Scott Stapp Comes Clean

Relevant Magazine November/December 2004

Creed straddled the line between mainstream and Christian music markets. While Creed flatly denied they were a Christian band, their lyrics suggested otherwise. Now their former frontman and chief lyricist says his career is "coming back full circle". Creed parted ways in June, and now Scott Stapp, backed by Canadian rockers Tea Party, is launching a solo career. He's got the lead single off the soundtrack inspired by Mel Gibson's The Passion of the Christ, and he's throwing around words like "backsliding."

"I just wasn't in the right place." Stapp said.

When he first met the guys in Creed, Scott Phillips was an atheist, Stapp said, "Mark [Tremonti] grew up going to Catholic Church on holidays, and we never discussed it. They didn't understand why we were getting asked [if we were a Christian band]. They wanted to be in a rock band, not in a Christian band. At the time, I could honestly answer, "No, we weren't a Christian band."

From the time they hit it big as a rock band, questions about Creed's faith rattled around the music world and the Church. The band was adamant they were not a Christian band, but their music was squeaky-clean and youth-group friendly. Despite the spiritual bent in their lyrics, name and logo, Creed's thunderous arena rock anthems and leather pants made them embraceable to rock fans across religious, generational and gender lines. It also made them one of the most successful rock groups in the last 10 years. Their success came no thanks to the critics, who regularly panned their albums and live shows. One critic called them a rock jalopy, a pieced together ride of familiar favorites – Eddie Vedder's voice, Metallica's riffs and Jim Morrison's pants.

Youth group leaders around the country pined for the band to come out of the closet and loudly proclaim their faith in Christ. But Creed didn't. Instead, they walked the line between. Along the way, they sprinkled fans on both sides of the line with just enough to keep seats filled at their shows. With a pinch of messianic imagery here and a dash of heavy metal there, Creed continually tilled the soil of their fan base and harvested a cash crop. Their second album, Human clay, sold 10 million copies, reaching the stratospheric diamond sales status. When the dust settled, their three albums had sold 30 million copies worldwide. But after three number one albums and eight number one singles, the band took a nosedive.

Dec. 29, 2002

Creed was performing at the Allstate Arena in Chicago. Things went badly…really badly. The show as so awful that four fans sued the band on behalf of the audience. According to the class action lawsuit. "Creed failed to substantially perform on December 29, 2002." It continued that Stapp "was so intoxicated and/or medicated that he was unable to sing the lyrics of a single Creed song." The lawsuit was dismissed. Stapp recently told MTV that at the time, he was in fact on Prednisone, a steroid-like drug, that reduced inflammation on his vocal cords, but made him bloated "like a beached whale," making him look like a "fat Elvis."

The band decided it was time to take a break; they insisted they were not breaking up. Then on June 11, 2004, the band announced they were calling it quits. Stapp's former bandmates, Tremonti and Phillips, immediately formed a new group Alter Bridge, and found a new lead singer, Myles Kennedy.

Stapp said during the break, he did a lot of soul searching and started reflecting on his faith, family and career. Around the same time, he got a call from Mark Joseph, who authored Faith, God and Rock 'n Roll [Baker] and who was recruiting artists to be part of a special new project. "[Joseph] asked if I wanted to write a song for the film [The Passion of the Christ], and I was really excited about it." Stapp said "At the time, Mark and I had just made the decision to work on solo projects, so I said I'd love to."

Joseph was producing the soundtrack inspired by the movie, which released simultaneously wit the DVD in late August. "When they called, I was going through some personal stuff," Stapp said. "I was leaning back on my faith and trying to figure out how it was going to be involved with my life." He was flown to Los Angeles to screen the film with Mel Gibson, and "It all perpetuated from there."

Growing up in a very conservative Christian home, Stapp said he was very familiar with the Passion story. "My first words after "Mommy" and "Daddy" were probably "Jesus", he said. When he stepped out of line, his father would make him copy the Psalms and Proverbs and then write a commentary about what the passage meant to him. That upbringing heavily influenced the music of Creed. "When I was writing the songs, subconsciously I was dealing with my past and trying to make sense of it in the songs," he said.

It was the demons and angels inside that produced the spiritually themed number one hits "My Own Prison", "What's This Life For," "One", "Higher", "What If", and "With Arms Wide Open". With the songs' success on rock radio and crossover to pop radio, questions about Stapp's faith grew louder. "I was so afraid to come out and talk about my beliefs", Stapp said. "When you're in the public spotlight, there's a lot of scrutiny. I was so afraid of the public eye because I wasn't there in my mind and in my life. I was caught in the middle trying to figure out what I believed in."

Stapp's unwillingness to share his struggle brought him back to his boyhood days. "For me, I over-thought a lot of things," he said. "I remember Jimmy Swaggart, Jim Bakker. I remembered the hypocrisy there and in my own church. I held a high standard and thought I had to be perfect to speak about my faith and have no doubt. When I was younger, I got caught up in the legalism with the Church at the time. The last thing I wanted to be was a hypocrite. When you're cast in the light as a Christian, that's when the judgment comes."

Today it's much easier, or at least more common, to be a Christian rocker than when the spotlight shown brightly and nearly exclusively on Creed. "Christianity took a lot of blows in the '80s and we've been the butt of a lot of jokes, but now it seems like it's getting some of its credibility back," Stapp said. "I used to tell my label some of the best musicians I'd ever hear were Christian musicians. It's about time these artists are getting that respect."

In many ways, Creed pioneered a movement: getting rock radio to accept, and perhaps even respect, spiritually sensitive music. As their tenure at the top was peaking, 2003 saw main stream radio rife with Christian bands hitting it big and major labels snatching up Christian acts in the merger-happy music industry, the bottom line is what matters most, not the content or quality of the music. Labels quickly learned Christian rock bands could sell. Bands like P.O.D., Switchfoot and MercyMe are the beneficiaries of the trail Creed blazed.

As Stapp's solo debut track, "Relearn Love," released this summer, he said his new music isn't meant to be evangelistic in the way of Christian artists, but he feels he's finally come home when it comes to his personal faith. "I've finally, in my personal life, come to grips with my faith," Stapp said. "I think that stubborn people like me have to be flat on their back to come to grips with it. The only place I could look was up. At the launch of my solo career, I've come full circle, and I'm launching my solo career around the story of Christ. I feel good about it. I'll never be able to answer "no" to those questions. Now I am a Christian."

.Eric Marrapodi