David Bowie tried to reach out to Stone Temple Pilots frontman Scott Weiland shortly before they both died.
Bowie approached MTV host Matt Pinfield in 2015 to pass on a message for the troubled singer to get in touch. Pinfield describes the interaction in his book All These Things That I’ve Done: My Insane, Improbable Rock Life.
Weiland was found dead from a drug overdose on his tour bus in Minnesota in December 2015, less than a month later, David Bowie died in January 2016.
“The last time I saw David, at the end of our conversation he pulled me aside and said, ‘I know you’re friends with Scott Weiland,” said Pinfield. “‘Please let him know that I’m here to talk if he needs someone.’
Weiland was never shy about his appreciation for Bowie, the Stone Temple Pilots regularly covered the Thin Duke’s track ‘Andy Warhol’. A few days before his death, he confided to Rolling Stone that Bowie would be his dream collaborator, saying: “He’s my biggest influence musically, vocally and fashion-wise”.
Watch Weiland perform ‘The Jean Genie’ with The Wildabouts below:
Pinfield continued: “I think he spotted in Scott a kindred soul. Not only musically – you can hear the Bowie influence so powerfully on STP songs like ‘And So I Know’ on their third album, and ‘Kitchenware & Candybars’ on Purple – but in terms of the demons he was fighting.
“So backstage at one of his solo shows I passed along that offer to Scott, and he said, ‘I’d love to talk to him.’ That was my final encounter with Scott. By the start of 2016, both he and Bowie were gone.”