Not Dead & Not For Sale

by Scott Weiland

I was already a teenager when this dream started recurring. Its form changed slightly, but the basic structure stayed the same:

  Posters are plastered all over the city—on billboards and buses, in splashy newspaper ads and screaming TV commercials. It’s all over the radio and the Internet. It’s tonight, it’s now, it’s what the world’s been waiting for.

  It’s the ultimate Battle of the Bands.

  Midnight tonight at a great outdoor stadium. The witching hour. The dark night of the soul. The moment of truth.

  It’s three years before I’m born.

  Or maybe it’s the year of my birth, or the moment of my birth.

  Or maybe I’m three years old. Or five. Or ten.

  Whatever my age, I’m there. I’m involved. I’m engaged. I’m riveted by the battle. My life is at stake.

  My pulse is racing, my heart pounding inside my chest. The excitement has me crazy with anticipation.

  Two bands. Two bandstands.

  The Rolling Stones versus the Kingston Trio.

  Over the Stones flies a pirate flag. Over the Kingston Trio flies the stars and stripes.

  Chaos versus Order.

  Nihilism versus Responsibility.

  Crooked versus Straight.

  The crowd fills the stands.

  Half of them are fraternity boys and sorority girls, suits and dresses, blazers and loafers. The other half are freaks, punks, dopers, bikers, renegades.

  I’m sitting in the dugout next to my mom.

  My father is introducing the Stones. He and Keith are dressed identically in psychedelic bell-bottoms. He and Mick are sharing a joint. He calls the Stones “the greatest rock-and-roll band in the world.”

  My stepdad introduces the Kingston Trio. They’re all wearing button-down blue oxford shirts and neatly pressed khaki trousers. My stepdad says, “This is real music. This is harmony. This is beauty.”

  My father shouts over to him, “This is darkness! This is the real shit!”

  “Go out there,” my mom whispers in my ear. “Go out there and help.”

  I run out onto the field. I look up and see a hundred thousand screaming people. The bands have started playing simultaneously. Riffs of “Satisfaction.” Riffs of “Tom Dooley.” I run toward my dad, Kent, but he’s disappeared into the crowd. Mick and Keith don’t know me. Security is chasing after me. I’m chasing after my dad, but I can’t find him. I’m running up and down, running all over the stadium, but I can’t find him, can’t find him, crying hysterically, I can’t find my dad …

  FATHERS AND SONS, SONS AND BROTHERS.

  My brother, Michael, was born to my stepfather and my mother when I was four and a half. On the day Mom came home from the hospital, I remember bright sunshine lighting our house. When I saw my baby brother, I was filled with wonder. He was fast asleep; he looked helpless, adorable, more doll-like than human. Whenever he squeezed my finger with his tiny hand, I felt flooded with love. I wouldn’t feel that kind of pure love until the birth of my own children. For the first time in my life, instead of worrying about being protected, I had someone to protect.

  Me and Michael

  The Scott-and-Michael story centers on two brothers to whom God gave musical talent. I’m the one who sought success; he’s the one who feared it. We both fell into drink and drugs. When I got caught with a beer, our stepdad brought the wrath of the gods down on my head. When Michael got caught with pot, he said, “It’s God’s herb,” and Father Dave just sort of shook his head. Maybe the wrath did me good. Maybe the tolerance did Michael harm. Later, I gave Michael his first beer, his first shot of dope, his first hit of crack. Do I feel guilty about that? Yes and no. I wish I hadn’t made those introductions, but knowing Michael, he would have done anything anyway—just to get away. Michael was always way ahead of the curve.

  Camping—hippy-style—a little weed and Big Foot: me at age six, cousin Chris, and Craig, 1973

  In the lane the snow is glistening: my childhood house in Cleveland

  TWO STATES OF MIND: Ohio and California. Ohio is cold and square; California is cool and hip. At least in the mind of a kid.

