Scott Stapp Interview Transcript

March 29 2006

[Transcript of interview (Scott Stapp tells Hans Fruck that there’s no such thing as Rock ‘n’ Roll 101 29 March 2006) with former Creed singer Scott Stapp. Stapp is playing two shows in Australia this April to promote his solo album, The Great Divide. The interview had been delayed a few hours while Scott took his son to a game of baseball.]

Hi, how are you?

I’m doin’ wonderful. Thank you for asking. How are you?

I’m doing fine. How was the baseball game?

Oh, it was great. My son was two for two, with two RBIs, and his team won 8-6. And so I got to walk off the field like my son was the reason we won. Daddy’s pride, you know what I’m saying? I didn’t say anything, but I was just so proud of my boy. He wanted to stay after practice and work even more with his throwing. It was just fun to play with him. I’d coached him and his football team, and we’d always gone out and I worked with him [at] baseball privately. But since we got this record and stuff going, I couldn’t coach his second baseball team. I coached his first baseball team when he was younger. And now he’s playing in the seven- and nine-year-old league, but before that it was a five-year-old league. But you know, it’s been a great day, and then we went out to eat afterwards to celebrate, and then came home. And I’ve just been relaxing, man. Doing interviews, and looking forward to coming to Australia.

It’s been a few years since you toured Australia with Creed. How did the Aust audiences respond last time?

Ah, man, one thing I love about Australia is it’s home. The fans and I have the exact same connection as home, so it’s almost like I haven’t left except for that two-day plain ride. Once I’m there and get switched on it’s like home. I live in South Beach and right outside and on the beach. we’d go there every weekend. You know, it’s a similar place to where I like to be. The way the fans respond to music it’s like I haven’t left. And even in ways that make it more special for that night and that moment. It’s always a place that I’ll be. And I’ve always said that I want to go to places where people want to hear me.

You’re used to playing with Creed. So massive stadiums and thousands and thousands of people. This tour’s gonna be a bit different. You’re gonna be playing smaller venues. Must be a different experience for you.

That was something that we planned to do. And I’ve loved it, man. I mean, I’ve loved it – just to reconnect in a room in front of 2500 people.

But how does that work, because you guys have a massive sound. You know, your vocals, massive riffs, huge drums.

It works exactly like I wanted it to when I recorded it. On this album, I was so much trying to... You know, on Weathered the sonics of the album, you know, sonically speaking, I wanted that to be as close to perfection as I could in every aspect. Even with headphone ear candy. And I felt to the best of my ability and the people around me that helped me create that album that we did that. It doesn’t mean that it is perfect sonically, but to the best of our ability. You know, every show, man, I’d be signing autographs backstage and hanging out with another band and a fan would walk up and be like always two or three guys or a girl and they’d be like: you guys sound so much better live. And I think that was my goal in sound on this record, to get a very live feel on this record, imperfection was less important than feeling. And I think I accomplished that with eight out of the 10 songs, and on the next pressing of the album I’m gonna put the original demo versions back on the record. Because they’re just better than me resinging them again, and the way the mix came out. But, you know, that was my goal, and also to just continue to be honest with my lyrics, man. And I feel the only way I know how to write is from my heart, and what’s on my mind. And the cool thing about being solo is I no longer have to show such solidarity and take on the chips of some other person in the band may have on their shoulder. You can be yourself. There’s less compromises. I’m not saying I wasn’t myself all the time in Creed, but there were times when – you know, I did found and start the band and Mark and I worked together and I did all the lyrics and melodies and vocals, but we worked together on the music, and creating the sound of Creed. That’s why the sound came with me on the second album. But it grew as well, and it has its differences, and I think my new band contributed to that, because I left the floor open to let them create once I had given them everything that I had.

Do you still get on with the other members of Creed. Are the communication lines still open?

Oh, no. No. Creed will never get back together.

Oh, man. You’ll have a lot of disappointed fans.

