 IN late 2007 Scott Stapp, the frontman of the rock band Creed, walked into the bathroom, grabbed a razor and did the unthinkable: He shaved his head. His band had split up three years earlier, and ever since Stapp had felt adrift, putting out a poorly received solo album and struggling with his self-confessed appetites for alcohol and painkillers. In 2006 he had become sober, reconnected with his family and rededicated himself to Christianity. But with his trademark long brown locks he looked like the same guy he'd always been.
His wife heard the buzzing electric razor and entered the bathroom, aghast.
"She came in like: 'What are you doing? That's Creed!' " Stapp, 36, recalled during an interview last month, several hours before his recently reunited band played the Aaron's Amphitheater. "I said, 'When you look at me, you've got to see me with new eyes.' Now whenever I meet somebody who had ideas about Creed or about me, it's almost like they give me a fresh chance."
Creed's first three albums, My Own Prison (1997), Human Clay (1999) and Weathered (2001), have sold nearly 25 million copies in the United States and spawned multiple Top 10 hits, including 'Higher' and 'My Sacrifice'. But despite enormous commercial success - or, probably more accurately, because of it - Stapp and his band mates, guitarist Mark Tremonti, bassist Brian Marshall and drummer Scott Phillips, were rock's favorite whipping boys through the late 1990s and early '00s. Critics assailed them for being too earnest, too pompous, too attractive, too pop, too derivative of Pearl Jam or just too inescapable. To detractors Creed's resistance to being called a Christian band didn't square with Stapp's spiritually themed lyrics.
If Pearl Jam and Nirvana had worked to subvert the rockstar mythos, Creed's songs, with their churn-and-soar dynamics and self-serious lyrics, and the accompanying videos, many of which featured a brooding Stapp striking blustery poses in leather pants, seemed aimed at restoring it. After the band's split the barbs focused more tightly on Stapp himself, who supplied his tormentors plenty of ammunition. On Thanksgiving 2005 he got into an altercation in a hotel bar with members of the band 311; in February 2006 he was arrested for public drunkenness at the LA airport en route to his honeymoon; days later clips from a sex tape featuring him with Kid Rock and several women surfaced on the Internet, scandalizing many of his Christian fans.
All of which makes Creed's reunion - which includes a United States tour and a new album, Full Circle, due on Oct. 27 - more than the usual sentimental, cash-generating victory lap. It's an attempt at rehabilitation.
"I'm asking all those who've become disenchanted with the band because of me to allow me to reintroduce myself and, with the other guys, show who we really are," Stapp said.
This may not be easy. Creed's omnipresence a decade ago transformed it from just another polarizing band into a symbol, to some, of all that was wrong with a bloated industry in which record labels sought out new artists that reminded them of older artists, pushed their singles relentlessly at radio and - in the years before file sharing crippled CD sales - reaped big financial rewards. Creed's name became an epithet for people looking to denounce excess and conformity in pop music. The band was publicly mocked by, among others, Blink-182's Mark Hoppus, Foo Fighters' Dave Grohl and Limp Bizkit's Fred Durst. The Offspring's Dexter Holland occasionally sported a T-shirt that read, "Even Jesus Hates Creed."
"Jesus probably did hate Creed for a couple years there," Stapp said with a laugh. Wearing a crisp white button-down shirt emblazoned with the words "Rock & Roll Religion," he appeared relaxed but eager to be understood. He admitted that he had grown cocky and defensive back then, but he also pointed out that Creed was an easy target: "We were the biggest band in the United States."
As Creed's previous tour wound down in 2002, even fans started revolting. Following a calamitous show outside Chicago the band was sued by four ticketholders who claimed Stapp was too intoxicated to perform. The case was eventually dismissed, but the public embarrassment stung. Stapp was drinking heavily during this time but said he was also suffering side effects from the steroid prednisone, which he took to combat voice problems. Regardless, his band mates blamed him for their travails.
"We were trying to keep our heads down, say the right things, do our jobs, and at the same time Scott was being irresponsible," said Tremonti. After that tour Stapp experienced a painful withdrawal from prednisone. The band make a quick, unsuccessful stab at a fourth album, then called it quits.
