Not Dead & Not For Sale by Scott Weiland Read Free Book Online Page A

Type Thing” was seen as a metal song—and that both bugged and pleased us. It bugged us because we didn’t see ourselves as metal. It pleased us because we were on the radio. And besides, the same thing was happening to Soundgarden and Nirvana. If they could be confused for heavy metal, why not STP?

    Down in New Orleans, we found ourselves in the wrong neighborhood in the wrong hotel but were too dumb to know. We kept partying.
    One night Dean drank too much and got sick all over the RV. Robert came waltzing into the hotel room with the new Stray Cats record and said, “Now I know why they called it Choo Choo Hot Fish .” Dean spent hours cleaning up his puke.
    Little by little, the record started catching fire until we got word that MTV’s Headbangers Ball wanted to interview us. That’s when Dean and I bonded big-time. Rather than be interviewed, Dean suggested that he bring his acoustic guitar to the MTV studios in New York so we could perform an acoustic version of “Plush.”
    We were overstimulated from touring and, to sleep on the plane, we took a handful of powerful pills—my first—that coated our brains and numbed out the world. When we got to the fancy hotel in New York, I vomited in the lobby. Dean barely made it up to the room before he vomited all over the bathroom. When we got to MTV at six that morning, we were high as zombies, and yet …
    Dean played his most heartbreakingly soulful version of “Plush”—and I sang it with more relaxed feeling than ever before or since. It was chill and it was mellow, an acoustic statement still being played on radio stations some eighteen years later. This is a story that seems to have a somewhat happy ending. It is a false ending, however, because my story only became more painful.
    WHEN CORE FINALLY BEGAN TO FLY, it soared, generating four top-five hits, two of which went to number one. I remember management or the label or someone in a suit coming to us and saying, “It’s happened! The big break is here! Aerosmith wants you to open for them!”
    I looked at Dean, Robert, and Eric, and saw the same expression on their face that was on mine.
    “No,” we said. “That’s the worst thing that could happen to us. We’re not opening for Aerosmith.”

F REEZING-COLD LONDON IN THE WINTER OF ’93.
    Core had blown up beyond anyone’s wildest dreams. We were nonstop traveling, promoting, selling records.
    This was our first tour outside the United States. It had been many months since I’d seen Mary. She was now seventeen and emancipated from her parents after having left them in California. I hadn’t forgotten her, but I had disciplined myself not to call. Suddenly my discipline collapsed. I called L.A. I learned she had switched agencies and was working in Paris but, miracle of miracles, she happened to be in London at this very moment. My mind went crazy. This couldn’t be coincidence. This was fate. Fuck cupids! We were brought together by Aphrodite herself.
    I called her and asked, “Would you come to my hotel?”
    “Yes.”
    Mary arrived wrapped in wool. She glowed. She kissed me on the cheek. The hotel had a private bar, small and intimate. Our chitchat was small and intimate. She explained how she had sued for her independence from her parents and was completely on her own. Mary looked sensational. In the year since I had seen her, she had traveled the world. She had done shows in New York, Tokyo, and London. She was confident, she radiated sophisticated energy, she was irresistible.
    “You’re a whole new person,” I said.
    “You are too. You’ve become a star.”
    Her words were still few, but they were all the right words.
    She asked me if I wanted her to walk me to my room.
    “You can stay over if you like,” I said. “I’ll sleep on the couch.”
    She stayed, and I didn’t sleep on the couch. Our sexual connection was even more powerful than I had anticipated. We became one. The heavens opened.
    “Go on this tour with me,” I