Well, you know, man, I think that Creed was an idea. One thing that we say, me and my band now, is ‘this is bigger than us’. That’s because the music is like a journal of our growth in life, and our ups and downs, and ways of how we want to be but aren’t, but we may sing about because we’re trying to build ourselves up, not anybody else. There’s no agenda. The music, for me, lyrics especially, I write for me. And I think that was such a misunderstanding in Creed. But it’s not gonna change. Just the players. There’ll be changes in the music per se, but I really consider this just Creed album number four, nothing really changed except the guys I had play around me, and I went from one genius guitar player to another.

You refer to a ‘misunderstanding’. Are you referring to this obsession with your faith – or lack thereof – in the media, in the interviews you conduct with them? Were you surprised about that? What’s that all about?

I don’t know why. You know, I talk about my spiritual life, and that’s what I call it. I talk about it in some of my songs. I did on my first song that I ever released to the world. And that’s another thing that people forget: I didn’t come out to the world saying ‘Look, I have arrived. I have all the answers. I came out to the world and said ‘God, I create my own prisons and should have been dead. God, I need some help. People got it all mixed up. Dude, when you’re on your back, the only thing you can do is look up. And you’ve got one foot that’s ready to go down to hell, and you’re gonna cry out to god – I don’t care who you are. Even Nietzsche said, ‘No man dies an atheist’.

That’s one of the things I wanted to ask you. You’ve been through some pretty tumultuous times. You’ve been fairly open about your battle with alcohol and drugs at various times, and you’ve had a few brushes with authority...

[inaudible] ...about my family.

...Do you think you could have been as good an artist without these troubles. If you’d lived behind a picket fence.

You know, spiritually speaking, I have prayed that I don’t have to go these lows any more in order to create or fight my way back up. I’m getting older, man. I’m getting sore longer. You know what I mean? When I’m lifting weights, you know maybe the next two days I play golf now. I don’t wanna reach those bottoms, and I don’t think I’m ever gonna go back there. I found out the hard way. But that’s just my nature, man. That’s just as honest as I can be. I’m just one of those guys that it takes a few stupid mistakes of the same thing to finally sink in. You know, it almost takes me till the point when I’m about to ruin it all before I learn. I don’t know why I’m so stubborn. But I am. And maybe it had a lot to do with living in such a controlled environment when I was a child, and being in a very militaristic upbringing, a strict religious upbringing, and spankings, and everything was on a timer. Thing of that nature. And, you know, I went the opposite way and rebelled, and also, because of that upbringing, to have dealt with it in my music throughout my career. And on this record, I talked about. This record was written in the order it came out of me. It was an accident, though. I can’t take credit for it. This was a very free-form-written record. I just said, ‘Hey man, let the tape roll’. And I’d either teach the band what I had written or any ideas they had come to me with. And then I would arrange the song. Once I had taught the band the song, I’d say ‘Alright, well, just start playing it man’. Let the tape roll, and put the headphones on, and I’d start singing. And it just came out, and I couldn’t recreate some of those feelings.

I want to ask you about Creed. You guys just had a gargantuan amount of success. The music industry is a difficult mountain to climb. When the band split up, and now you’ve gone solo, did you ever doubt that you could climb that mountain a second time?

Oh, you know. I never thought about it. Here I am doing it, man. At the time, man. You’re just in the moment. I was in the moment, but not in the moment because of things going on in my personal life. And it was a rough time for me as well as for everybody else in the band. There was a lot of stuff going on. You know, I thought it was gonna last forever. The thing is, is I think it can, and I think it is. And I don’t wanna take away from the guys that played with me in Creed, but you know it’s carried on, man. It’s right there on The Great Divide. And of course it’s got its differences, but the essence of the band I started, Creed, and the sound that I helped create and wrote with is there, man. The only thing that I really focussed on differently lyrically is... I’m tired of being misunderstood. And so I wanted to get it out there that ‘Hey, you know’ – and I think I mentioned this before – I write about how I wanna be sometimes not how I am.