"It was easy to walk away because it wasn't what we'd envisioned," Tremonti said. "No matter how many records you sell, when you're up there with a target on your head every day it's not fun."
He and Phillips reconnected with Marshall, who'd been ousted from Creed in 2000 after persistent clashes with Stapp, and recruited Myles Kennedy to form a new band, Alter Bridge. Stapp, meanwhile, was drinking in binges while working in fits and starts on his solo album, The Great Divide. The album's producer, John Kurzweg, who also produced the first three Creed albums, described the sessions as a "mess." Years of withering criticism had battered Stapp's self-confidence.
"If he read a review, I'd be like, 'You've got a fan base. Why worry about what people are saying?'" Kurzweg recalled. "But he took it very seriously, and that affected everything, including his writing."
The Great Divide flopped and in the aftermath Stapp endured arrest and the sex-tape revelations. Rick Canny, who managed Stapp from recognized a conflict within him. "The person writing those heartfelt, spiritual lyrics was probably 51 percent of his being," Canny said. "The other 49 percent was just a guy who wanted to have a good time, play sports and look at girls. But he felt you had to be one or the other. That led to some destructive behavior."
In late 2006 Stapp broke his hip in a fall, then bottomed out. At a Japanese restaurant he pointed to a tattoo on his forearm that read, "11-18-06."
"That was the day my wife had had enough," he said. "I had to face that if I don't make a change, I'm losing my family. I'm losing everything." Stapp, who has two children, quit drinking and drugs and began thinking about mending fences in Creed. The other members, who had found middling success with Alter Bridge, were initially reluctant.
"He'd done so much damage to my life, I didn't want to speak his name for a long time," Tremonti said. "Since I was 11, this is all I've worked for. I finally built up a huge band and watched it destroyed by one person."
Nonetheless, in late 2008 he, Phillips and Marshall met with Stapp, who apologized for his past misbehavior. The reconciliation was satisfying, and given the more moderate scale of their separate projects, the idea of resurrecting Creed was appealing. "When you go from two or three people on a bus and nice hotels to everybody on the same bus, staying at a Holiday Inn and playing a club that has a closet for a dressing room," Phillips said, "you sort of long for those days when you had nice catering."
According to Paul Geary, who manages both Alter Bridge and Creed, Alter Bridge had taken on significant debt, which a Creed tour would help alleviate. Geary also recognized that Creed's superstardom was a precious commodity.
"Over the last few years new bands that go from zero to multiplatinum are scarce," he said. "Technology has changed everything, making it more difficult to permeate publicly. It makes bands like Creed much more valuable."
Full Circle has some surprising moments: the title track's swampy acoustic guitar line; the glistening chorus to 'Rain'. But as Tremonti acknowledged, the members didn't make wholesale changes to Creed's signature sound; they just gave it a "face-lift." Several songs bear the muscular riffs, soaring choruses and, throaty baritone characteristic not only of past Creed hits but also of bands that have populated rock in Creed's absence, like Nickelback, Daughtry and 3 Doors Down.
Creed's stage show also includes the hallmarks of the band's former incarnation, featuring pillars of flames, billowing fog and, during the encore, a shirtless Stapp clutching a microphone in a position that looks vaguely prayerful.
Creed has been playing to roughly half-full amphitheaters and grossing nearly 60 percent less money per night than on its 2002 tour. By contrast, tours by two other recently revived rock bands, No Doubt and Blink-182, have generated receipts similar to their previous outings'. More promisingly, as of mid-October Creed's brawny first single, "Overcome, was No. 5 on Billboard's Active Rock Radio chart. Nonetheless the band is unlikely to achieve the market saturation it did a decade ago.
Ultimately, though, Creed has not returned as a vastly different band. It's as if the time apart convinced band members there was nothing wrong with their product, just the perception of it. What they are really asking for is a reassessment.
"We have the opportunity," Phillips said, "to go back out, learn from our mistakes and maybe get everybody thinking, 'You know, I don't hate Creed so much. I like them.' "
– Courtesy: New York Times |
