Scott Weiland's ex, Mary Forsberg, publishes essay 'Don't Glorify This Tragedy' in Rolling Stone
As fans and family mourn the sudden death of troubled rocker Scott Weiland, his ex-wife has published a candid essay offering a reality check about his fractured relationship with his children.
The Stone Temple Pilots and Velvet Revolver vocalist died Dec. 3 in his sleep while on tour with his current band The Wildabouts, according to a statement from his representatives.
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Though many of the obituaries and tributes noted his much-publicized struggles with drug addiction, Mary Forsberg Weiland's essay — titled "Don't Glorify This Tragedy" and published Monday by Rolling Stone magazine — shares some of the personal struggles she and the couple's two children suffered.
"We don't want to downplay Scott's amazing talent, presence or his ability to light up any stage with brilliant electricity … But at some point, someone needs to step up and point out that yes, this will happen again — because as a society we almost encourage it," Forsberg Weiland, the rocker's second wife, wrote in the missive.
The essay is billed as being by the former model as well as the pair's now teenaged children Noah, 15, and Lucy, 13.
"We read awful show reviews, watch videos of artists falling down, unable to recall their lyrics streaming on a teleprompter just a few feet away. And then we click 'add to cart' because what actually belongs in a hospital is now considered art."
Stormy relationship
As a model on the rise, Forsberg Weiland met Weiland when he was a struggling musician working as a driver. They later reconnected and married in 2000.
The pair had a tumultuous, headline-generating relationship over the years that included heroin, brawls, trashed luxury hotel suites, arrests and a 2007 incident where she infamously set fire to $80,000 of the singer's clothes in the driveway of their California home. These were often punctuated by repeated stints in rehab.
She detailed her difficult childhood, mental health battles and her stormy relationship with Weiland in the well-received book Fall to Pieces: A Memoir of Drugs, Rock 'n' Roll, and Mental Illness in 2009, about two years after their marriage ended.
"Even after Scott and I split up, I spent countless hours trying to calm his paranoid fits, pushing him into the shower and filling him with coffee, just so that I could drop him into the audience at Noah's talent show, or Lucy's musical. Those short encounters were my attempts at giving the kids a feeling of normalcy with their dad. But anything longer would often turn into something scary and uncomfortable for them," she wrote in Rolling Stone.
"I had often encouraged him to date a 'normal' girl, a woman who was also a mother, someone who had the energy that I no longer had to love him. Instead, when he remarried, the children were replaced. They were not invited to his wedding; child support checks often never arrived. Our once sweet Catholic boy refused to watch the kids participate in Christmas Eve plays because he was now an atheist. They have never set foot into his house, and they can't remember the last time they saw him on a Father's Day."
The essay urges Weiland's fans to remember and engage with children of absentee parents and not to simply sweep his death aside as yet another tragedy chalked up to the "demons" of a rock and roll lifestyle.
"I don't share this with you to cast judgment, I do so because you most likely know at least one child in the same shoes. If you do, please acknowledge them and their experience.
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"Noah and Lucy never sought perfection from their dad. They just kept hoping for a little effort...Our hope for Scott has died, but there is still hope for others. Let's choose to make this the first time we don't glorify this tragedy with talk of rock and roll and the demons that, by the way, don't have to come with it."
