He's always been a comics character type figure, just like the Ramones. People who wear haircuts where you can't see their eyes are figments of imagination.
I saw Velvet Revolver too on that last fateful pre-split-tour (my son, then a teenage Slash fan dragged me), but it ranks among the best gigs I've ever witnessed. Weiland and the band were no longer communicating, not a smile or a glance or any type of acknowledgement during the whole gig, he acted like they weren't there. And the band knuckled down to it, ignoring him too. Now that sounds like a recipe for disaster, but that night it was magic, all that band-internal aggression and frustration fueled one hell of a joint, if not joined performance. Dysfunctional as it was, it was also entirely captivating.