Scott Weiland’s estranged family asks ‘Don’t glorify this tragedy’

“December 3rd, 2015 is not the day Scott Weiland died,” writes Mary Forsberg Weiland, the mother and ex-wife of the late rocker’s children Noah, 15, and Lucy, 13, in an open letter that she penned with the kids on RollingStone.com. “But the truth is, like so many other kids, they lost their father years ago.”
The 48-year-old Stone Temple Pilots singer died in his sleep during a tour stop in Bloomington, Minn. last week. An official cause of death hasn’t been released yet, but Weiland apparently suffered a cardiac arrest, and his bandmate Tommy Black was reportedly busted for cocaine possession.
Mary Weiland, who split from Scott in 2007, explains that Tuesday’s tell-all post is intended to remind the public that Weiland’s personal demons shouldn’t be celebrated alongside his musical legacy.
SCOTT WEILAND DEAD AT 48, GAVE STONE TEMPLE PIOLOTS SOUL
“Even after Scott and I split up, I spent countless hours trying to calm his paranoid fits, pushing him into the shower and filling him with coffee, just so that I could drop him into the audience at Noah's talent show, or Lucy's musical,” she writes.
“But at some point, someone needs to step up and point out that yes, this will happen again – because as a society we almost encourage it. We read awful show reviews, watch videos of artists falling down, unable to recall their lyrics streaming on a teleprompter just a few feet away. And then we click ‘add to cart’ because what actually belongs in a hospital is now considered art.”
Of course, Mary was no stranger to Weiland’s rock ’n’ roll lifestyle. The model’s 2009 memoir “Fall to Pieces” details the hard-partying couple’s joint heroin and crack abuse throughout their marriage, as well as her own hospitalization after she torched $80,000 worth of Weiland’s clothes in front of their California home after a fight. They divorced in 2007.
“Spending so many years immersed in Scott’s multiple illnesses led to my own depression; at one point, I was misdiagnosed as bipolar,” she writes. “I feared the same would happen to the children. There were times that Child Protective Services did not allow him to to be alone with them.”
She claims that Weiland distanced himself from his kids after he married photographer Jamie Wachtel in 2013.
“They were not invited to his wedding; child support checks often never arrived,” she says. “They have never set foot into his house, and they can't remember the last time they saw him on a Father's Day.”
Yet she reveals that Weiland has still reached out to his ex at his lowest points. “I could hear his sadness and confusion when he'd call me late into the night, often crying about his inability to separate himself from negative people and bad choices,” she writes.
She pleads for readers to think of the other children estranged from their parents, and to show them love and support.
“Our hope for Scott has died, but there is still hope for others. Let’s choose to make this the first time we don't glorify this tragedy with talk of rock and roll and the demons that, by the way, don't have to come with it,” she writes. “Skip the depressing T-shirt with 1967-2015 on it – use the money to take a kid to a ballgame or out for ice cream.”