One of the songs that interested me was Justify, where you say that you ‘don’t have to justify the way you live your life’. Was that directed at anyone or anything in particular? What made you write those lyrics?

You know, I talk a lot to my fans to explain some of the songs on this album, and that’s one of them. That song is not about a defiance from me. If you listen to the lyrics it’s wrapped around, OK? The lyrics that wrap around that chorus – and before I wouldn’t talk about meanings of songs, but I’m gonna give it to you in a way that I think, you know, you as an intelligent man, can think about it and see where I’m coming from. Look at what it’s wrapped around. And so what am I not saying I have to justify? I’m being completely honest in that song. Saying I’ve lived a life of deceit. I surrounded myself with worldly things. Listen, I lived a double life. That’s confession. That’s saying: ‘I didn’t have to tell you this. You put this tag on me.’ But I’m gonna tell ya, since day one I’ve been telling you that I’ve been creating my own prisons. And you know what? I haven’t reached enlightenment because of my success. I said, you know, ‘It’s only made things a little worse, in terms of my joy. Not in terms of my success and the fame and the other things that came with it. At the end of the day, being happy and waking up with a skip in your step and being happy and not having all these worries – that’s where I wanna be, brother. I wanna be in the sublime 24/7. But I feel like I live right in the middle of the ‘great divide’ on a daily basis. Hopefully as I get older – I’ve found out I’ve had to learn the hard way, like I said before – I’ll make better choices when I’m in that great divide. That great divide is my struggle and my journey. And my goal is to be set free of that great divide, and spend that time in the sublime. But that’s just a dream, man. I’m a dreamer. The reality of life is that we get bits and pieces of the sublime. We gotta appreciate those and surround ourselves with people that give us more bits and pieces of the sublime than negativity.

I wanted to ask you about negativity. Because, you know, they say in physics for every action there’s an equal and opposite reaction, and for Creed you became so successful that immediately there were people who just really wanted to take you down, and criticise you, and sink in the boots. Can you just shrug that kind of criticism off or do you take it to heart?

No, listen, that hurt me, man. That wasn’t my rock n roll dream. Let me be honest with you, dude. You don’t think that your rock n roll dream is not [laughs]... You know, you think you’re gonna be loved by everybody. That’s just the bottom line truth. If you have that mass success... and we took it very personal – all of us. And the guys really took the Christian thing very personal. And that was one of the reasons, one of the million reasons, but that was one of the reasons. They didn’t understand it, but they saw... Once they did understand it, they didn’t really understand it.

Are you saying that they didn’t like being described as a Christian rock band?

No. You know what, why does music have to have a label? You know, aside from a genre. Why does it have to be Christian rock? Why can’t it just be rock? The thing is, though, you listen to my music. There is never once that I try and make people believe what I believe. I ask more questions – there’s more doubt – in all my records. There’s more doubt, and more a crying out to something I can’t see.

Scott, we’ve only got about 30 seconds left, and you can feel free to say ‘Simon, that’s absolutely none of your business–’

Oh hey, are you talking about the sex tape?

Yeah. Well, you know...

I can’t really talk a lot about that because of the litigation and lawsuit, but let me tell you, man. Somebody... I can’t believe that on my wife’s first marriage, a beautiful wedding... What hurts me the most about that is my wife had to deal with that. It stole a good three-four days of joy from my honeymoon. And that’s not cool, man. Fortunately, me and my wife were honest with each other, and we’d known each other and shared things with each other that prior, way prior to that tape, six, seven, eight months prior, I had told her after my first divorce that I went reeling a little bit. And I kinda wanted to experience the rock n roll lifestyle. I thought it was what I was supposed to do. I thought, hey man, this is what my idols did, right? And this is how I was thinking. I was young, you know, 24, 25. And, you know, I did what I did. I’m not ashamed that the whole world knows. If they would ask me, I’d tell ‘em. But what I’m ashamed of is... I’m ashamed of that behaviour now.

