Matt Pinfield recalls in his recent autobiography, All These Things That I’ve Done: My Insane, Improbable Rock Life, David Bowie was looking out for Weiland in the months prior.
“The last time I saw David, at the end of our conversation he pulled me aside and said, ‘I know you’re friends with Scott Weiland. Please let him know that I’m here to talk if he needs someone’,” Pinfield recalled.
“I think he spotted in Scott a kindred soul. Not only musically, but in terms of the demons he was fighting.”
As it turned out, Scott Weiland would pass away a short time later, while David Bowie succumbed to liver cancer in January of 2016.
Both Weiland and Bowie were known to be fans of each other, with Weiland having covered ‘Andy Warhol’ while performing with Stone Temple Pilots, and covering ‘Fame’ and ‘The Jean Genie’ on his 2011 covers album.
In an interview with Rolling Stone just two days before his death, Scott Weiland noted that David Bowie would have been his dream collaboration, explaining “He’s my biggest influence musically, vocally and fashion-wise.”
Since Scott Weiland’s passing, his former band, Stone Temple Pilots, have reconvened with a new vocalist, and have recorded their first full length album since 2008’s self-titled reunion album.
Check out Stone Temple Pilots covering David Bowie’s ‘Andy Warhol’:
