"That was a song for a little girl, Lauren," Scott Weiland said after finishing "Crackerman," one of two Stone Temple Pilots songs that his current band, Velvet Revolver, played New Year's Eve at the Hard Rock. I was standing next to Lauren Bronston on the Joint's packed balcony, and at that moment, I think I may have been bumped aside to make way for her smile.
I had met Lauren a few hours earlier, during dinner at Del Frisco's, where I saw the slip of paper on which she had written out her speech to Weiland requesting the song. I don't know the exact words because Lauren, who after our meal was scheduled to go backstage and meet Velvet Revolver, was too excited and nervous to read it to me.
She is by nature shy and private. And so, though we did not discuss it, I knew she was also one very brave and very strong kid. Lauren has faced and suffered things that no child should have to deal with. Just 17, she suffers from a serious kidney disease and looks about 12; she is very thin and frail. Lauren is in end-stage renal failure and is waiting for a kidney transplant. Although she's very high on the priority list for organ donation, she's been waiting for over a year; meanwhile, every night she requires eight hours of dialysis. She is also an orphan whose father died last year and has only her half-brother, who is a bachelor trying to raise her as best he can. She is too ill to go to school regularly, so she misses many of the social opportunities that should be such a part of a young life. Lauren, of course, never mentions or complains about these things. In fact, when I met her at dinner—thanks to the Make a Wish Foundation—illness was last thing on Lauren's mind.
Like many youngsters, Lauren, who plays bass, counts on music to bolster and console her as she faces her problems, impending adulthood and all of the other natural confusions of adolescence. Her two favorite bands: Stone Temple Pilots and Alice in Chains. So Make a Wish had given her this trip to Vegas, provided her some money to spend here and arranged for her to meet Scott Weiland, lead singer of Stone Temple Pilots. This last part worried me. I know Weiland's history of drug abuse and unpredictable behavior, and as we ate I quietly fretted over how things would go. After all, Weiland was arrested three years ago at the Hard Rock, and he is still on probation from an entirely different incident. He freely admits to having a bipolar personality that is not entirely under his control.
Of course, a cynic would say that Weiland could use some good press about now. But in this case, a cynic would be wrong. MSO, the publicity firm for Velvet Revolver, was not told about Lauren, and the band showed no interest in anything media-friendly, prefering a private experience meeting her. I only learned about Lauren's visit by chance, as an old college friend of mine, Lily, who befriended the Bronstons, had traveled to Vegas with them. Since Velvet Revolver were playing New Year's Day, as well as New Year's Eve, I had put the Bronstons in touch with the Hard Rock and the casino had immediately offered her tickets to the second show, too.
For that small reason, Lauren's brother said—while Lauren sat there with a huge, beaming smile and nodded vigorously, too shy to say it herself—she insisted on buying Lily and I dinner with her Make a Wish trip money. She also used some to buy stuffed animals for Weiland's two children. She got nothing for herself with her cash. After dinner, Lauren went off with the Make a Wish volunteer (a single mother with two jobs who gave up her own New Year's Eve, though she had never met Lauren) to meet the band. Lily and I waited like nervous parents to hear how it went.
I should not have worried. The Velvet Revolver members were all Lauren had hoped they would be. They signed everything in reach. Duff McKagan showed her the bass line to a song and guitarist Slash wanted to know if the brownies she baked for him were spiked. Scott kissed her on the cheek, loved the stuffed animals and insisted that she read the speech to him when she hesitated. Lauren returned to our seats almost incoherently excited. And things weren't over yet.
Soon, Lauren met writer and sometime Weekly contributor Lonn Friend, who was sitting at the next table. Friend gave her a vintage STP hoodie (which his own 15-year-old daughter gave right off her back) and introduced her to a member of her other favorite group—Alice in Chains' Jerry Cantrell—who happened to be there. Cantrell was also an angel to her and asked for her e-mail address so he could keep in touch. But Lauren insisted on giving him a phone number instead. It turned out she was embarrassed to give her e-mail because her screen name is an homage: the title to one of Cantrell's songs. Then, when it looked like the night could not get any better, the manager of Velvet Revolver came to get her and let her sit on stage for the encore.
At one point from the stage, Weiland addressed the roaring, hedonistic New Year's Eve crowd. "Do you know what this night's about? It ain't about hey let's get go get f--ked up, it's a new year. It's about the celebration of life for another year. You know that? You are all f--king lucky to have another year of life. Let's all be f--king grateful. Yeah!"
I suspected Lauren was on Scott's mind, and at that moment, I was very grateful indeed. I realized the privilege and honor it has been to start 2005 seeing a very, very sick little girl for one night be the happiest person on the planet; no one who was with her that night will ever forget it. As Lonn Friend said later, "It was an honor rockin' with her."