Background and career
Scott Richard Weiland (, WY-lənd; né Kline; October 27, 1967 – December 3, 2015) was an American singer and songwriter. He was best known as the lead vocalist of the rock band Stone Temple Pilots from 1989 to 2003 and again from 2008 to 2013, recording six albums with them. Weiland was also the lead singer of the rock supergroup Velvet Revolver from 2003 to 2008. He released one album with rock supergroup Art of Anarchy in 2015, as well as four solo studio albums and several collaborations with other musicians. Weiland was noted for his flamboyant and chaotic onstage persona, his consistently changing appearance, and his versatile vocal style. He sold over 50 million albums with his various projects and collaborations. Weiland's career was plagued by substance abuse issues, leading to various high-profile arrests and his firings from Velvet Revolver and Stone Temple Pilots. On December 3, 2015, at the age of 48, he was found dead on his tour bus from an accidental drug overdose.
Weiland was born Scott Richard Kline on October 27, 1967, at the Kaiser Permanente Medical Center in San Jose, California, the son of Sharon (née Williams) and Kent Kline. His father had German ancestry. He was raised Catholic. At the age of five, he was legally adopted by his stepfather David Weiland and subsequently took his surname. Around the same time, he moved to Bainbridge Township, Ohio, where he attended Kenston High School. According to Robert DeLeo, when he was younger, Scott was in choir. At the age of 12, while living in Ohio, Weiland 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. Before fully devoting himself to a music career, he worked as a paste up artist for the Los Angeles Daily Journal legal newspaper.
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. Hicock and Allin would soon be replaced by Eric Kretz and DeLeo's brother Dean. They took the name Stone Temple Pilots because of their fondness for the initials "STP". Robert DeLeo said that, while he was working at Mesa Boogie, in Sunset Boulevard, Scott was working "across catty-corner" from him and would come to show musical ideas. In one of the band's first opening performances under the name Mighty Joe Young, they opened for Electric Love Hogs, whose guitarist Dave Kushner would one day co-found Weiland's later band Velvet Revolver. In 1992, they released their first album, Core, spawning four hits ("Sex Type Thing", "Wicked Garden", "Creep", and "Plush".)
In 1994, STP released their second record, Purple, which saw the development of a more distinctive identity for the band. Like Core, Purple was a big success for the band, spawning three hit singles ("Big Empty", "Vasoline", and "Interstate Love Song") and selling more than six million copies. The critical response to Purple was more favorable, with Spin calling it a "quantum leap" from the band's previous album. In 1995, Weiland formed the alternative rock band the Magnificent Bastards with session drummer Victor Indrizzo in San Diego. The band included Zander Schloss and Jeff Nolan on guitars and Bob Thompson on bass. Only two songs were recorded by the Magnificent Bastards, "Mockingbird Girl", composed by Nolan, Schloss, and Weiland, appeared in the film Tank Girl and on its soundtrack, and a cover of John Lennon's "How Do You Sleep?" was recorded for the tribute album, Working Class Hero: A Tribute to John Lennon. 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... Songs from the Vatican Gift Shop, which sold about two million albums. Weiland encountered problems with drug addiction at this time as well, which inspired some of his songs in the late-1990s and resulted in jail time. In 1999, STP regrouped once again and released No. 4. The album contained the hit single "Sour Girl", promoted by a surreal music video with Sarah Michelle Gellar. That same year, Weiland also recorded two songs with the short-lived supergroup the Wondergirls. During this time period, Weiland spent five months in jail for drug possession.
In November 2000, Weiland was invited to perform on the show VH1 Storytellers with the surviving members of the Doors. Weiland performed vocals on two Doors songs, "Break On Through (To the Other Side)" and "Five to One". That same month Stone Temple Pilots appeared on the Doors tribute CD, Stoned Immaculate with their own rendition of "Break on Through" as the lead track. On June 19, 2001, STP released its fifth album, Shangri-La Dee Da. That same year the band headlined the Family Values Tour along with Linkin Park, Staind and Static-X. In late 2002, significant backstage altercations between the DeLeo brothers and Weiland precipitated the band's break-up. In 2008, Stone Temple Pilots announced a 73-date U.S. tour on April 7 and performed together for the first time since 2002. The reunion tour kicked off at the Rock on the Range festival on May 17, 2008. According to Dean DeLeo, steps toward a Stone Temple Pilots reunion started with a simple phone call from Weiland's wife. She invited the DeLeo brothers to play at a private beach party, which led to the reconciliation of Weiland and the DeLeo brothers. STP's reunion tour was a success, and the band continued to tour throughout 2009 and began recording its sixth studio album. STP's first album since 2001, Stone Temple Pilots, was released on May 25, 2010. STP toured Southeast Asia for the first time in 2011, playing in Philippines (Manila), Singapore and Indonesia (Jakarta). Following this, the band played successful shows in Australia, including sell-out performances in Sydney and Melbourne.
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. [There's] a lot of archival footage that we're putting together, a coffee table book, hopefully a brand new album – so many ideas. A box set and then a tour, of course."STP began to experience problems in 2012 that were said to have been caused by tensions between Weiland and the rest of the band. Despite the band's claims that their fall tour would be celebrating the 20th anniversary of Core, this did not happen. 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. 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.
Sources
Net-worth figure: Celebrity Net Worth (October 2026), in USD. Biography and career facts: the person's Wikipedia article and linked reporting. Snapshot date for all StarWorth figures: 28 October 2026.