  THE BEER BUZZ IS A SMALL BUZZ, but it’s an intriguing buzz if you’re looking for any kind of buzz. In the sixth grade, living in Cleveland, I lived for the summertime. Summertime meant California and my dad, Kent, and his wife, Martha. Summertime meant watching them cultivate their pot plants in the backyard and throwing their parties with Emmylou Harris and Stones records and margaritas and shots of Cuervo Gold. Summertime meant pals like Billy, a cool dude who already had long hair, Levi’s super-bell cords, and Vans slip-ons. Billy was the first guy I met who played guitar. He taught himself Zeppelin and taught me about a beer buzz. Billy, my stepbrother, Craig, and Jonathan, the son of Martha’s best friend, snuck beers out of Dad’s fridge. While the grown-up party was building its own buzz, we chugged down the brews, and then another, and another, and walked out into the backyard, the secret inside our heads. I liked the feeling of entering an alternate energy field. I liked the psychological and chemical rearrangement brought on by the alcohol.

  Other times we invaded Dad’s liquor cabinets: times when Billy, Craig, Jonathan, and I got sick, times when we pushed the envelope and smoked weed, which hit me like acid. I tripped on the sunlight streaming through a trellis fence. The pattern of shade became a three-dimensional revelation, a maze containing the very mystery of life, a key connecting all feelings to all forms.

  Back in Cleveland for the seventh grade, the California sunshine was replaced with the Ohio snow. My Ohio friends weren’t as cool as Billy. My Ohio extracurricular activities centered on sports. Breaking tackles. Wrestling and fishing. Getting up at six a.m. in the dark for swimming practice and going at it again after school.

  One day I came home from school and walked over to my friend Mark’s house. His parents, who worked late, had a killer liquor cabinet. Over ice, I filled a tumbler with Black Velvet, gin, and vodka, took it to the woods, sat against a tree, and drank it down. The moment was pivotal precisely because it was solitary. I got blasted all alone. The isolation did something to me—removed me from life and reality—that I experienced as strangely wonderful.

  The winter was long. I studied the calendar, watching the months slowly pass until fall gave way to winter, winter to spring, and spring to summertime back in California, where I learned to surf. I wasn’t a champ, but I could do it. While surfing I felt free from time, suspended in space, thoughtless and alive.

  HAVING TWO DADS AND NO DAD WAS CONFUSING. I wanted my biological dad but he seemed to want me only during the summers. He was the one listening to Hank Williams. My stepdad was telling me to do my homework. Meanwhile, the teachers told my stepdad that I was smart but hyper. I was diagnosed with attention deficit disorder. Psychologists suggested that I go on Ritalin. Mom wouldn’t allow it. But she would allow me to visit her ex-husband at the end of the school year. So I was off to California to visit Dad and Martha and Martha’s son, Craig, who was my age. Craig was a great guy and one of my closest friends, but I couldn’t help but be a little jealous of him. He had my dad’s attention all the time. Craig had become my replacement. Then two years later, Craig was dead.

  Me hugging Craig

  I REMEMBER SITTING IN MR. BURKE’S creative-writing class. Mr. Burke was my favorite teacher. The school year was almost over. I was still in shock. I still couldn’t process the news. Mr. Burke knew what happened back in California. He told me to write about it. He said writing would help. I remembered then—and still remember now—every moment, every conversation that took place between me and Craig. Our encounters were etched into my psyche.

  I wrote this:

  “Yesterday was rainy. The sky was crying rain. I was standing at the end of our driveway when I heard my mother’s voice. She said, ‘Hurry, Scott, there’s a call for you.’ I ran in the house. My heart was beating like crazy. I knew something was wrong. My father’s voice sounded different. His voice was crying pain.”

 
; From there, I wrote another ten pages, raw words flowing out of the ink like a bad, black dream.

  I turned in the paper and the teacher understood. That’s all I could write. I’d memorized my father’s words, but couldn’t repeat them: “Craig was riding a wheelie. You know how he’s the best wheelie rider around. He didn’t see the car coming. It hit him head-on. His brain is swelling. There’s a hole in his brain. They’re operating tonight.” I couldn’t repeat what my father said when he called the next morning: “Craig’s dead.” I couldn’t describe my memories of how, for week after week, month after month, year after year, Dad would take me and Craig dirt-bike riding.

  I couldn’t say anything when I visited Dad that summer. He was completely remote and removed from me. I couldn’t tell him—couldn’t tell anyone—about the feelings overwhelming me. I was angry, guilty, sad, resentful, longing to have my father back. I was covered with confusion.