Are you and Kid Rock still on speaking terms?

Oh, Bob, was just getting publicity. You know, his album was coming out.

But that’s what some people are saying about you? You must be pretty disappointed about that? That people are saying the same thing about you?

Ah, whaddya mean? About the tape?

Yeah.

Nah, the tape was stolen, man. Do you think that I’d put that out about myself? My god, man. And also, Bob. Listen, behind the scenes, Bob wasn’t happy that tape was out. Are you kidding me? He went off on me, even publicly. But behind the scenes, he still was like ‘how could you be so stupid to let someone steal that from you?’

Well, you can’t control what people steal–

I was like, dude, man, I had it in my safe. You know, it was a freakin’ stupid move. Even to allow it to get stolen from me. But someone who I trusted and hired stole that from me. It’s unfortunate. It hurt. But we got through, because of our relationship and the maturity of it, and we enjoyed the rest of our honeymoon. And then I just had an amazing tour in the States. The thing is, man, I found that when you start surrounding yourself with positive people that love you for you, and support you through anything, you know? That’s what gives me the strength to go on, and I found it. But that doesn’t mean I’m a perfect person, brother. I got my battles just like everybody else. I just share mine with the world. The only thing that keeps me going, man, is because, deep down inside, I’m gonna win. I don’t wanna lose. That’s what gets me through life. I look at life as ‘Hey, this is not gonna beat me’. I’m gonna enjoy it, and you know what? It’s been half and half. And it may even have been less enjoyment than the other. But you know, dammit, I’m gonna get it. I’m gonna get it. And you know, balance, and getting away from the machine, is what’s gonna do it for me, and just keeping my music true to myself, man. You listen to the record... What’d you think?

Yeah, it’s a good record. I liked it more than I thought I would, to be perfectly honest. I just have one question for you. I think your fans would like to know: will you be playing any Creed songs when you’re touring?

Oh yeah, dude. I mean, they’re my songs. I do my whole new record and I do 10 Creed songs. We mix it up. But I pretty much make sure I do all my hits. But then there are songs that people like live that I found out over the years, like Faceless Man and Wash Away the Years sometimes, and Lullaby, and Bullet, and Freedom Fighter, and even going back to Unforgiven Illusion, and things of that nature. I play everything I write, man. It’s just a matter of the mood that I’m in. It’s hard to jump back into some of those moods, because those were times and diaries and depictions of my mind and my life at the time. So some of the songs I sing, and I think ‘My God, I can’t believe that I wrote this song’...

It’s like a time capsule.

Yeah, exactly. So we just try to keep it fresh. The typical Creed fan comes to the show an they gonna get everything that they love and more.

Would you be OK with the other guys now playing in Alter Bridge playing Creed songs.

I don’t think they could pull it off. You think someone could pull off me?

No. No, probably not.

I don’t think anyone could pull off Mark Tremonti. That’s why everything is done exactly like Mark Tremonti played it. But I don’t think somebody could take away my heart and make a cover song out of it. I don’t think someone could do me. I’m sorry. Could somebody do Bono? Springsteen? I mean, I couldn’t do Axl Rose–

God forbid, man.

I mean, I’m just saying. I’m not saying I’m in those guys’ league. I’m just saying that I think I have my own sound, and unfortunately as a guitar player there’s thousands and millions of them. But lead singers with a distinctive style and a way of writing lyrics that’s just not replaceable and that was something that was learned by Alter Bridge. You can’t just plug in somebody new and expect the same thing to happen. And for me it’s more about just name awareness. You know, people know me as the Creed guy. They see me and go ‘Scott Creed!’ I get recognised everywhere, but Scott Stapp people don’t know. But they’re gonna know this go-around.

Does that piss you off, at all?

