Former Velvet Revolver guitarist Dave Kushner discussed Scott Weiland struggling with his addiction in a new Fueled By Death Cast interview.
Dude, it’s so stressful watching that, like when Slash is sitting there on the phone and he’s like playing with that little plastic candy wrapper, and he’s like, “Oh, okay. So he’s got the flu? Oh.” And which is like every junkie story when they’re sick, because when you’re at that point, you get flu-like symptoms. So it’s like you just say you have the flu, and he was like missing and we’re like, “Really? Are we going to do this? It was fucking stressful. And then we did it, and he was fucked up, and he got arrested like two weeks into it. He went to jail because he got pulled over with drugs on him.
And then the next three songs he wrote were Slither, the fucking … I don’t know the ballad song, I can’t remember. Fall to Pieces and Big Machine. Those were the next three demos. So, we were like, “What the fuck? This is it. We’re doing this.” Scott knew me and knew that I wasn’t drinking and stuff, so we talked about that and he stayed at my apartment because he wasn’t … I don’t know where he was living, but it’s like … I’m like, “Really dude? All these guys got houses, you want to stay in my fucking apartment?”
So we started there, and we just started … and then Duff and I tried to help them as much as we could and then we were off and running and it was like a fucking episode of Behind the Music for the whole time we were ready to launch. It was like, I remember times where he was in rehab and was leaving. I was going to a tasting at a caterer for my wedding, and my manager called and she’s like, “You have to go get Scott. He’s leaving rehab.” And I’m like, “What?” And I’m like, “Fuck me.”
I’m telling my wife and my wife, my fiance, and she’s like, “Well, you got to go. What are you going to do? It’s your band.” Okay, let’s go. So she drops me off and I’m sitting there trying to talk to them. There was a lot of that kind of stuff. There was a lot of craziness and people falling off the wagon. But then again, that was the stressful part, a lot of Scott not showing up to shows and playing at Stubb’s and … where is it? It’s somewhere in Texas, I forget. We were like 20 minutes late and we had no clue where he was. And he had gone to score something. The tour manager called him and he actually answered his phone and he’s like, “Oh. Hey Pete.” “Dude, where the fuck are you?”
He’s like, “I’m not really sure,” and he’s just like, “Dude, look around you. What buildings do you see?” He’s putting him on speaker asking the security guard that’s local, “Where is he, dude?” And he’s like, “Oh, he’s like 34th and whatever street.” And so he’s like, “All right. Stay there and we’re going to come get you.” His fucking tooth had fallen out and he was singing with …It was fucking crazy. So there was a lot of that. But there was a lot of amazing stuff too, like we won a Grammy, and we did this thing on the Grammy’s where we played with … we were the bad and it was a song with like Brian Wilson and Stevie Wonder and Bono and Steven Tyler.
