Former STONE TEMPLE PILOTS frontman Scott Weiland continues to live in some sort of denial of the fact that he was fired by the group last month. In an interview conducted with Vindy.com while en route to a stop of his "Purple At The Core" tour, the singer further clarified his view of being dismissed from the group.

"They've done it before, and they can do it again," he said. "They're good players. I respect them. Every band has issues. I just think sometimes people say things before they really think about it. I know that I've done that in the past. I was guilty of it with VELVET REVOLVER after myself and [drummer] Matt [Sorum] got into an argument backstage before an encore. That led me to say that I wasn't going to play any more shows with those guys. So I think that the fact this tour was doing so well was a reactionary thing on their part. But it actually isn't quite so simple.

Asked if he is closing the door to ever working with STONE TEMPLE PILOTS again, Weiland said: "Definitely not."

Asked by TMZ earlier in the month about his dismissal from the band, Weiland replied, "STP is not broken up. It's a whole thing to try to boost ticket sales." The vocalist added, "I haven't talked to them for a while, but they were trying to get shows put together but we (Weiland and his solo band THE WILDABOUTS) already had our tour . . . They've done a lot of stuff like that in the past before, it's just kind of the way they roll."

Weiland also insisted that he can't be fired because "there's a thing written in our contract, no one can be fired."

The singer also said that substance abuse issues were not the reason for his firing, saying, "I haven't been doing any of that bad stuff in a long time. I drink some, but I don't drink and drive. I'm fine, I'm all good."

Rumors of Weiland being fired first surfaced in December after Slash revealed the news in a radio station interview. Just last week Weiland gave an interview to Rolling Stone in which he called the stories "hearsay."

That was before February 27, when STP issued a brief statement saying that Weiland had been "terminated."