Billy Corgan: Scott Weiland Was a ‘Voice of Our Generation’
Tributes continue to pour in for Scott Weiland after the former Stone Temple Pilots singer passed away at 48 Thursday night. Smashing Pumpkins‘ Billy Corgan, Weiland’s alternative rock peer since the early Nineties, wrote a touching tribute where he called Weiland one of the defining voices of his era. “If you asked me who I truly believed were the great voices of our generation, I’d say it were he, Layne [Staley], and Kurt [Cobain],” Corgan wrote of the Stone Temple Pilots singer on the Pumpkins’ official site. “So it goes beyond tragedy to say it is we who lost them, and not the other way round.”
In his eulogy, Corgan admits that he – like many music critics at the time – was initially “so critical” of Stone Temple Pilots when the band first “appeared on the scene like some crazy, man-fueled rocket.” “And not only was the knight up front freshly handsome to a fault, but he could sing too,” Corgan wrote. While Core was accused of being derivative of Pearl Jam, by 1994’s Purple, Stone Temple Pilots had locked onto their own unique sound.
By 1996’s Tiny Music… Songs From the Vatican Gift Shop, Corgan was a fan. “It was STP’s 3rd album that had got me hooked, a wizardly mix of glam and post-punk, and I confessed to Scott, as well as the band many times, how wrong I’d been in assessing their native brilliance,” Corgan wrote. “And like Bowie can and does, it was Scott’s phrasing that pushed his music into a unique, and hard to pin down, aesthetic sonicsphere.”
Corgan also shared an anecdote about befriending Weiland and trying to make the singer laugh while going to “dumb parties” in Hollywood. While not mentioned by Corgan, the Smashing Pumpkins and Stone Temple Pilots are forever linked in song, as both bands are named in the sneering final verse of Pavement’s “Range Life.”
“May I also offer my humble condolences to his family, friends, and band mates; who have, and are, suffering this great loss. For when anyone as vaunted leaves far too soon, we mourn all that might have been,” the Smashing Pumpkins singer added. “As any fan, I find myself reflecting on what I do have in my own treasure chest: in scarce moments where Scott and I spoke as contemporaries or competitors, and got to know each as people other past the footlights and shadows we were so busy casting to the world.”