Prison Break

Guitar World September 1998

How Florida's neo-grunge men Creed beat the odds with their indie release, My Own Prison.

Creed is an overnight success. Other bands might resist the tag, but Creed frontman Scott Stapp isn't arguing. How could he? His little ol' hard rock band from Florida has sold in excess of a million records over the past year and is busy playing major venues in major markets. Stapp is noticeably thrilled. And yet, he's also willing to admit that as Creed's popularity grows, he's learning firsthand that overnight success is often accompanied by a backlash: Creed, many critics say, sound a bit too much like Pearl Jam, Alice in Chains and other Seattle bands.

"Sure, I hear what people say. But the only opinion I care about are from the fans," Stapp says. "People can throw stones all day, but I'm in front of 3,000 people who know the words to every single song on our record. How many other bands have that? Creed's got an army out there. These people are diehard."

Creed's fans are indeed growing in number. The band's debut album, My Own Prison, has been certified Platinum on the strength of its title track's massive radio airplay and the band's relentless touring. A second single, "Torn", is also doing well at traditional rock radio, although radio programmers seem to be most excited about "What's This Life For?", a song some believe has enormous crossover potential.

But exactly why an unknown band that sounds like it could have been born in Seattle five years ago seems breaking so big, so fast, is still something of a mystery. And what's most surprising is how Creed managed to do it on a tiny New York indie label, Wind-up Records.

Surely, Creed benefited from being the label's only act and therefore its sole point of promotional focus. It also didn't hurt that Wind-up had deep pockets and distribution through BMG, facts which guaranteed that the discs would reach stores. But little of that would matter without radio play - the most important factor in breaking bands in the Nineties.

To that end, the understaffed label reportedly hired an expensive team of radio promoters and began testing Creed's chances on Florida radio. Rick Schmidt, the program director of WXSR, the alternative rock station in the band's hometown of Tallahassee, says it didn't take long for his listeners to respond - or for other radio stations across the country to see a Florida success story building and jump on the bandwagon themselves. "'My Own Prison' was a great song that listeners reacted to strongly and quickly," says Schmidt. "It snowballed from there. And it didn't hurt that Wind-up and BMG had the record in stores, on display and at the end of the aisles. It was easy for listeners to find and buy, and easy for us at radio to see those sales building."

But Creed guitarist Mark Tremonti says the impetus behind the band's success is actually something far simpler. "We fill a void," he says. "People have apparently missed the singer-guitar-bass-drum approach to American rock and roll. We're sincere and we play like we're in our basement, only our basement keeps getting bigger."

When they started in 1995, Stapp, Tremonti, drummer Scot Philips and bassist Brian Marshall literally were playing Tallahassee basement. A year later, they began slowly pooling the $6,000 it took to record My Own Prison. After selling over 3,000 copies on their own Blue Collar Records, Stapp and Co. decided to shop around for help. "A lot of labels were telling us rock and roll was dead, and labels like Atlantic and Universal told us they wanted to release it a year later," Tremonti says. "We had momentum growing and we needed to get the record out."

If it was speed Creed was looking for, Wind-up had it. The label first heard the record on a Wednesday, flew to Florida that Friday, and brought the band to New York to close the deal the following week. For Creed, Wind-up seemed like an opportunity for attention, input and long-term commitment. And for Wind-up, Creed was offering a finished album, a small grass roots following, and the chance to impact rock radio.

"They were a new band, and we were a new label," says Wind-up president Steve Lerner. "We're pretty practical people, but in our bones we knew we had something special. Our expectations were that we had a multi-Platinum band and everything we'd do would have to be in line with that goal."

For Wind-up, that game plan meant having Ron Saint-Germain (Tool, 311) remix the album, rushing "My Own Prison" to radio and planning a tour of various radio markets - a tour that was wisely preceded by a Wind-up promotion man who visited each radio station, retailer and venue along the way bearing giveaway records, posters and concert tickets.

"Touring sells records, and radio has definitely been the key to our success," says Stapp, who claim Creed still spend nearly 15 hours a day promoting themselves through radio performances, in-store appearances and press interviews. "A lot of bands say 'fuck radio'. but that's because they haven't had that success and they've taken the opposite side. Radio's part of the childhood dream of being a rock star. You want radio, you want MTV, and you want to play for 30,000 people. Nobody wants to play for five people and struggle. We didn't want to be underground. So we went for it, and went for it hard."

A year after the release of My Own Prison, Creed and Wind-up's promotional efforts only seem to be gaining momentum. And judging from all the sold-out shows and radio requests, Creed fans are indeed a die-hard bunch. But while Stapp maintains that his band is in it for the long haul, he seems painfully aware that some industry insiders have declared Creed nothing more than the latest faceless, radio-driven, one-album wonder. "We're waiting for our time. It won't be long before people know who Scott Stapp and Mark Tremonti are," he says. "At this point, everybody's written us off, and it may take our second album going multi-Platinum before anyone gives us any respect. But when our time comes, people will understand us. We're already blown away by our success and realize we've struck some kind of nerve, but we're just going to have to continue proving people wrong."

.Andy Langer