The death of Scott Weiland last December hit many hard, including some of his Wildabouts bandmates. Guitarist Nick Maybury, who had just joined the group earlier in 2015 after the death of guitarist Jeremy Brown, reveals that while his time with Weiland was brief, he felt he got to the know the rocker and was left numb when the news of Weiland’s death was delivered.
Speaking with the No Guitar Is Safe podcast for Guitar Player (as transcribed by Alternative Nation and heard in the player below), Maybury recalled that on the day of the singer’s passing, Weiland wanted to stay on the bus while the rest of the band and crew went off to visit the Mall of America. The guitarist was catching an Uber ride back to get a bite to eat when he arrived and saw police cars surrounding the tour bus. Soon after, he got a text message from the tour manager telling everyone to get back to the bus and upon arrival he learned from the production manager that Weiland had died.
“From then on, I was just blank. Numbness, shock, trauma, tears, emotions, the whole thing. Having to talk to the cops, being in an emotional state, was just rough,” says Maybury, who added, “I never saw Scott do any drugs. It’s obvious now, we all know that he was. He obviously wasn’t doing it in front of everyone. I never saw him doing any drugs, so I figured, okay, as long as he can do the gig and keep it together, I guess it’s not a problem. I’d see him drinking a lot, we all knew he was drinking, and on the prescription stuff too. We knew that was a terrible mix to start with already.”
Maybury reveals in the interview that he joined the band as a guy who was sober and that he initially had a rough time fitting in. “By the time we had gotten back from that first tour, that first tour was exciting, but rough at the same time. It was rough for them having to adjust to a new guy, the new dynamic, and missing the co-writer who wrote the stuff, their buddy, and I wasn’t drinking, or doing anything like that,” says the guitarist.
At one point, Maybury shared his concerns for Weiland with the singer. “It was one of those things he had that he had been dealing with for years. It was hard to take at first, because they were all really hurt by Jeremy passing away and stuff, and that stuff will start happening if you don’t look after yourself. I would have thought that would have been some kind of revelation to look after yourself more or something,” says Maybury. “I had a chat with him about it, I did bring it up with him. [It was] before we went on stage at Carolina Rebellion, I had a deep heart to heart, serious conversation with Scott Weiland, about his life and his career, and where he was heading, on the bus. I think just the fact that we had a chance to connect on a deeper level, put us closer together. He goes, ‘I’ve had a career for 20 years, and I don’t think this is really going to change it.’ I was like, ‘Okay.'”
“I was that concerned about him, and we were on that level,” continued Maybury. “I would have thought, ‘Okay f–k, am I going home? Did I just get myself fired just saying all this s–t?’ It wasn’t like that at all, Scott was so compassionate. He would listen, he might not say anything, but I knew he would take things [and listen]. He was the kind of guy, he would want you to feel better, he wanted you to feel comfortable. He made me feel like I was his family in the end. We came a long way in such a short amount of time.”
The guitarist says that he wanted to keep doing the gig and he went to AA meetings to figure out how to better deal with Scott’s drinking. “It made me realize to be more compassionate, and less judgmental towards people with their disease. It’s a disease, it’s such a deep thing. I figured out a way how to deal with it. He just wasn’t well man, he should have been recovering, and getting healthy.”
At the time of his passing, Maybury revealed that Weiland and the Wildabouts were discussing doing another record and that the singer had talked about the possibility of getting back together with Stone Temple Pilots after another album cycle had passed.
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