There was a point in time when Creed was the biggest rock band in the world. It spanned the late-’90s into the beginnings of the new millennia, when TRL was must-watch television, Limp Bizkit claimed the nu-metal throne, ‘N Sync and Backstreet Boys passive aggressively duked it out, and it was either Britney or Christina but never both, even if they each swapped spit with Madonna.
Somehow, an unassuming foursome from Florida led by the thunderous riffs of guitarist Mark Tremonti and passionate orations on youthful alienation by frontman Scott Stapp fit into that mishmash. Creed’s 1997 debut My Own Prison offered a taste of grunge for those too young to experience the rise of Alice in Chains and Pearl Jam in real time. The group’s next two albums, 1999’s Human Clay and 2001’s Weathered, debuted at No. 1 on the charts, but along with success came a harsher-than-usual backlash.
Much of it was due to the spiritual preening by Stapp that a large contingent of critics saw as holier-than-thou, hypocritical posturing. It got to the point where even the rest of the band seemingly wanted nothing to do with him as Tremonti and Creed’s rhythm section, bassist Brian Marshall and drummer Scott Phillips, moved on and put together the prog-metal-tinged outfit Alter Bridge with singer Myles Kennedy.
Five years after Creed’s initial breakup in 2004, they tried again with a new album and tour but went on hiatus a short time later. It looked bleak for the future as all those involved politely distanced themselves from any talk of a reunion with a canned “never say never” response.
Nostalgia is a funny thing, however, and recently the group become an unironic touchstone for professional sports teams like baseball’s Texas Rangers and football’s Minnesota Vikings and Philadelphia Eagles. Serendipitously, a Creed reunion was in the works pre-pandemic and finally came to pass in this spring when they headlined the Summer of ’99 cruise. A tour of the same name is hitting 40 North American cities this summer, including Mansfield on Thursday night (August 21). The majority of the shows, the Xfinity Center among them, are sold out or nearly sold out.
Earlier this month, Vanyaland sat down with Tremonti for a 617 Q&A (Six Questions; One Recommendation; Seven Somethings) when the trek stopped in Bridgeport, Connecticut. Coincidentally, it was the same day his eponymous metal outfit announced the January release of a new LP, titled The End Will Show Us How. Slated to be his 19th full-length release as an artist, it joins the catalog of Creed, Alter Bridge, and his 2022 Frank Sinatra covers record, the latter of which stemmed from a desire to become involved with the National Down Syndrome Society after his daughter Stella was born with the genetic disorder the previous year.
During our talk, Tremonti went deep on the Sinatra project and why it’s his favorite musical achievement to date, the rise, downfall, and resurgence of Creed, and what songs Metallica should play live if James Hetfield ever gets stuck on the setlist.
:: SIX QUESTIONS
Michael Christopher: Looking back at the rise of Creed, the trajectory was perfect for a time. You’re on an indie label, doing small clubs, and the venues are getting progressively bigger each time you come through. Right around the release of Human Clay though, it felt like it just exploded. Suddenly you’re playing on the rooftop of the Rio Hotel in Vegas and at the NFL Thanksgiving halftime show where shirtless dudes are flying around as you perform. Was there a moment where you said to yourself, “Holy shit — this is getting beyond what I imagined.”
Mark Tremonti: There was never a day where one day it was one thing and the next day it was a completely different animal. It was always, like you said, a consistent kind of building to what it became, and it was never an overnight thing. So there was never a day where we’re like, “Holy shit, what happened? We’re already playing arenas.” Looking back, it was a quick rise to where we got, but it was never overnight. It was always a work in progress. When Human Clay and “Higher” started doing really well, that just kind of threw gas on the fire. That just made things speed up a little bit, but it was still not an overnight thing.
When did you start to notice a backlash? Was that an overnight thing or was it gradual?
Probably during the Human Clay record. I think during My Own Prison, we were still kind of the underdogs and still the new band that was on the way up and people are still rooting for you, and I think by the time we hit maybe “With Arms Wide Open,” people were like, “Arggh.” Once you get on top, so to say, people want to chop you down. A lot of people like to do that. I think it’s just a way of mankind, you know? You see the champ; you want to see them beat. You’re rooting for the underdog, but you want somebody to take down the champ.
Almost all the dates on the current tour are sold out. There’s a whole new generation of fans discovering the group for the first time, along with all these high-profile sports teams that are talking about how much they love to use Creed songs to get themselves fired up. Is it more satisfying or surprising given how maligned the band was for so long?
I think slowly but surely the world’s come around and I think people have just kind of aged out of that mind frame with the band. A lot of people went after the personal behind-the-scenes stuff with Creed as well, instead of just listening to the music. I think people just grew up with this music now. They don’t care about all that stuff. They don’t care about the drama; they just appreciate the music.
