================================================ Subject: FW: Religion Read From: "]\\[][G}{T§TÖ®]v[" To: Date: Sat 16 Feb 2002 12:22:13 -0500 ================================================ Lets see if this one goes though... an old interview with Scott where he delves into such subjects as "Is Creed Christian?" and the background to "WTLF" and a brief covering of his life back home... ----- Original Message ----- From: To: Creed Discussion Sent: Monday, October 25, 1999 12:14 AM Subject: Religion Read Creed Interview One of the hottest new bands in the country is a group called Creed, led by Scott Stapp, and named Billboard magazine's 1998 Rock Group of the Year. Their first album, My Own Prison, went platinum in seven months, with sales of over 3 million. Many are drawn to the group because of the spiritual message found in their lyrics. Recently, Doug Pagitt and Chris Seay of Leadership Network spent some time with Stapp, and his video interview was shown at the Reevaluation Forum. The following excerpts are from the interview. Doug: Now I'm intrigued by a couple of things - your willingness to do this interview and why it was of interest to you. You must get requests all the time. Do you grant every interview that's requested? Scott: You know, I don't know why. Maybe it's just because it's my first Christian interview. Or my first interview with religious people. I've never done an interview with any religious publication. When the secular media asks me questions, ninety percent of them have no background in religion so they don't even understand some of the answers that I give them or even some of the lyrics. I just wanted to see what you guys were all about and kind of get a feel for you guys - how the Christian community was - what they were thinking and get a pulse on the rational Christian community - you know, the normal Christian people - if you can call Christians normal. At one point in my life I thought that I was called to be a minister and I think that was probably around 9 or 10 years of age. But, I became disillusioned by a lot of things that happened to me by Christian people. You know, there were so many different things that were going on in my mind that made me really start to question and want to get away and try to figure out things on my own and through my own search. And I'm still there. I haven't come to any resolutions. Just because I felt like, man, I guess no one else is thinking this way or feeling this way or has ever wanted to do this. So I felt like I was some big evil sinner and that I was the only one because on Sundays everyone put on their suits and sat on the front row and acted like they were perfect and had the perfect families and the perfect lives and their kids were great and everything was perfect. And so for me to have these feelings and thoughts and have no one to identify with just even isolated me more in an environment where I was supposed to feel love and understanding and compassion. It's refreshing to hear you say that there are churches that aren't like that. I wish that I could get ahold of one youth pastor that was very, very influential in my life. His name is Fred Franks and I don't know where he is right now but he was just dynamic - just a great guy. He was real. He was a real guy and you could tell he had been through some real things. I was thinking the other day about when someone asked me if I was a Christian and I looked at him and said, 'I don't know, man. I still have a lot of questions that I wish I had answers to.' And that's why I don't want to tell anyone that I'm a Christian. First of all, because I don't know if I am, but second of all, I have a lot of questions about that and I can't sit here and tell you guys that by the letter of the law I'm a Christian or not. I know that I believe in God and I speak with Him every day and I have a relationship with Him and I feel like He speaks with me and I feel like He's very instrumental in everything that I do. Maybe the whole struggle and the whole search and the whole desire to ask questions and find the truth is what makes us Christians. Doug: There are Christian singers who sing whole albums and don't say a thing about God in them and they are sponsored by Christian radio stations and Christian festivals, and then there are you guys, sponsored by whomever you're sponsored by and you're singing about God in about every third song, it seems like. So what do you say to people when they say, 'Are you a Christian band?' Scott: I say we're not. The first thing is the other three guys in my band, you know, they don't believe the same way I do. I write all the lyrics so they're just kind of thrown into these beliefs. They got in the band to be rock stars in the classic sense of the word. And now, all of a sudden, they're hit with all this stuff that they didn't ask for. And this responsibility, you know, if they want to drink beers or whatever, I'm like, 'Would you please pour that in a cup before we go to autograph sessions?' Not a clear cup. I just don't want you to influence some little kid who came to the show at 12 years old and who is a Christian kid and thinks we're a Christian band. I don't want to be a stumbling block for him. Whether we are or not, now