"I am, I am, I said, I'm not myself / But I'm not dead, and I'm not for sale," sang Scott Weiland in Trippin' on a Hole in a Paper Heart. With those lyrics in mind, using Not Dead & Not for Sale as the title of a memoir may seem not so much striking as somewhat problematic.
Before turning to the book itself, however, let me begin with a small detour into literary theory (a very small one, I promise). Within autobiography studies, there is a concept known as the autobiographical pact. In simple terms, when a book bears the author's name on its cover and presents a first-person narrative, readers assume that the author, narrator, and protagonist are one and the same person. We therefore accept that the story is being told by the author about their own life and from their own perspective. If we enter into such a pact with Weiland, the title reads almost as a declaration of authenticity. The fact that the memoir was shaped and written with the help of someone else complicates that situation somewhat.
Let us turn, however, to the specifics. In December 2015, just days after Weiland's death, David Ritz reflected on the process of gathering material for the book in an article published in Billboard (December 8, 2015). The two men became friends and participated together in a Twelve-Step program. Ritz and Weiland spent two weeks at Weiland's cabin on Lake Chelan, Washington, although many years passed between the initial decision to collaborate in 2005 and the eventual publication of the memoir.
What Ritz learned about Weiland's life during those conversations by the lake can be found in the pages of the book. What readers will not find there, however, is the impression Weiland himself made on the journalist. According to Ritz, he was a calm, well-read man with a deep appreciation for art, someone who actively sought reconciliation with every person with whom he had been at odds.
That promise is already present in the book's opening pages. In the foreword, Weiland writes:
I've felt deflated and elated to dig through the maze that is the mind and soul. Mining through the cobwebs to explore the why's and why not's. The human heart filled with sorrows and gold inspired me to dig further through this marathon or labyrinth in order to get the answers, find truth, and forgive injustices endured in order to move forward...
The passage invokes a familiar autobiographical rhetoric. The memoir is presented as a journey inward, an attempt to navigate the labyrinth of memory and selfhood in search of truth, understanding, and reconciliation. Weiland frames the act of writing not merely as recollection but as a process of self-examination and self-discovery. Significantly, the stated goal is not simply to recount events but to "find truth" and come to terms with past injustices. The language of introspection, forgiveness, and emotional reckoning reinforces the autobiographical pact established at the outset, encouraging readers to approach the narrative as a sincere account of lived experience.
The memoir is dedicated to Weiland's children, Noah and Lucy. It also includes numerous black-and-white photographs drawn from the singer's personal archive, among them images dating back to his earliest childhood. From a publishing standpoint, the volume is an attractive production and one that is likely to satisfy both collectors and longtime fans of Scott Weiland and Stone Temple Pilots.
What, then, can readers expect to find within its pages? What insights does the memoir offer into the life of one of rock music's most talented and controversial figures?
Stone Temple Pilots did not come from Seattle but from Southern California. One of the most persistent criticisms directed at the band concerned the perceived similarity of their music to that of Pearl Jam, particularly in relation to Weiland's vocal style. In addition, the appearance of Sex Type Thing on the band's debut album, coupled with its controversial music video, led some critics to accuse Weiland of misogyny.
In later years, Weiland repeatedly performed in dresses as a way of emphasizing that both the song and its message had been misunderstood. The issue, as he saw it, was one of interpretation rather than intent.
In 1994, Stone Temple Pilots released Purple, an album that simultaneously resembled and departed from the sound associated with Seattle. The distinction is difficult to capture precisely. While the record retained certain musical elements commonly linked to grunge, it lacked much of the darkness that was increasingly enveloping the Seattle scene. This is hardly surprising. Unlike many of their contemporaries from the Pacific Northwest, the members of Stone Temple Pilots had not been shaped by the same local histories and traumas. Yet there is something particularly tragic in the fact that many of those shadows would eventually find them anyway.
Weiland addressed the controversy surrounding Sex Type Thing directly:
Because the song was written in the voice of a deranged character, there were critics who presumed I was that character. That's like saying that there's no difference between a first-person character created by a writer and the writer himself. The assumption is ridiculous. I wanted to point out the craziness of that criticism, so before getting out onstage and performing 'Sex Type Thing,' I smeared lipstick across my mouth and slipped on a dress (p. 81).
His response is particularly striking when viewed through the lens of autobiography and authorship. In defending the song, Weiland invokes a distinction that literary scholars would immediately recognize: the difference between the author and the speaking voice of a text. Long before publishing his memoir, he was already challenging the assumption that a first-person voice should automatically be equated with the person who created it.
Weiland located the beginning of his most serious troubles in 1995, when he was arrested for drug possession and Stone Temple Pilots experienced its first breakup. In reality, however, his struggles had begun much earlier. In April 1994, he entered a rehabilitation facility in Pasadena, although he had originally been scheduled to attend the Exodus Recovery Center in Marina del Rey, where Kurt Cobain and Gibby Haynes of Butthole Surfers were undergoing treatment at the same time.
Two days after Weiland arrived at rehab, he learned that Cobain had left the facility. Four days later, Cobain was dead.