A lot of our fans, the largest base that we have now is under 30, 40 years old, which is very surprising to us. When you sell a ticket nowadays, you find out the gender of the person buying the ticket and where they’re from, and how old they are. So, when we saw those statistics, we were blown away with the age groups that were buying these tickets. When we play a live show now, and Scott asks the crowd, “How many of you are seeing your very first Creed show tonight?” It seems like almost every hand is up in the air, which blows us away.
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Is there any part of you that feels like time was lost when Creed wasn’t together, or do you think it kind of had to happen to get to where you are now to be able to sustain the relationships you have, whether within the band or musically to have, that time apart?
It would’ve been great if we were all getting along and seeing eye-to-eye to keep on putting out music. But we didn’t waste any time. Once we had all gone our separate ways, I think everybody stayed in survival mode, kept on working and trying to remain professional musicians. I know I was in survival mode when I started Alter Bridge and until I got to the third Alter Bridge record, I was in survival mode. Once I got there, I was like, “You know what? As long as I want to do this, as long as we keep on putting out records that we believe in, I think our fan base will stay true to us, and [we’ll] stay true to them, and we can do this as long as we want. But before that, I was like, “It could be over at any minute. It could be over any record.”
The first part of Creed’s success, we were always fighting for survival. People were saying, “Oh, it’s a one-hit-wonder band. Oh, you’re going to have your sophomore slump on your second record.” All these negative things we’re always fighting to survive and prove people wrong.
And I think that gets lost a lot, that people don’t realize that you weren’t some manufactured band, and you weren’t pushed by a major label or something like that.
I’ve read in the past that we were some pieced-together corporate band. Like you said, little do people know that we were on a tiny little startup record label from a tiny little town in Tallahassee, Florida, paying for our own demos. That demo for My Own Prison is pretty close to what we released. We recorded that demo in Tallahassee, Florida — we just remixed it. It couldn’t have been more of four college dudes trying to make it and get lucky. There was never any kind of big corporate thing where they took some charismatic singer and found some great guitar player in California or bass player from New York and put together the supergroup. It was never that.
What about your relationship with Scott? How is that these days, and do you think you needed that time apart to kind of sort out that relationship?
Yeah, I mean, now I think the best thing, I think everybody realizes what we had then and how right now it’s almost like capturing lightning in a bottle twice. Having the amount of people showing up to these shows has been amazing to us. So I think everybody’s just appreciative of what we have going on now. Maybe in the first round when you’re young and you think you’re invincible and you take things for granted, you don’t make the best decisions personally. So, nowadays, we just appreciate it so much and I get to have my family out here watching this for the first time. I think we’re all just more… I don’t know… wise? [laughs]
Would you say you and Scott are friends?
When we’re all working together? Definitely. We’re friends and we’re a unit. We’re still so fresh new into this tour that everybody’s kind of… I spend all my day with my kids and my baby. I got my three-year-old baby out here. So, there hasn’t been a lot of like, “Hey, day off, let’s all go to the ballgame,” or something like that. We’re all friendly with one another, but it’s different than when you’re young college kids [and] you’re like, “Hey, let’s go hit the bar and let’s go hang out all day.”
Now it’s like, “Hey, I got to make sure my college kid who’s out here on tour signing up for his next semester classes and my other son’s going to bed on time and my daughter gets fed lunch and dinner and got to change her for the show.” We’re just so busy. There’s no time to really hang yet, but my family’s actually flying home tonight, so now I’m going to dive headfirst into just all-day writing. I’ve got a Tremonti record that’s mixed and mastered, ready to come out early next year, but now I’ve got to write a ton of music for what comes next.
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The Human Clay deluxe edition just came out. You were road-testing a lot of that album for a couple of years leading up to its release and not all of them made it onto the record. Some of the really good ones turned up as b-sides or appeared on soundtracks. “Young Grow Old,” “To Whom it May Concern,” “Bound & Tied.” They’ve mostly made it onto the deluxe edition, but do you ever look back and wish that those songs were showcased more, that they didn’t get relegated to a soundtrack or a Japanese b-side so they could be presented more accessible to fans and you’re like, “Damn, I wish that people could have heard this song or that song?”
I feel that on every record. It’s just part of this business. You have to understand that you’re always going to sacrifice a few songs for a Japanese release or if Target or Walmart or Best Buy needs an extra track for their version, just got to make sure you always have stuff to spare. But we don’t ever write songs like, “Ah, let’s just write a crappy song since we need an extra one.” We’re always trying to write the best songs we can, and then we have to decide, “Well, maybe these two songs fill the same space dynamically on this record. Let’s just take one of those and put it and make it a b-side.” But a lot of times I like the songs every bit as much as the others.
