Not Dead & Not for Sale

Book excerpt: The instant New York Times bestseller: the lead singer of the Stone Temple Pilots and Velvet Revolver delivers an exhilarating memoir of scaling the pinnacle of rock stardom, plunging into the chasm of addiction and incarceration, and then clawing his way back to the top again and again. In the early 1990s, Stone Temple Pilots—not U2, not Nirvana, not Pearl Jam—was the hottest band in the world. STP toppled such megabands as Aerosmith and Guns N’ Roses on MTV and the Billboard charts. Lead singer Scott Weiland became an iconic front man in the tradition of Mick Jagger, David Bowie, and Robert Plant. Then, when STP imploded, it was Weiland who emerged as the emblem of rock star excess, with his well-publicized drug busts and trips to rehab. Weiland has since made a series of stunning comebacks, fronting the supergroup Velvet Revolver, releasing solo work, and reuniting with Stone Temple Pilots. He has prevailed as a loving, dedicated father, as well as a business-savvy artist whose well of creativity is far from empty. Not Dead & Not for Sale is a hard rock memoir to be reckoned with—a passionate, insightful, and at times humorous book that reads with extraordinary narrative force.