The timing could hardly have been more paradoxical. Stone Temple Pilots was on the verge of becoming one of the biggest rock bands in America. Unlike the band's debut album Core, Purple was embraced not only by audiences but also by critics. At the same time, Weiland had married Jannina Casteneda and was hoping for a stable and peaceful life (pp. 69, 106). Yet beneath the surface of professional success and personal aspirations, the problems that would come to define much of his public life were already taking shape.
Weiland had quite a lot to say to Ritz about the period during which Purple was written and promoted. Above all, he looked back on the album far more fondly than on the band's debut. In his view, Purple was a more honest and autobiographical record. The memoir repeatedly reveals Weiland's ambivalent relationship with autobiographical truth. This claim is somewhat difficult to reconcile with his earlier objections to being identified with the voices and characters inhabiting his songs. Then again, people are entitled to change their minds, although throughout the memoir there are moments when Weiland appears to embrace whichever version of events best supports the point he wishes to make at a given moment.
According to his account, many of the songs on Purple drew directly from his personal experiences. Vasoline, for instance, is about being stuck in the same situation over and over again. It's about me becoming a junkie. It's about lying to Jannina and lying to the band about my heroin addiction (p. 111).
The same themes surface in songs such as Unglued and Pretty Penny. Interstate Love Song, meanwhile, emerged from the telephone conversations Weiland had with his then-wife, conversations marked by repeated lies, guilt, and longing, the latter finding expression in songs such as Still Remains.
When Ritz asked why the album was titled Purple, Weiland reportedly replied, "Because it sounds purple," before adding that it was "a stupid question" (p. 112). What exactly a purple sound might be is difficult to determine. The color purple is often associated with luxury, royalty, or grandeur, whereas the emotional landscape described throughout the memoir is anything but triumphant. Perhaps the answer was intentionally evasive. Or perhaps, as is often the case with artists discussing their creative process, Weiland simply preferred intuition to explanation. If addiction forms the memoir's central narrative, Mary's presence becomes one of its emotional anchors.
One of the central threads running through Weiland's account of his private life is his love for Mary Forsberg, the mother of his children. He fell in love with the model while still married to Jannina, a circumstance that rendered both relationships destructive from the very beginning. Weiland describes the period in characteristically concise terms:
The more I got, the more I lost. The more I lost, the more I wanted. The more I wanted, the more I wasted (p. 121). The observation extends beyond romantic relationships. It applies equally to fame, wealth, and addiction, all of which are presented in the memoir as manifestations of the same destructive cycle of desire and loss. The more success Weiland achieved, the less capable he seemed of finding satisfaction in it.
The marriage eventually collapsed, and the divorce proved financially devastating. Throughout these chapters, however, Weiland's attention is directed not only toward the damage inflicted upon his family but also toward the consequences of his actions for Stone Temple Pilots. He repeatedly acknowledges that his addiction and increasingly erratic behavior were harming his bandmates, people whose careers and personal lives had become inseparable from his own. One of the more striking features of the memoir is the extent to which guilt permeates its narrative. Weiland rarely presents himself as an innocent victim of circumstances; instead, he repeatedly returns to the ways in which his choices affected those closest to him.
Along the way, Weiland also reflects on his solo projects and collaborations with other musicians. Yet regardless of the setting or the people involved, addiction remains the memoir's defining theme. Particularly compelling are the passages in which he discusses not only his own substance abuse but also the dynamics of codependency that shaped his relationship with Mary. Weiland writes candidly about her struggles with addiction and mental health, portraying a relationship in which both partners were attempting to navigate their personal crises while simultaneously becoming entangled in each other's.
A succession of rehabilitation programs was meant to keep Weiland from reaching what he feared most: prison. Ultimately, however, even that outcome proved unavoidable. Paradoxically, his recollections of incarceration are less traumatic than one might expect. At times, prison appears in the memoir almost as a place of temporary stability, a structured environment in which some of the chaos of his life was briefly suspended.
The birth of his children seemed, for a moment, to offer the possibility of lasting change. Yet sobriety remained fragile, and relapses continued to punctuate his life. Throughout these struggles, several friendships played an important role, particularly those with Matt Sorum and Duff McKagan. The latter, in particular, emerges as a key figure in what was perhaps Weiland's most determined attempt to overcome addiction.
The later chapters devoted to Velvet Revolver are equally rich in conflict, tension, and interpersonal drama. That said, revealing too much would deprive future readers of some of the memoir's most engaging moments, so I will leave those discoveries to them.
Before closing, however, I would like to leave you with one final passage. For a moment, try to set aside everything that happened after the publication of this memoir and remain instead with its hopeful conclusion:
I want to leave a footprint of someone passionately interested in expressing his heart and soul. I'm still making that footprint (p. 238).
Perhaps that is ultimately the legacy Weiland hoped to preserve. Not the headlines, the arrests, the relapses, or the public controversies, but the trace of a person who remained deeply committed to expressing himself through art. Whatever one makes of the memoir's omissions, contradictions, or self-mythologizing tendencies, the sincerity of that aspiration is difficult to dismiss.
I know it is true.
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