Not at all, man. I did everything I ever said I was gonna do. I never said I would announce the breakup. I committed myself to spend 10 years of my life to be with them. I swore I’d never say anything negative about them in the press. I signed agreements. I spent Christmases, and all that. These are my friends. So that’s why the way their situation and the way they handled it shocked me to death first of all. But it was also like, my god, I was almost a dead man. It was almost Creed turned to greed. And you know, I had a role to play in that, because I’m a grown man. I can make decisions. I can tell a doctor ‘Hey, I’m listening to this doctor. I come from an athletic background, so my mentality, being a leader, I played quarterback, I played shortstop, I was always in a leadership role in the athletic teams I played on, and I approached that way in my music. And I was like ‘Shoot me up, and I’ll do it’. And I did and took whatever I needed to, to try and keep this band together. But really it was killing me.

Are you referring to the stress it would put on your voice, among other things?

Well, I was diagnosed with pneumonia. I got hit by a car doing 60mph when I was parked and messed up my back and my neck. I had two tumours that I was diagnosed with. They thought that I had lymphoma. You know, they were giving me all these things, and prednizone, and whatever... But you know what? I’m a grown man. I can say, ‘You know what? I’m not gonna do this.’ OK? I’m gonna take care of myself, because I need to be alive for my son, because there’s a risk here. And I remember that I wanted this band to stay together so bad I said ‘Ah, who cares if I don’t live to be past 50?’ I can’t believe that those words came out of my mouth. I was 25 years old, but I can’t believe those words came out of my mouth.

When you’re young you just think you’re living for yourself, but as you get older I guess you realise that you’re living for other people too.

Yeah, well, I had a baby at the time. I had a baby that was probably eight or nine months old. Ten months old. Maybe a year. I just didn’t get it. That’s why on Arms Wide Open I was like I don’t know if I’m ready to be the man I’m supposed to be. You know, that song was talking about me being a perfect father. That song was saying: God, I hope he’s not like me, man. [Laughs] I hope he can greet the world with arms wide open, dude, because all I do is fight it. And I fight it in my head and it’s a constant struggle, and you know I get bits and pieces of happiness, but... damn. I don’t even know if I’m ready. It’s not like, you know, I was saying I’m Mr Joe Dad, pattern after me. Hell no. Listen to the words. And that’s what I couldn’t understand. You know, yeah, I’d have the songs like Can You Take Me Higher, but you know why I said can you take me higher? Because I was about as low as you could go. And I needed to be taken higher, because I was sinking. In my dreams, I’m fantasising about getting out of these holes. When dreaming, I’m guided to another place time and time again. I’m having a dream about just getting up into this high place and this positive place in my life. It’s not reality to me, you see? I wish people would have got it. But you know what? That’s my fault too. You know, part of the chip that was on the band’s shoulder was ‘The press hates us, and we’ve gotta have this chip’, and we came off as a bunch of pretentious a-holes, man. To some people. And you know what? We deserved what we got. I mean, but we were young and naive, and we didn’t know. I mean, there’s no guidebook on Rock n Roll 101. I mean, we were trying to do what we thought was best. And we thought, you know, that just acting like tough guys like we didn’t care. And then go off back and handle that way, and you know, just act pretentious in an interview. I mean, what’s up with that, man? You and me, dude, we need each other. Why would I want to be pretentious with someone... You and I, we work together. And that’s part of growing and understanding, and I learned a lot of that in the reflection time that I’ve had over the last four or five years, and then also in just being yourself, man. And that’s not to say... I was always myself in my music. But a part of me was not myself in public, and it was because of all these expectations that people had of me.

You’re moving in a world that’s pretty superficial sometimes. You know, the music industry. It’s a fact, isn’t it? A lot of it’s about image. Sometimes if you’re not careful you get sucked into that way of living. That way of being.