all of a sudden they have a responsibility and they didn't ask for it. They wanted the partying of being a rock star. And so it's kind of thrust on them because of the lyrics and it's put a lot of responsibility on three other guys who totally didn't ask for it and they just wanted to be like any other typical rock star. This album specifically was that whole break-away thing for me from the Church, and just kind of setting off and dealing with the anger. I was very angry. I was very bitter. Doug: In 'What's This Life For' - when you use the swear word in there - was that intentional to make a statement? Scott: That's a quote. A friend of mine had committed suicide. In his suicide letter he wrote, 'Now who's settled the God damn score,' and then blew his head off. I wrote that line because that song was inspired by that whole situation and in a situation Mark went through. By putting that line in there, that song was all about trying to reach out. Like this is what I would have said to him if I could have talked to him an hour before or a day before. And I've gotten a lot of criticism for that but I don't care because a lot of people don't know why I did what I did. I was very opposed to them making an edit on that because I wasn't damning God. I wasn't saying that in anger at God. And I can understand the respect factor. We have to respect people and this is a word that even people who don't believe in God feel is like one of the worst expressions that you can make. I just really felt that it was important and necessary to be there because I wasn't trying to reach people who had their lives together with that song. I wasn't trying to reach Christians. Another thing is you've got to think about who you're trying to reach. And the people that I'm trying to reach, they'll understand that and that might make them go, whoa. And they'll hear that and they'll identify with that anger. They'll identify with that feeling and it'll make them listen. There's an answer right after 'But we all live under the reign of one king.' This one guy came up to me and he said, 'I turned your album on and I had just finished writing my suicide letter and I was sitting on my bed with a gun and I was going to blow my head off and I got to 'What's This Life For?' and I just started crying. Thank you.' I don't want to be this band or this writer that people don't understand. I want people to understand what we're doing. I think a lot of people say it is really eclectic and great and they will ask, 'What does this mean?' I think that sometimes very creative and artistic people use that as an excuse for not being able to express themselves properly. I just think you can't run from the truth. As much as you want to run - and as much as you want to - you can't run. One of the things I used to tell my dad is, 'I'm not going to be a missionary. No way I'm going to some Third World country. No way.' Okay God, did you hear that? I'm not going to be a missionary. And I think that I was running. I think that I'm still running, to some degree. But the ironic thing is that I'm running and that I ran right into Him. And I'm like doing the same thing that I'd be doing - I mean, I've affected so many people by accident just like I was a minister with the message of salvation in My Own Prison. I didn't even think about it until after it was done. And how many people who have never even stepped in a church hear My Own Prison every day. I asked God for this but then I didn't want it any more. And I asked God - you know, I would ask God for things when I was young - I would be like, 'God give me the wisdom of King Solomon and give me the spiritual strength of Samson.' I would ask Him for all of these things. I would be like please, help me understand and use me and all this stuff. And then, all of a sudden I didn't want it any more but He gave it to me anyway. And He's like, well, if I gave you all of this stuff, you're going to use it, whether you want to or not. I think that's basically how it's developed. You know my songs on this album were - there was a lot of, listen man, I know what's right. I know what I'm supposed to feel is right. I've been told there's still something missing. I didn't know we were going to be on the radio or I didn't know that we were going to sell 3 million records and I was going to be doing interviews like this. We didn't know. I wrote them for me. The only answer for the success is the message. I think there's a message in there that needs to get out and that God wanted to get out. Doug: It seems to me that you guys are real nice guys that don't have some big machine behind you creating an image and pushing the thing. Scott: What you see is what you get. It wasn't intentional. That's how we wanted it to be. We just wanted people to say, 'This is Creed, this is Scott, this is Brian, this is Mark.' It's not like I wake up every day and put on my rock star outfit. We get up and what you see is what you get. It's a struggle in the sense of I want to be real and I want to be who I am, but the public doesn't want that. In essence, they don't want me to be real. Shay To unsubscribe or change your preferences for the Creed-Discuss list, visit: http://www.winduplist.com/ls/discuss/form.asp