‘They lost their father years ago’: Scott Weiland’s ex-wife pens letter on behalf of his two children asking people not to glorify the tragedy
- Weiland's ex-wife Mary released letter with children Noah, 15, and Lucy, 13
- In it, they reveal they feel they 'lost their father years' before his death
- The singer passed away in his sleep while on a tour stop in Minnesota
- He had been dogged by substance abuse problems throughout his career
- Was lead singer for Stone Temple Pilots and supergroup Velvet Revolver
Scott Weiland's ex-wife has penned an open letter on behalf of the singer's two teenage children asking people not to glorify the tragedy of his death.
Mary Forsberg Weiland made the plea to Rolling Stone as she revealed that their children Noah, 15, and Lucy, 13, had 'lost their father years ago' and all they lost when he passed away on Thursday was 'hope'.
The former Stone Temple Pilots frontman - known for songs such as Plush and Vasoline - died in bed on his tour bus in Bloomington, Minnesota, on Thursday night after battling a career-long addiction to drink and drugs.
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Mary Forsberg Weiland released a letter, written with their children Noah, 15, and Lucy, 13, begging people not to glorify his death, adding they felt they lost their father 'years ago'. Pictured: The family in 2005
The former Stone Temple Pilots singer Scott Weiland (right) was found dead on his tour bus Monday night. Above, he is seen at Toronto's Adelaide Hall the night before his death
Mary, pictured in 2011, said people may not have realized the extent of the problem because she tried to keep it private for the sake of her children, who might read about it later on
'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,' Mary wrote in the letter, published in Rolling Stone.
The letter, written with her children, criticizes those who revel in watching their heroes crumble on stage, and goes on to ask people to remember the families left behind 'with tears in their eyes', while admitting she tried to gloss over how bad her former husband's problems were.
'You might ask, "How were we to know? We read that he loved spending time with his children and that he'd been drug-free for years!"
'In reality, what you didn't want to acknowledge was a paranoid man who couldn't remember his own lyrics and who was only photographed with his children a handful of times in 15 years of fatherhood.'
The letter details how the 48-year-old had stopped seeing his children a number of years ago, stating his children were not invited to his wedding when he remarried, and they couldn't remember the last time they spent Father's Day with him.
Mary reveals how she desperately tried to sober Weiland up, or counsel him through a paranoid moment, so he could attend his children's events.
But there were points where the problem was so bad, children's services said he was not allowed to look after Noah and Lucy alone, she wrote.
'This is the final step in our long goodbye to Scott,' they wrote. 'Even though I felt we had no other choice, maybe we never should have let him go,' the family wrote.
'Or maybe these last few years of separation were his parting gift to us – the only way he could think to soften what he knew would one day crush us deep into our souls.'
''This is the final step in our long goodbye to Scott,' the letter stated. Pictured: Weiland on stage in 2003
The family, pictured in 2005, said they felt they had 'no choice' but to let him go in recent years
First responders speaking to police dispatchers said around 9pm that the rockstar died of cardiac arrest, while a fellow rock star said that he had been recently been using crack cocaine.
However, his third wife, photographer Jamie Wachtel Weiland, told TMZ that her husband hadn't done drugs in years and that the band members had a pact not to do drugs.
The Stone Temple Pilots became one of the most commercially successful bands to come out of the early 1990s grunge rock movement.
The band's 1992 debut album, Core, was an insta-hit and sold eight million units.
The hit single Plush won the Grammy for best hard rock performance.
The band's follow-up was a white-hot success, too: 1994's Purple hit the No. 1 spot on the Billboard pop charts, sold six million copies and launched the hits Interstate Love Song and Vasoline.
The Bloomington Police Department said Weiland's cause of death will be released by the Hennepin County Medical Examiner's Office at a later time and further information wasn't available.
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