Scott Weiland was an LA media person*

Scott Weiland, the former singer of the Los Angeles band Stone Temple Pilots, was found dead yesterday while on tour in Minnesota with his latest band, the Wildabouts. Weiland was 48. Less known was that Weiland made his living in the early 1990s as a page designer for the Los Angeles Daily Journal, the legal newspaper. "Before his big break," says a Daily Journal alum who provided the tip. The newspaper is apparently mentioned in Weiland's autobiography, "Not Dead & Not for Sale: A Memoir." So too was his troubles ith drug addiction.

Randall Roberts, the Los Angeles Times pop music critic, discusses Weiland's LA connection in today's appreciation.

In 1995, he was arrested in Pasadena when police caught him with cocaine and heroin. He checked in to rehab soon thereafter. That would prove a pattern.

Weiland got his start as a rocker in Southern California -- and met future Stone Temple Pilots bassist Robert DeLeo at a Black Flag show in Long Beach. Though known for harnessing hardened energy to create commercially palatable rock, Stone Temple Pilots gigged early shows at underground Hollywood spots such as Club Lingerie and the Whisky a Go-Go.

Released by Atlantic Records, Stone Temple Pilots' 1992 debut album, “Core,” came out a year after Nirvana’s “Nevermind” had rewritten the rules for commercial rock music. Where once Los Angeles was teeming with pop metal bands, a darker sound had hit, and Stone Temple Pilots entered with heavy chords and grim themes.

* Monday, Dec. 7 update "Page designer" is pushing it. Weiland was a paste up editor and, in an office of drivers, he rode a skateboard to work. More at the LA Weekly.