  FATHERS AND SONS, SONS AND BROTHERS.

  Craig was my brother, and even though he wasn’t Dad’s blood son, I know that when Craig died, part of Dad died with him. That’s a part of my father I’ve never been able to reach. Much later in life when my brother Michael died, part of me disappeared and has never returned. It hurts to love.

  Leaping for the stars

  NO ONE TURNS YOU INTO A DRUG ADDICT OR DRUNK. The blame game is pointless and harmful. I don’t believe in pointing fingers. We do what we do and are responsible for our own actions. I don’t believe we are victimized by circumstance. There are, however, stories to be told. The story does not begin with us, but rather our parents, and our parents’ parents. The story goes back further than we know or can even imagine. Our stories are linked together because we share this space on the planet. We influence one another, whether we like it or not.

  I love my mother. Without doubt she’s been my biggest supporter—true, loving, and loyal. She’s an independent woman who has always held down well-paying professional jobs. She’s smart, understanding, and kind. She’s also identified herself as an alcoholic.

  When I was a preteen and still living in Cleveland, my stepfather took our family to a Cavaliers basketball game. We sat in the private box owned by TRW, his employer, that had leather seats and a fully stocked bar. After the game was over, Dave went into my mother’s purse to look for something. He discovered a bottle of vodka that Mom was stealing from the bar. That’s how she was busted.

  She had hit bottom—or enough of a bottom for her to feel remorse and respond honestly. She admitted her problem. In front of Dave, me, and Michael, she started crying. She said she was a loser. We cried even louder and said, “Mom, you’re not a loser. We love you.”

  At the time, I didn’t know the meaning of alcoholism. All I knew was that Mom was calling herself a horrible mother, and I knew that wasn’t true. I knew she cared for us deeply. I watched her join a twelve-step program that she followed diligently. She didn’t drink for some twenty-five years, and only started again after she learned that both her sons were heroin users. She slipped, as I have slipped, as I come from a long line of slippers. My uncle—Mom’s brother—was an alcoholic and coke addict. My grandparents—Mom’s mother and father—were hard-core alcoholics. Booze runs wild in my family.

  JERRY JEFF WALKER SANG A SONG called “Jaded Lover.” I heard it for the first time during one of those summers that I spent with my biological father, Kent. Dad could sing like Jerry Jeff; he could also sound like George Strait. His voice was resonant and deep and full of warmth. In a strange way, when I listened to the lyrics of “Jaded Lover”—“Well, it won’t be but a week or two … you’ll be out lovin’ someone new”—I thought of the troubled relationship between me and Dad.

  I felt like the jaded lover, the son he gave up, the son he could never quite embrace, the son who wanted the father more than the father wanted the son.

  MY EARLIEST SEXUAL EXPERIENCES WERE NOT JOYFUL. When I was twelve and still living in Ohio, some girls invited me to play truth or dare. We went to a barn with a haystack, the perfect setting. Little by little, we dared each other to undress. The Southern Comfort we were drinking out of a mason jar bolstered our courage. The game was going well when suddenly a big muscular guy, a high school senior, showed up and decided to fuck one of the girls in full view of all of us. The girl was willing but the party was ruined. None of us wanted to be there.

  Turned out that the same dude rode the bus with me every day to school. One day he invited me to his house. This is a memory I suppressed until only a few years ago when, in rehab, it came flooding back. Therapy will do that to you.

  The dude raped me.

  It was quick, not pleasant. I was too scared to tell anyone.

  “Tell anyone,” he warned, “and you’ll never have another friend in this school. I’ll ruin your fuckin’ reputation.”

  What do you do with that fear? That pain? How do memories get suppressed, and where do they go to hide?

  INNOCENCE VERSUS CORRUPTION.

  Hope versus despair.

  I had the hope that comes with being a kid with natural athletic ability. In baseball, I had only one pitch—a fastball—but hardly anyone could hit it. By the eighth grade, I was able to launch a football fifty yards. The summer before my freshman year, I practiced with the team every day and achieved my goal: I was tapped as starting quarterback.

