Noah Weiland, the 21-year-old son of late Stone Temple Pilots singer Scott Weiland, says “it felt like a backstab” last year when Suspect208 kicked him out of the group. That was the band he played in with two other rockstar offspring — bassist Tye Trujillo, son of Metallica bass player Robert Trujillo, and drummer London Hudson, son of Guns N’ Roses guitarist Slash.
The young group ousted Noah because he was “heading down a dark path of drug use” and withdrawing from the band, they said in a statement that January. But now, after visits to rehab, Noah is making a return to music with solo material that’s “like a new fresh beginning,” he tells iHeartRadio.
“In the end, it was hurtful, but it also made me learn a lot and grow up a lot and also make a lot better music,” Noah said of his split with Suspect208 in the interview that emerged last week (April 22).
“At first it was out of spite,” he continued, “and then once I started getting on a roll and putting that resentment into my music — I feel like a lot of my greatest songs come from me making music out of spite, whether it’s a girl or a situation like that or someone else who’s hurt me.”
In May 2021, Suspect208 broke up as a band entirely. Looking back on their statement four months earlier, Noah asserted he didn’t yield to addiction until after he got kicked out.
“This is the thing that people don’t know,” he said. “I wasn’t even addicted to anything when that whole thing happened. I didn’t get addicted to stuff until months after. … It made me mad because, yeah, I did end up getting addicted. But before that I was not a drug addict, and they made it seem like I was and for awhile when I really wasn’t. That’s when it hurt me the most.”
Suspect208 also featured guitarist Niko Tsangaris (guitarist), who now plays with Hudson in S8nt Elektric. But Noah described his firing from Suspect208 as being mainly the decision of Hudson, whom he claimed was projecting his own spiraling drug abuse.
“We became really, really close,” Noah said of Hudson. “We were like brothers. We did everything together. … Tye had nothing to do with any of that. He did not know. He really wasn’t even a part of the band that much. He just liked us and he liked what we were doing and he just wanted to do it for fun, really.”
Noah added it was Hudson who “went on a crazy rant saying like, ‘You need to stop doing drugs, you’re the reason why I relapsed,’ and all this stuff. … He was using some hard stuff that I didn’t approve of. Like, I didn’t want him to do the specific thing that he was doing. … He didn’t like what I was doing also, so he just kind of called me out and totally didn’t even think about the fact that he has problems too.”
Eventually, however, Noah himself entered rehab after a few false starts. “It’s hard when you’re young,” he shared. “You don’t realize how serious this type of stuff is. … I never stuck with a program [or was] around the right people. But, I mean, I probably was happy then, but right now how I feel — I really haven’t felt this good since I was in that band. But the thing is now it’s my own music, and I feel like it’s my time to shine.”
His own music kicked off publicly with the catchy, guitar-driven single “One Day,” Noah’s official solo debut from earlier this month. (He said he’s holding off on a full album or mixtape for now.) Watch the “One Day” music video below and read Noah’s full iHeart interview here.
Noah Weiland, “One Day”
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