Scott Stapp: “Creed Has Always Been a People’s Band”

Spencer Kaufman
·8 min read
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The post Scott Stapp: “Creed Has Always Been a People’s Band” appeared first on Consequence.

Consequence’s Post-Grunge Week continues with an interview with Creed singer Scott Stapp. See our picks for the 50 Greatest Post-Grunge Songs, and keep checking back throughout the week for more lists, artist-driven content, games, and more.

Creed are back in a big way. The multiplatinum band announced a reunion last year, and it’s been nothing short of triumphant so far.

Despite being away for roughly a dozen years, Creed’s connection with fans hasn’t waned. The band sold out two recent cruises that marked their live return, and they’re poised to rock hundreds of thousands of fans on their upcoming summer and fall tours (pick up tickets here).

This past year has also seen Creed involved in some super-viral moments. Their monster hit “Higher” became a rallying cry for World Series champions the Texas Rangers, and singer Scott Stapp and guitarist Mark Tremonti appeared in an absolutely bonkers Super Bowl commercial for Paramount+ alongside a slew of celebrities.

While they sold millions of albums during their heyday, Creed also experienced a wave of backlash during the height of their fame. The band also went through some inner turmoil, leading them to break up in 2004 before an initial reunion in 2009 that lasted a few years.

Heavy Consequence recently caught up with Stapp to discuss Creed’s reunion, his thoughts on the backlash they received, the possibility of new music, and more.

Read our interview with Scott Stapp below, and see where Creed’s hits landed on our list of the 50 greatest post-grunge songs.

With two sold-out cruises and a fast-selling tour on the horizon, did you imagine that this current Creed reunion would get such an enthusiastic reception more than a decade since the band was last together?

I mean, it’s been overwhelming and I didn’t even really understand the enormity of it until I heard Mark [Tremonti] talk about it in interviews, and then share with me personally … that our two cruises were the fastest ever music cruises to sell out.

According to Mark and our agent, we’re kind of picking up where we left off at our peak. I have tremendous gratitude. I’m thankful. I’m blown away. There’s three generations of Creed fans that we’ve connected with.

I think social media has been a huge part of that, most definitely. I’m looking forward to playing in front of a lot of fans that have never seen us play. Some of them only knew of Creed because they heard their parents playing the records. I’m just excited and grateful for all of it.

You just mentioned three generations of fans. It seems that Creed have connected with people who were just toddlers or not even born when you guys first broke onto the scene. What do you think it is about your music that’s resonating with these younger fans?

I’m hoping that it’s just the message of hope and the positivity in the music. And also the depth in our records. Life is cyclical. Just like fashion trends kind of circle around over and over and over again. If you’re lucky, you hit on the right one as a designer. I think the same thing happens in music.

It’s clear that Creed’s message and our sound resonated in a way originally that connected with a lot of people, and has been fortunate to stand the test of time and just reconnect with an entire new generation, I think for the same reasons we connected the first time.

I guess I won’t really know until I get out there, start doing meet and greets, start talking to people, and doing the shows and really see firsthand what it is that’s brought this entire new generation [to our music].

Along with Creed’s tremendous success came a good amount of backlash. Do you feel that this enthusiastic response to this current reunion serves as vindication for the band?

To comment on the word you just said, “vindication,” I don’t have time in my life nor space in my heart to ever think about vindication. So I’m just looking at everything from a positive perspective, and not a way of kind of, “Haha, told you so.” That’s not who I am. That never entered my mind.

I think the initial backlash, some of it was just part of being so big, so fast — eight straight number one singles. I mean, we were all over the radio. You couldn’t escape us. I think the initial narrative was completely created by kind of the elite, critical media, kind of the cool guy club, who liked bands that didn’t sell a lot of records. So it was a narrative that was kind of generated by that niche of the media and then propagandized out there to make people think that that was the voice of the people.

And as that narrative was being put out there, we were selling out multiple nights of arenas, releasing diamond records, and had stadiums on hold. So it didn’t even line up at all with the masses. Again, it was a media-generated narrative. And once that kind of gets out there and just gets hammered home, you’ll always have the fringes that come out on both sides, but it didn’t represent the people, and Creed has always been a people’s band.

And that’s what meant so much to us, were the awards and the recognition that we got that the people chose, and that the numbers said, and that the concert tickets said. So that’s really my perspective on it, from a thousand-foot view, but at the time it definitely kind of caught all of us off-guard. We didn’t understand because we went from being on the cover of magazines that said, “Creed’s the savior of rock ‘n’ roll” to all of a sudden the most hated band by the media, not by the public, by the media. So, it was just kind of like, “Hey, this doesn’t line up with our rock ‘n’ roll dream. What’s going on?”

Being that young age, of course there was some frustration, anger, hurt. But being where we are now, we kind of know that that’s just what comes with it. It’s just part of the deal. I mean, it happens in pro sports. Mark and I were doing an interview the other day, and he was talking about how this has happened with LeBron James. He goes from King James and then now he gets hate. He’s one of the most hated players in the league, and it’s all because of how dominant and how successful he is. And so it’s just par for the course. It just comes with the territory, and being more mature and older now.

All that matters is the fans, and all that matters is riding on the positivity and then just trying to deliver to the fans every night and focus on what’s good, and just let all that stuff go. It doesn’t hurt anymore.

With the two cruises and the upcoming tour, Creed are bringing out a lot of your contemporaries from that golden age of post-grunge: 3 Doors Down, Finger Eleven, more. Why was it important for you to have those bands on the lineups?

Well, we’ve become friends with these bands over the years, and you want to be on tour with dudes you know and you like. But also, these were bands that we toured with back in the day and that came up with us, and that have also stood the test of time. They’re still touring, they’re still successful, and they’re still connecting with people. And it’s a genre of music that our core fan base was around for from day one. They know all their songs. So it’s a great way to relive that history, but also it’s about the camaraderie between the artists on tour.

Obviously, Creed will be on the road for much of the year, plus you just released your own solo album, and Mark has a number of projects. That said, is there any chance for new Creed music in the near future?

Who knows what’s going to happen. That’s not something that we’ve laid out or planned right now. We’re just kind of focusing on getting back in the groove of being onstage together, playing together, digging deeper into our catalog and then we’ll see what happens from there. We’ll see what happens organically.

And I have to ask about that wild Super Bowl commercial for Paramount+. How did that come together?

Man, I tell you, it came together just like the Texas Rangers, and just like NASCAR, it just came out of nowhere. We got the call, and the opportunity presented itself. And to be a part of a Super Bowl commercial with everyone that was involved, again it was just a gift that kind of fell into our laps. I mean, the timing couldn’t have been more perfect, with the arena tour on sale. It was just incredible, man.

It’s just another one of those situations where there seems like there’s a divine plan, and everything’s just lining up and there’s been this resurgence. And a lot of our fans now, to think of it on a logical level, a lot of our fans now have, are successful people in powerful positions, so we probably started coming up in conversations. And it was such a fun experience. Mark and I had such an incredible time on set shooting that. It was a lot of fun.

Photo Gallery: Creed, 3 Doors Down, and more rock the Summer of ’99 cruise (click to expand and scroll through):

Scott Stapp: “Creed Has Always Been a People’s Band”
Spencer Kaufman

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