Ever heard a ghost sing? Stone Temple Pilots and Velvet Revolver fans may feel that sensation listening to “Time Will Tell,” a new track featuring previously unheard vocals by Scott Weiland, the legendary late STP/VR frontman. Noah Weiland, Scott’s son and now an alternative pop recording artist, released “Time Will Tell.”

Noah gave his dad’s rough demo sleek contemporary production. “Time Will Tell” has the effect of, given Scott’s admiration/emulation of chameleonic rocker David Bowie, what kind of music Scott Weiland might be making in 2024, if he hadn’t died at age 48 of a drug overdose on his tour bus in Minnesota in 2015.

Noah Weiland’s recent Instagram post makes “Time Will Tell” even more newsworthy. On IG, Noah captioned the cover art of the single with, “can’t believe i’m saying this right now but basically i been getting blackmailed by a random number that somehow has a very old version of a song i have with my father. and because of that i am basically forced to release a song i had no intentions of releasing until way further into my career cause this coward rly thinks i’m about to send them $2k to not leak it. sooo, i beat em to the punch.”

Noah told Rolling Stone, “Due to the fact that nobody who ‘represents’ my dad actually cares to give the fans new unheard music, let alone keep his name alive in the first place, my friend [producer] Spencer Carr Reed and I decided to turn it into a more modern sounding song as if he was still alive and just decided to hop on one of my songs. That was the concept behind it.”

Noah shared a screengrab of the blackmail threat text from an 951 area code number on his Instagram.

Two grand sounds like a blackmail number from a previous century. But according to another recent Rolling Stone report, Noah monetary inheritance from his dad was exactly zilch.

Noah, now 23-yeard-old, told RS, “My dad was millions in debt when he died. My mom has always worked a normal job. And truthfully, even if my dad’s estate ever does get out of debt, I don’t even want that money. I want to make a career out of myself as much as possible.”

Noah’s recent solo material is decidedly poppy and he’s named latter-day Justin Bieber as an influence.

Noah’s previous music sounded much more in line with his bloodline. In 2020, he was fronting a rock band called Suspect208 also featuring Slash’s son London Hudson on drums and Ty Trujilo, son of Metallica’s Robert Trujillo, on bass. The Suspect208 track “Long Awaited” dripped with potential.

Of course, Scott Weiland and Slash had teamed up in Velvet Revolver, the 2000s supergroup known for hits like “Fall To Pieces” and “Slither.”

Unfortunately, Noah, who was seven when his parents split and had little contact with his dad, Noah says, during his dad’s last years alive, was fired from Suspect208.

The rest of the band released a statement at that time that read, “Noah was not writing lyrics or lifting his weight in the band for two months before we let him go. He was heading down a dark path of drug use that got in the way of our friendship as well as the band…we did as much as we could to help him.”

After getting sacked from Suspect208, a development eerily similar to Scott Weiland’s firing from Velvet Revolver, Noah went into a dark, druggy spiral. After Slash got him into a sober living house, Noah ended up in rehab.

Now, Noah records his vocals on an iPhone and sends them off to a producer who’s worked with the likes of Nicki Minaj to add music and polish.

By day, Noah Weiland, son of one of rock’s greatest frontmen from the last 35 years, works a warehouse day job. He told Rolling Stone he’s off opioids but still drinks and smokes weed.

“This is the happiest I’ve been in years,” Noah told RS. “My goal now is to become financially stable with music. I mean, I could say I want to be the biggest artist and take over, but realistically, I’m doing one thing at a time. I’m not in a rush to blow up overnight. I want to build a cult fan base. I’ve played a few concerts, and I want to make them feel like parties.”

Since he was just 14 when Scott Weiland died, Noah doesn’t have a ton of memories of his dad. But there are a few, like them having fun chats about which superheroes would win in hypothetical battles with each other. As a child, Noah once appeared onstage with Velvet Revolver while dressed as Spider-Man.

The last time Noah ever saw his dad was when they got together for dinner. Afterward in the parking lot, he showed his dad some of the new skateboard moves he’d learned. “But he wasn’t really paying attention,” Noah recalled to Rolling Stone. “It was like he wasn’t really there. He was falling apart. I knew it was going to be the last time I saw him.”

Years later, after going through his own drug hell, Noah finally understood his famous father, he told RS. “It made me realize it wasn’t his fault. He was just in too deep. He had too many demons. They caught up to him. It actually made me forgive him.”

Noah’s caption on the YouTube release of “Time Will Tell,” reads, “I LOVE YOU DAD, KEEPING YOUR NAME ALIVE.”

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