Wrote 'dis. You can read it, or not. It isn't going to be published anywhere. I didn't draft a specific piece for a freelance gig. I won't be paid. There is no objective other than the sheer hope that this may resonate with someone who reads it, somewhere. I wanted to express what it means to be a fan...and what I think it doesn't.
I first heard the Stone Temple Pilots when I was 11 years old, it was 1996 and we're talking about the "new" Tiny Music album here... I know, I was late to the party. What soon followed was a monsoon wave of their discography and I've since never looked back. It swept into my life bands like Pearl Jam (it was STP first, not the other way around for me by the way), Nirvana, Soundgarden. David Bowie. The Doors. The Red Hot Chili Peppers. The link remained cohesive throughout my adolescence - Sleater Kinney, Black Flag, The Misfits, too. Look at my vinyl collection today and what you see is what I had on a Compact Disc when I was 11 or 12. I worshiped these bands, not because I chased fame or for superficial reasons, but because they were my only friends. My friends at this age were particularly the voices fronting these bands. Scott Weiland, Eddie Vedder, Kurt Cobain, Corin Tucker. My friends solely existed between the grey compartments of a 3-disc CD player and helped educate me in the poetics of rock and roll. In 2000 (Y2k?!), after several years of musical research, guitar lessons, hospitalizing depression, those turbulent wild years of adolescence - I finally saw my first show and it was the Stone Temple Pilots. I was 14 years old and it was rock and roll. It changed my life. Not in some dramatic epiphany sort of way, more as though I learned a valuable life lesson that has grown with me ever since. Artists - great artists - give everything they have to their audience. Whether that manifests itself solely through their musical expression, or if it bleeds over into their personal life, making things hazy I am sure. It is what happens when great, honest art is put forth. It hooked me that night. I had yet to even kiss a boy at that age, yet that night I understood some teenage form of sexuality existed inside of me when I saw Weiland in leather dancing on stage. I found a weirdo community that both engulfed and surrounded me that night. Shielding me, holding me up on shoulders, pushing/pulling. Connection. Friends. Human form friends. Yet they were mostly strangers. Music has a way of connecting us all together. Isn't that the unique thing about being a fan? Isn't it why we listen to music in the first place? Isn't it incredible being in a room on this particular evening, after having stood in a Ticketmaster line on a Saturday morning at Kroger's with your mom and step dad waiting for the show's seats to go on sale at 10am? These were all very real experiences I had that night. Soon after in the same year I would see Chris Cornell, Pearl Jam, the Red Hots, thus catching the bug that is being a FAN in every sense of the word. That makes up a large fiber of my being. As I (very quickly) got older I began to miss that innocent way a young person has about them when they first discover "their" music. When I was a child, I learned to speak English to the Beatles and experience my first ear opening, relevatory guitar sounds all while never knowing a Beatle dropped acid, divorced, or was even dead. Did that matter? Did that have to go along with my having to be a fan? I have often been disappointed in the commonality of human beings habit to build up another equally human (yet extraordinarily gifted) human being, only to surround them in a circle and laugh hysterically as each limb is ripped off one by one by the very same people who put them there. Michael Jackson is a great example of this. Everyone wants a piece. Even us fans. But at what cost? We expect our beloved artists to become superheros and serve us 24 hours a day. Which most of the time, they DO. They tour relentlessly, write songs for the sake of needing to long after the inspiration may have left, some take drugs and drink to cope, some work out. Some have sex. Some don't change at all. Whatever. I don't have to explain this story to you. I just turned 30 years old, and last week Scott Weiland died.
As a fan, it's a unique situation for me to have experienced. I have always felt one foot lay on each side of the door panel. On one side, I've always loved identifying as a fan and pouring over music obsessively. There is something comforting in that. I have often been in situations in my roaring twenties where i found myself in a room- of a party, backstage, a studio, or a place much less glamorous than these aforementioned places standing shoulder to shoulder with one of my rock "idols". It hasn't always been pretty, or nice. I've been disappointed more than I have been impressed. I prefer and love the power of being in the crowd, because depending on who you ask - the real happiness often lies in the invisibly connected sea of fans all experiencing this artist, giving their life to us. For this reason, hearing the news of Scott Weiland's death deeply impacted me It wasn't that I was surprised, shocked, or even had tickets to see his new band. I had drifted in and out of listening to his post-STP discography and only half supported those endeavors. But I did not share videos of him fucking up on stage from San Antonio, or join in on the witty banter meant to humiliate an artist who had given so much to us for so many years. Witnessing that got me to thinking about how sad and difficult it must be to be 'our' artist, while struggling with one's own very human demons. To constantly feel the need to be present, to give give give, while we take demand take demand seems exhausting to me. Yet Bowie did it. Patti Smith, too. Hendrix died doing it, much like Kurt Cobain. Weiland did this too. I don't write this with the objective to "glorify" the death of someone famous, as much as I want to point out the unique and all not too rare situation that this has become. This endless cycle of an artist giving and us, the human race and the audience in demand, taking. In these musical heroes I have never looked for a 'father figure', or some martyr whom I should put up on a pedestal - that ain't my style. These people were making art that was honest and wrote words that found me through the lonely walls of my bedroom. For that, I will forever be grateful to Scott Weiland. Isn't it funny how lonely people often make music for other lonely people?
It's kind of like that last line of Elton John's Candle in the Wind "goodbye Norma Jean, from the young man in the 22nd row"...
He was a true artist. A real gifted writer. And I will miss his voice. Thank you for all the music Scott, it will outlive us all indeed.
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