About a week ago, we and pretty much everyone else published the story of how current Art Of Anarchy vocalist Scott Stapp talked about being inspired to stay clean by the now deceased Scott Weiland. Our headline was "Scott Stapp Says Scott Weiland Visited Him From Beyond The Grave, Told Him To Stay Clean," which was a little tongue-in-cheek humor and to some degree very true to what Stapp actually said.
To quote Stapp…
“All of a sudden, it was almost like Weiland speaking to me from the grave, man. It was a very weird feeling that I felt. I remember being in the bathroom, looking in the mirror, on the bus, and really feeling like I could hear or feel him saying, 'Dude, this could have been you. And this could be you if you continue that path. Don’t do what I did. Don’t go down that road.' And, literally, I’m having this moment.”
So yeah, not exactly a ghostly visitation, but the inspiration was there. Now Stapp clarified his statement with Alternative Nation, and he's not happy about the way the media took his quote.
“Scott Weiland didn’t literally speak to me. What I was referring to there was how being on this tour bus that he died in created an epiphany within me. The way I carried on my life at certain times could have put me in that same position. In no way, shape or form, as you interpreted, did Scott Weiland speak to me. Those were the writer’s words, not mine.
The writer for that article was, in my opinion, way out of line, and wrote an article just to assassinate me personally. He took any window of opportunity to take anything I said out of context.”
To be fair, the guy from GQ did preface the story by saying "Well then, let’s address that. I promised you a ghost story and this one starts with Stapp’s supergroup." So maybe a little misleading, but I don't think anyone thought Scott Weiland's ghost literally appeared before Stapp in the bathroom and spoke to him. Stapp's comments made it very clear that he just felt inspired to stay clean, which nobody is going to argue is a bad thing or silly at all, by Weiland's issues.
