ROCKER HEART ATTACK
Weiland pal held on drugs
ROCK STAR Scott Weiland wasn’t breathing and appeared to have suffered from cardiac arrest Thursday when he was found unresponsive on his tour bus, according to first responders.
Police said they found cocaine in the singer’s bedroom and elsewhere on the bus and later arrested the 48-year-old frontman’s bandmate.
An emergency dispatch call describes the star having gone into cardiac arrest.
A recording of the exchange between Minnesota’s Bloomington Police Department and the Hennepin County Sheriff’s Department was obtained by TMZ.
The band’s bassist, Tommy Black, was arrested and charged with felony drug possession, according to the site.
Officials have not confirmed Weiland’s cause of death.
The singer “passed away in his sleep while on a tour stop in Bloomington, Minn., with his band The Wildabouts,” according to a posting on his Facebook page Friday morning.
Weiland, best known as the flamboyant frontman for Stone Temple Pilots and Velvet Revolver, openly struggled with drug addiction throughout his three-decade career.
“I’m a tenacious drug addict,” he wrote in his 2011 memoir, “Not Dead & Not for Sale,” “I give it up and I don’t give it up. I put it down and I pick it up. But I’m also a tenacious recoverer. I never quit trying to quit. That counts for something.”
The father of two had been scheduled to perform with his latest band, The Wildabouts, at a concert at the Medina Entertainment Center in Hamel, Minn., later Thursday. The band’s guitar player, Jeremy Brown, died of a drug overdose in March, according to a report from the Los Angeles Coroner’s Office.
Weiland broke into the rock scene in 1992 with Stone Temple Pilots and their multi-platinum debut album, “Core.” The eccentric singer became known as much for his animated stage presence as for his heartfelt, growling vocals.
Weiland’s former Stone Temple Pilots bandmates — Eric Kretz and brothers Dean and Robert DeLeo — released a statement Friday thanking the singer, “for sharing your life with us.”
“Together we crafted a legacy of music that has given so many people happiness and great memories. The memories are many, and they run deep for us,” the statement read. “We know amidst the good and the bad you struggled, time and time again. It’s what made you who you were. With deep sorrow for you and your family, we are saddened to see you go. All of our love and respect. We will miss you brother.”