Ahead of this Friday's release of a 25th anniversary reissue of Stone Temple Pilots' 1996 album Tiny Music...Songs from the Vatican Gift Shop, STP's Robert and Dean DeLeo and drummer Eric Kretz are reminiscing about their late bandmate, Scott Weiland.

Speaking to Yahoo Entertainment, Dean recalls that when they first met Scott in the early '90s, "He was superhuman -- whatever he did, whether it was skiing or tennis or basketball, he excelled. He was really, really talented in every sense of the word, his physicality and his strength. Things came very easy to him."

But by the time Tiny Music... came around, Kretz says, "things were getting bad" with Weiland and his substance abuse.

The band recorded the album while living together in a huge rented mansion in California's Santa Ynez Valley, and Robert recalls, "There were times when we did go upstairs, and you had to walk past Scott's bedroom first when you went up, and we just were checking in on him to see if he was alive. Literally."

Dean adds, "To be affiliated with somebody of that musical magnitude and to be so fulfilled by it, and to watch this person just go into this deep hole of demise was just f***ing awful. It was just awful, man."

But still, Dean says, "Not a day doesn't go by that we all think about Scott. Every day." Robert admits that even seeing his car's dashboard compass pointing to "SW" feels "poignant."

Dean adds, "It's heartbreaking that he's not here to celebrate this."

Despite the struggles of making Tiny Music..., it finally led to some long-awaited acclaim from music critics, who'd been brutal to STP since the start of their career.  As Robert notes, "Talking to some of those critics these days, they're like, 'Um, sorry! Sorry!'"

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