This is the latest post for an ongoing media project — SoCal Sports History 101: The Prime Numbers from 00 to 99 that Uniformly, Uniquely and Unapologetically Reveal The Narrative of Our Region’s Athletic Heritage. Pick a number and highlight an athlete — person, place or thing — most obviously connected to it by fame and fortune, someone who isn’t so obvious, and then take a deeper dive into the most interesting story tied to it. It’s a combination of star power, achievement, longevity, notoriety, and, above all, what makes that athlete so Southern California. Quirkiness and notoriety factor in. And it should open itself to more discussion and debate — which is what sports is best at doing.
The most obvious choices for No. 3:
= Carson Palmer: USC football
= Keyshawn Johnson: USC football
= Willie Davis: Los Angeles Dodgers
= Anthony Davis: Los Angeles Lakers
= Candace Parker: Los Angeles Sparks
= Chris Paul: Los Angeles Clippers
The not-so-obvious choices for No. 3:
= Josh Rosen: UCLA football
= Glenn Burke: Los Angeles Dodgers
= Steve Sax: Los Angeles Dodgers
= Rick Reichardt: Los Angeles/California Angels
= Frank Corral: UCLA, Los Angeles Rams kicker
The most interesting story for No. 3:
Scott Weiland: Edison High of Huntington Beach football quarterback (1982 to 1985)
Southern California map pinpoints:
Huntington Beach, Costa Mesa, Long Beach, Hollywood
= Reference books on the subject:
“Not Dead & Not For Sale: The Earthling Papers – A Memoir,” by Scott Weiland, with David Ritz, 2011
The photo documents perhaps the only tangle evidence that has been circulated that the flamboyantly driving force behind the Stone Temple Pilots, Scott Weiland, played football — an aspiring quarterback trying to make his mark at the esteemed Edison High School in Huntington Beach.
He kind of looked like a young Sean Salisbury — ready, willing and able to commandeer a team to success and fame. The hairstyle of the moment was helmet friendly.
Yet, Weiland would wander from that pursuit. Whether it was launching STP, Velvet Revolver and Art of Anarchy, fired or otherwise bored with each venture, he wasn’t tracking to become the famous college football player he once imagined he could be.
High school non-confidential: When your teen years of self discovery, hatching experiments, raging hormones and social standing leads into subsets of friends, new friends, and former friends, swallowed up by cliche cliques, we’re not often sure what’s going to spit is out in the end. We ride it out.
At a peak of his music fame in 2007, Weiland was asked in fan Q&A about his high school activities.
“What kind of self-respecting outcast were you?” he was asked.
He explained:
“One with a lot of cojones. I was never a jock, but I was an athlete, and I was good. (Edison High) had just won multiple state football titles; it was a hardcore football school. I had aspirations of going to Notre Dame, so I played quarterback. But also I was into music: I sang in the school choir; and the two worlds didn’t really hold hands skipping down the hallways. I got a lot of flak from the coach and the guys on the team. Then I formed a rock & roll band with my best friend, and at the start of the senior year, I decided that I was into music more.”
While there is this one football photo, there exists thousands more snapshots, videos and websites to celebrate Weiland’s music — nominated for six Grammys, winning two for Best Hard Rock Performance, selling 50 millions records and called a “voice of our generation” by Smashing Pumpkins’ Billy Corrigan. Some critics might have labeled his bands as “a shameless clone of such grunge leaders as Pearl Jam, Nirvana and Soundgarden.” But on an individual basis, Weiland can see he was once called “one of the towering figures in the history of rock” by Rolling Stone magazine.
Audiences and fans were captivated by a chaotic stage presence. He was a champion chameleon, amplified with a megaphone. He navigated the diversity of glam, alt rock, pop, and hair-metal with far better results than the tix of drugs, alcohol and fame that consumed him.
When Weiland died in 2015 of a drug overdose at the age 48, the question had to be asked: How will he be remembered? It won’t be as a jock. But we can imagine how he might have piloted that endeavor
Continue reading “No. 3: Scott Weiland”
Tom Hoffarth's The Drill: More Farther Off the Wall 