================================================ Subject: Fw: An Old Article From: "]\\[][G}{T§TÖ®]v[" To: Date: Thu 12 Jul 2001 20:33:08 -0400 ================================================ Dunno if this will go through, but it was sent to the list October 4, 1999... and I thought it was good reading... ¤]\[][G}{T§TÖ®]v[¤ ----- Original Message ----- From: Madeline To: Sent: Monday, October 04, 1999 10:16 AM Subject: An Old Article I found this article and I thought it was pretty cool...althought a bit old. I'm sure many of you read it way back when, but what I found most interesting about it is that they are still the same guys they were then. So many bands become big and popular and then aren't even the shadow of who they were before, but if you read current interviews with Creed and compare it to this one, they are still saying the same basic things...read on....it's called "Creed's Creedo" and it was originally published in Launch Magazine. "We haven't had time to prepare for any of this," Creed guitarist Mark Tremonti admits. "I feel like I've put on four years in the last six months; I'm a 38-year-old 23-year-old." Since Creed's debut album My Own Prison was released six months ago, the band has been playing clubs across the country nonstop. Their hard work and radio coverage has resulted in My Own Prison being certified gold; it sold nearly 30,000 copies during the week of January 21st alone. So not surprisingly, a lot of attention and demands have recently been foisted upon the young group, who considered themselves a baby band, having been together just three years. Tremonti and his early-twentysomething Creed bandmates--vocalist Scott Stapp, bassist Scott Phillips and drummer Brian Marshall--just returned to the road, after a last-minute vacation to Tallahassee, Florida for a much needed rest--as well as a reality check. "We're all normal kids, from normal families, with pretty much normal lives; that's just how it is," shrugs Stapp. "We're just regular guys: we drank beer behind the house when we were 15, or smoked some pot when we still smoked pot. There's no crazy rock 'n' roll story here. I mean we still party and have a good time, but it's like normal stuff. It's not like we're in the bus shooting fucking heroin." "And people come up to us and expect us to be like that," Tremonti adds. "Like this guy asked me if I wanted some coke right outside our bus!" "None of us have a drug problem or were beaten as children," Stapp interjects. "It gets so old when you open up Rolling Stone and read about Fiona Apple and all the shit she's gone through, or Travis Meeks' bullshit about how he was drunk at nine and sleeping on the streets. That's all glamorized and that's how you're supposed to be if you're in a rock band. That's stupid. Why glamorize an idiot? Glamorize his talent, not the fact he was a bum when he was a kid." He pauses, then reiterates: "We're not conforming to some crazy rock 'n' roll life style just because our music is a success. It changes you if you let the things that surround you change you." Ironically, Stapp's admiration for one of the most infamous examples of rock 'n' drug abuse of the '60s, the Doors' Jim Morrison, aided in the formation of Creed. After a stint at a college in Tennessee, Stapp moved to Tallahassee in 1995: "The only reason I picked Tallahassee over Gainesville was because I had been reading this book on Jim Morrison and it said he lived there; I'm a big fan," Stapp smiles. "That's a 21-year-old pothead's mentality." A week after he arrived, Stapp ran into Tremonti, a high-school acquaintance, and the two started playing music together. "Scott suggested a guy he worked with to play drums; he said he was an awesome drummer and looked like a rocker," remembers Tremonti. However, the guy was "less than good." Stapp laughs. "I had never been in a band before; I thought everyone was good." When Phillips, who was hanging out at the rehearsal space, jammed with Tremonti on a Living Colour song, Tremonti then knew "that was it; Phillips was in." Marshall joined a short time later when his previous band broke up. After paying their dues playing long sets of cover songs in Tallahassee bars, the quartet started working in their own tunes...but still, they remained close to home. "We never toured," says Tremonti, almost with pride. "We never did the Florida club circuit like all these other bands; we just played once a month at this bar called Floyd's Music Store." The turning point came when they scraped together enough money to record their songs. "Once we had a couple tracks down, we had interest from a manager--he was a local promoter," Marshall recalls. "After 'My Own Prison' was recorded, he took it to a radio station--WXSR 101.5--and the [program director] fell in love with it; the next week 'My Own Prison' was number-one phones. And it just kind of snowballed from there." Creed sold 5000 copies of "My Own Prison" in two months out of Tallahassee, radio stations in Tampa and Orlando added the song, and labels soon started calling. Creed signed with the newly created label Wind-Up (distributed by BMG) and remixed their completed album. All this and they still hadn't left Tallahassee. "We came out of our own little thing," Stapp affirms. "No one in Florida--except Tallahassee--knew about us until we were played on the radio. But we had a grass-roots thing through word-of-mouth." Not only do they differ from many of the successful Florida bands in that they didn't play the circuit, but they also are clearly not a part of the generic-commercial-rock popular in that region. Musically, My Own Prison is a much heavier record; in fact, it has more in common sonically with Alice In Chains (only with a little more pop and a little less grunge) than it does with Seven Mary Three and Matchbox 20. Lyrically, it's also much like AIC in that it is dark and introspective. But unlike the Seattle set, there's a ray of hope. "I think that's how we all are. Despite all the things that have gone wrong in our lives, we saw a light at the end of the tunnel, we never gave up hope, we knew we could get out of where we were," Tremonti avows. "Maybe that comes through, but it wasn't intentional; it just naturally flowed." In nearly every one of My Own Prison's 10 songs, there's a religious or spiritual reference or a questioning of beliefs. "There are so many things we dealt with on this record: governmental issues, racial issues, self-doubt and self-pity issues, anger and bitterness," begins Stapp, "but religion has been focused on a lot because I use a lot of religious imagery in my lyrics. That's how I learned how to write; I had to go to church three times a week, I had to read--and write--the Bible, and that trained a lot of the way that my writing style developed--writing out Proverbs three and four times. "People are confusing that with us being a religious band; we're not. That's just what I was going through at that time. I was asking questions and dealing with issues and going against beliefs that I had been taught my whole life. It's hard for people to understand that because they're so used to being held down by churches and denominations. I wasn't held down; I was born into it. I had no choice, and when I had a choice, I wasn't allowed to have that choice so I left home. My whole life is about having that freedom to have a choice, and not having it forced on me. So that's kind of what we're all about." But, Mom and Dad, we're happy to announce there are no warning stickers defacing My Own Prison--which pleases Stapp when he thinks of his own formative years. "I wasn't allowed to listen to rock 'n' roll when I was a kid, and there are a lot of kids that aren't allowed to listen to rock in their house. They're allowed to listen to Creed because their parents think we are a Christian band--that, and we don't have that warning sticker." Leaning across the table, the vocalist continues. "It's surprising to me how it's all come about. There are Atheists and Christian fanatics who love our band. It's cool because it's like bridging a gap--maybe the Atheists can learn something from these people, and maybe the Christians can learn something from these people." Stapp smiles, then concludes, "And there are kids who don't give a damn about religion and like it because it rocks." To unsubscribe or change your preferences for the Creed-Discuss list, visit: http://www.winduplist.com/ls/discuss/form.asp