Solo Stapp's new creed: Love it all

The Arizona Republic, March 12 2006

Former Creed singer Scott Stapp is finding out whether any publicity is, indeed, good publicity.

As he sets out on a concert tour to promote his debut solo album, The Great Divide, Stapp has been in the news for two incidents that have little to do with the music that has sold more than 25 million records in his career.

A day after his Feb. 10 marriage to former Miss New York Jaclyn Nesheiwat, the 32-year-old singer was arrested for suspected intoxication at Los Angeles International Airport as the couple tried to board a plane to Hawaii.

A few days later, a 1999 videotape purportedly showing Stapp and rap-rocker Kid Rock - who both are headed for the Valley - engaging in explicit sexual activity with four strippers on a tour bus surfaced. Kid Rock, who plays Cricket Pavilion in Phoenix on April 22, has won a temporary order to stop a California company from selling the tape. One of the women involved has sued Stapp for invasion of privacy.

"Don't believe everything you read, and don't believe half of what you see," Stapp, who performs in Tempe on Saturday, said during a phone interview.

Stapp, whose former band was wildly popular but also the target of cruel criticism for its middle-of-the-road rock and religious themes in such hits as Arms Wide Open, has said the tape may be aimed at sabotaging his launch of The Great Divide.

"This new album sounds just like Creed, and people either love them or hate them," says Paul Peterson, program director of Valley rock powerhouse KDKB (93.3 FM).

Sales of the CD have picked up since news of the videotape and airport arrest, according to the retail chief of Arizona's Zia Record Exchange chain.

"The album didn't blow up out of the box (in December), but it has picked up speed lately," Zia's Brian Faber says. "With some of the rumors, it never hurts album sales."

Stapp has not denied the veracity of the sex tape, but the ongoing coverage is one more reason for Stapp to feel hostile toward the news media.

His onstage spats with his Creed bandmates were well documented by the press, as was their decision to form a new band, Alter Bridge, without him in 2004. He has been sued by fans who claimed that he was "too intoxicated or medicated" at a 2002 show to remember song lyrics. And he says the use of a painkiller made him go "nuts" as Creed's end neared after a three-album run.

"I retired in 2003 after I got dropped off at my house with all this medication that (doctors) put into my body," Stapp says. "I can't blame anyone. . . . I should have gotten second opinions."

In order to get his life back on track, Stapp took his young son, Jagger, to Hawaii.

"The (Creed) machine got so big, and I don't want a machine," he says. "What I'm trying to learn this go-round is to love every aspect" of recording and performing.

During his hiatus, Stapp says, he wrote the 10 songs that would appear on The Great Divide "in exactly that order."

"It was a very cathartic process. If you read the lyrics . . . it tells a story of where I was, what I've been through."

Stapp takes responsibility for his actions in the blistering album opener, Reach Out:

"These scars will heal with time / There's no excuse for weakness, selfishness and compromise," he sings, backed by Houston's Gone Blind, which once toured with Creed.

He challenges his former bandmates on the next song, another aggressive rocker called Fight Song:

"I'm still healing / No, I'm not reeling . . . This is my fight song."

He thanks God for helping him to "survive the great divide" in the title track, and ends on an inspirational note with two songs urging listeners to "keep hoping and dreaming" (You Will Soar) and to "look above, find love (Broken).

Most of the album has the post-grunge flavor characteristic of Creed's work, which was largely written by Stapp.

"It's my sound, it's the only way I know how to write," he says. "I've continued doing what I've always done. I just have different musicians around me."

Zia's Faber and KDKB's Peterson agree with Stapp's decision to not veer too far from Creed's Grammy-winning sound.

"If you're going away from your roots, your sound, you're being something that you're not," Faber says.

Despite Stapp's tendency to polarize music fans, Faber and Peterson see a strong chance of solo success.

"He's got a lot going for him." Faber says. "He was the lead singer with an extremely popular band. He's a good-looking guy who writes good songs."

The new album's singles, The Great Divide and Surround Me, have been receiving uneven airplay nationwide, but the first song has been in heavy rotation on KDKB since fall. Stapp blames that uneven performance on his failure to visit radio stations nationwide to talk up the CD.

"They're treating me just like a brand-new artist, which is fine," he says. "I am blown away that, with such a lack of promotion and lack of radio airplay, that the album has done as well as it has."

.Larry Rodgers