  I was haunted by a dream that, decades later, still recurs:

  I’m in the huddle, call the play, get the snap, drop back to pass, survey the field, and see, thirty yards away, my wide receiver two steps ahead of his defender. I cock my arm, and, just when I’m ready to launch a rocket, the football slips out of my hand for no reason. A lineman recovers the fumble and the game is lost.

  What everyone wanted for me

  Despite some obvious fears, I was a good athlete. I had a certain wholesome outlook on life. Look at the posters in my room: the famous Farrah Fawcett bathing-suit pose, pictures of badass boxers like Marvelous Marvin Hagler, Sugar Ray Leonard, and Thomas “Hitman” Hearns. I was the All-American Ohio boy with a far-off dream of playing for Notre Dame, just as Dad Dave had done.

  I wanted the prestige and attention that came with being QB—not to mention the thrill that comes with being the field general. I thrived on competition.

  When it came to music, I also had a California-Ohio hip-square split. My first LPs were The Captain and Tennille’s Greatest Hits and Elton John’s Captain Fantastic and the Brown Dirt Cowboy. I was unapologetic in my passion for Tennille’s version of “Love Will Keep Us Together,” one of Neil Sedaka’s best songs. In Ohio, my mother developed a love for John Denver’s music that, according to her former husband’s new wife, Martha, was a sign of squareness. As a member in good standing of the square Cleveland burbs, I joined the school choir. Riding in the back of my parents’ Cadillac, I listened to Peter and the Wolf by Sergei Prokofiev, visualizing the animals depicted by the clarinet, oboe, horns, and bassoon.

  I got religion.

  I would wander over to Chagrin Falls Parks. The people who lived there, almost exclusively black, called it “The Park.” I liked that neighborhood and, in fact, in the sixth grade I had a crush on a beautiful black girl.

  In my preteen years, I had developed a deep and abiding love of God, inspired by the ministry of Father Plato and Father Trevisin. Dave brought us into the Catholic fold. My mother had been Episcopalian but felt comforted by the progressive view of Christ afforded by these two gentle priests. It wasn’t about fire and brimstone, guilt or punishment. It was about a compassionate and patient love that doesn’t judge, scorn, or scold. “Be not afraid. I go before you always. Come follow me and I will give you rest.” I related to the notion of a mystic, all-accepting, all-forgiving love. I wanted it.

  I became an altar boy. I wore the robes. During Mass, I brought the wine and the host to the priests. I lit the candles. Today, no matter where I am—tour bus, hotel room, studio, cabin in the woods—I light the candles. They calm me, center me, remind
me of a time when God sat in the center of my heart. Not that He’s ever disappeared. The candles bring Him back. I need to light them, every day and every night.

  I WAS BURNING BRIGHTLY IN CLEVELAND. As a freshman, my first game at quarterback was only weeks away. I couldn’t wait. I smelled triumph; I longed for glory. And then, just like that, Dave made the announcement: I wouldn’t be playing the game; I wouldn’t even be going to that school. I’d be leaving my best friend, Rich Remias, who came over practically every night to play Dungeons & Dragons. Like me, Rich came from a broken home; he understood me. It hurt to leave Rich, but there was nothing I could do. We were moving, and we were leaving immediately. We were winging our way back to California. I didn’t know what to think. Didn’t know what to feel. I was fourteen.

  Senior class picture. Ahh, such a nice kid. Too bad in three years I’d be a strung-out junkie.

  1982. HUNTINGTON BEACH, SURF CITY.

  Orange County, bastion of reactionary Republicanism but also stronghold of punk-rock counterculture.

  Our house was three blocks from the beach and directly across from Edison High, scene of my new life.

  First thing I did was hand a note to the football coach. It was a message from my old coach that said I was a starting QB. The new coach wasn’t overly impressed. I was five eleven and weighed 155 pounds. The Edison team had won several championships. I’d have to wait.

  By sophomore year I was one of the rotating quarterbacks. I also played defense. Going for an interception, I was speared from behind and knocked out of commission for a couple of weeks. I took that time to consider the options. I could keep playing, but without much of a chance to start at QB because, I always thought, my parents weren’t doling out money to the boosters’ club, or I could try something else. Rock-and-roll, like a siren song, was calling to me.