Yeah, I guess. I just didn’t no what to do. [tape flip] It’s all about who you have in your life, man. And what people’s priorities are, and right now my priority is to enjoy what I do in all aspects. That’s why I’m doing interviews at 10 o’clock at night at home during my break. Because I’m finally getting to have a conversation to a journalist, instead of feeling like I’m taking a deposition. And just talking about the reality of the situation. And the thing is, I chose this life. I chose to be in the public eye. So I can’t expect everybody to act like I think I would expect myself to be. There’s things that I’ve expected myself to be that I have not lived up to. Obviously. It’s good to be the king, isn’t it?

Well, yeah, absolutely, but...

Did you hear what I said there? I said it was ‘good to be the king’. I was kinda picking on myself there. [That’s what Scott says in the sex tape, while, er, being serviced by one of the ladeez...] But you know, that’s where your head can get.

Yeah, but I mean... You chose to be a rock star, not necessarily a role model, you know? Do you think it’s fair that people–

Exactly right. But the thing is... Part of me because of my spiritual life feels like... that I need to be. This is my struggle, man. This is what I deal with every day. This is what I talk to my close friends about. A have a heart for kids, and that’s what my foundation is for – for kids. [Scott has founded a charitable foundation.] There’s part of me that has that philanthropic side and wants to help kids and be a role model, and then there’s part of me that me, man, that wants to tear it up. You know what I mean? There’s part of me that’s completely fulfilled with being a married man and having a son, and more children. But then there’s another part of me that sometimes thinks about the other. It’s just a matter of making those choices – I’m a human being, you know? But I chose to be in the public eye. But that’s just the reality of it, man. And that’s the dichotomy of my life, is I’m trying to... My goal and part of my growth and my journey is to try to see if my actions can match my words.

Ah, I think we’re all in that boat, aren’t we?

Yeah, I know, man. But it’s a journey. It’s not a 360 thing. It’s something I think that’s a process, and you may never reach it till you die. But it’s just something that I’m trying to do. But I’m being honest with you. I’m not telling you that you’re not gonna read in the paper six months ago that I got busted at an airport drinking again. [The day he was married Scott was arrested refused boarding onto a plane at LAX en route to a honeymoon in Hawaii with his wife because he was drunk.] I don’t know what’s gonna happen in six months. But I know where my heart is. My heart is... I don’t think I’m very good. You know, I never allow alcohol in my home. My son’s never been around it...

Well, all you can do is confront the world with good intentions, you know? Sometimes is doesn’t work out that way...

Yeah, I know, but I always shoot myself in the foot! [Laughs] You know, I create my own prisons. How about that?

I’ve heard that before, I think.

Yeah, I think so.

Anyone who’s honest with themselves has been there and done that. So rather than throw rocks, hopefully, you’ll get a bit of empathy...

You know what? At the end of the day, we have one life, and as long as we didn’t hurt anybody. You know, I didn’t take my buddy hunting and shoot him in the face. [Laughs]

[Laughing] What can you be referring to?

I have a little aftershow fun – as a single man. [Laughs] I mean, there are much bigger fish to fry here. You know, don’t be a dick and go in woods with bush. I heard that one just yesterday.

You’re just giving me so many good quotes here.

But the thing is... That’s the whole scope of it with me. Just putting it all in perspective, and just hoping that everybody else does. And finally, getting to be... just introducing myself to the world. And I think that’s what you do when you’re doing your solo thing, right? I think that’s something that we could have done in Creed. But there was too much – as we got successful – too much... I was trying so hard to keep the band together because of how things were happening. So I really needed to make sure that no one poked there head out. But the media pulled my head out. I had no choice. But as much as I could I tried to dish off, and pull back. This go-around, man, hey, if I feel like wearing flip-flops or board shorts and a tanktop and doin’ my show – that’s what I show up in? – then that’s what I’m doin’ my show in. Because that pretty much lets you know where I’m at in my head.

[A little more small talk. Interview over.]