Scott Weiland profile: The former Stone Temple Pilots singer and 'one of a kind' frontman

Scott Weiland, the dynamic and flamboyant US frontman of alt-rock bands Stone Temple Pilots and Velvet Revolver, died in his sleep on Thursday night during a tour stop in Bloomington, Minnesota. He was 48-years-old.

Born Scott Richard Kline in Santa Cruz, California, in 1967, Weiland was adopted by his stepfather aged five and took on his surname, becoming Scott Weiland. He spent his childhood in Ohio before his family moved back to California and Weiland found his passion for rock.

Weiland co-founded the Grammy-award winning band Stone Temple Pilots (known as STP) in 1989 with Robert DeLeo, which would later be completed with the addition of Dean DeLeo and Eric Kretz. The group disbanded in 2003 and reunited in 2008, releasing their final album, Between the Lines, in 2010. A talented singer known for his energetic stage presence, Weiland enjoyed success within the group during the 1990s. However, this decade was also punctuated by stints in rehab for drug abuse, with Weiland attending drug-rehab programs 13 times in the three years running up until 1997.

In 2002, he was approached by former Guns N’ Roses members looking for a singer and eventually agreed to join them, forming Velvet Revolver. He returned to Stone Temple Pilots in 2008, performing with them until he was “terminated” by the band in 2013 and replaced by Linkin Park singer Chester Bennington.

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Stone Temple Pilots climbed up the charts in the 1990s, securing a string of top 10 hits in the alternative charts, a number three album, Core, and a number one album, Purple. The band sold more than 14 million copies of these two albums in the US.

Weiland, who was diagnosed as bi-polar, released a candid memoir in 2011 detailing his problems with substance abuse, including a relapse during Velvet Revolver’s second tour in 2007.

“At the beginning of the tour, I was okay, but then a single line of coke in England did the trick,” he wrote. “I snorted it. And soon the demons were back. Thus began another decline… I was out there again, going to dangerous places to buy substances. All this was done in secret; the guys in Velvet Revolver didn’t know I was using.”

He was arrested for possessing crack and heroin in 1995 and pleaded guilty to heroin possession in 1998. When asked what he learned from jail in a previously unseen interview with Rolling Stone in 2004, he responded: “That led to two-plus years of completely clean living. That's when I first learned how to stick to it and get my life together. A lot of artists who are drug addicts have this fear of not being able to write if they're not using. I don't have that fear — it's a lot easier for me to access my emotions now.”

Weiland went on to form his own band, Scott Weiland and the Wildabouts, playing to smaller audiences than he was used to and releasing one album in 2015.

His fellow musicians and fans have responded to news of his death with an outpouring of tributes to Weiland and his family.

Weiland is survived by his wife, the photographer Jamies Wachtel, and his two children from his previous marriage to Mary Forsberg. Much has been written about his well documented highs and lows throughout his life, but in an interview with USA Today five years before his death, Weiland was adamant that addiction would not become his legacy. "People have this misconception about me," he said. "OK, I struggled with heroin and cocaine and I was a big rock star. But music is not what defines me. I'm a brother, a father, a son and a person who's been in love with very few women."