TRAGI-COMIC: Velvet Revolver Splits As STP Reunites

BEEN A LONG TIME SINCE I COCK N’ ROLLED: Velvet Revolver, Camden, Aug. 2007
[pictures by JONATHAN VALANIA/CLICK FOR SLIDE SHOW]

LOS ANGELES (Reuters) – Four founding members of the rock band Velvet Revolver said Tuesday they were splitting with the group’s troubled singer, Scott Weiland, citing his “increasingly erratic” behavior. The announcement came in a terse statement from the group’s management company as Weiland, 40, and his recently reunited original band, Stone Temple Pilots, were set next week to announce plans for a highly anticipated summer tour.The Pilots, also known by their acronym, STP, already have confirmed a handful of upcoming dates, beginning with the Rock on the Range festival in Columbus, Ohio, on May 17-18.

PREVIOUSLY: Velvet Revolver is where rock stars go to die. It’s not quite heaven, and it’s not quite hell, but it will do. Perched halfway between artistic rehab and commercial purgatory, and hard rock in a hard place, Velvet Revolver is where empty-nester rockers — people like Stone Temple Pilots frontman Scott Weiland and pretty much everyone in Guns N Roses not named Axl Rose — go to detox from a life of chemical sin and await the Second Coming of rock writ large, or at least lucrative.