When you’re doing a tour like this, obviously you have to play the hits, but is there a part of you that’s like, “I really want to break out a “Bound & Tied?” I keep mentioning that song — and I know it’s a My Own Prison bonus track — because I love that riff and how it just grinds along.
Well, right now we’re testing the setlist we got going on, and the singles, the big songs that everybody knows, are so powerful in the set. We have to be very careful with keeping that heightened attention on the set. If we stray too much, there’s a lot of people that are like, “Just play the damn hits!” But we have, I don’t know, six songs in the setlist that are kind of, they’re album tracks and the rest are the singles. So far, we’ve been rotating songs like “Beautiful,” “Rain,” “Overcome,” and a couple more that we kind of have in the middle of the set that we decide what we’re going to do that night. It’s always a moving target, but it’s easier when it’s a heavy, fast, hard song and it’s an album track. People get into it just because it’s heavy. But when it’s more of a moody thing, “Who’s Got My Back?” or something like that, I don’t know if people are going to have the patience for it.
You mentioned the new Tremonti album, which was just announced. This is going to be your 19th studio album across your various projects – which in itself blows my mind – and whenever there’s an artist like yourself who has so many different musical endeavors going on, I’m curious as to how you keep it straight. When do you know when it’s a riff for an Alter Bridge record versus Tremonti versus Creed?
The only time I really know if it’s going to stick to one band is when it’s Tremonti. When it’s got too much of a metal element to it for the other bands, then it goes to the Tremonti band. I fought for years pushing metal riffs on these guys, and I’ve gotten a total “No” many times to certain riffs. I’m like, “All right, start my own band and play it in my other band.” So, [a] speed metal-influenced riff, I’ll still present it to the guys, but if they give me that look like it’s too speed metal, then I’ll take it to the Tremonti band. But, that being said, I think I got out a lot of my heavy urges into Tremonti along the way. Now, when I approach Tremonti, I just want it to be the best songs possible, the ones that I like singing. So the lines sometimes are blurred. But I always know it’s going to be in the Sinatra band. [laughs]
How many riffs and other ideas do you have stockpiled for the next Creed record?
Oh, I’ve got thousands. Literally thousands. I hoarded my ideas since I was, gosh, since I bought my first little handheld tape recorder – the little micro cassettes – saved my ideas since I was maybe in junior high school, high school.
When it was announced a couple of years back, just when the headline popped up Mark Tremonti Sings Frank Sinatra, I think the knee-jerk reaction was almost like the reverse of Pat Boone doing the metal record. It was a goof. No way could this be serious. But not only was it genuine, but it’s been widely acclaimed, and, most importantly, you’ve really shone a light on the National Down Syndrome Society since it came out. What can you tell me about the impact the record, and the subsequent touring where you showcase those songs, has had on you both as a person and on the NDSS?
It’s been the most amazing experience, professionally, in my life. When I first got into singing like Frank Sinatra, I just wanted to do it for fun, and I didn’t know why I was doing it. And then when I got the diagnosis that my daughter was going to be born with Down Syndrome, that light bulb went off. There’s a reason why I’m a fanatic of Sinatra right now. He raised over a billion dollars for charity. It’s disappointing that nobody really talks about that too much with Frank Sinatra. I wasn’t nervous at all, because we were doing this for charity. And when it came out, the response it got blew me away. It just blew me away. I could have written a thousand rock records before I got the attention from some of the folks that have responded to this record.
I remember being over in Europe and going into catering when we were playing with Judas Priest and Rob Halford. As soon as I walked in the room, he’s like, “That record is beautiful!” I’m like, “Which record is that?” He’s like, “The Sinatra record!” I’m like, “Oh shit, thank you. Rob!” And then Paul Stanley from Kiss randomly tweeted about it, and I thanked him. Slash gave me a great endorsement thing. Hank [Cattaneo], the producer for Frank Sinatra’s Duets record, his biggest record ever, was so complimentary. Even Robert Plant. My buddy is his personal security at some points, and he shot me a little note. He’s like, “Yeah, I was driving Robert to Bonnaroo and I put on your Sinatra record, and he really, really enjoyed it. He thought it was fantastic.” So, me hearing that, I’m like, how many rock records would I have written before Robert Plant would actually listen to give a compliment? But anyways, I didn’t have any of that in mind. I didn’t want to impress anybody. I just wanted to put something out and have it come out and raise some money and awareness. I think sometimes when you do those things, the stars align and it works out.
We’ve raised, I think we’ve raised almost multimillion dollars with this project now, and we put some of that money towards the ‘Smile with Stella Tremonti Down Syndrome Clinic’ at Advent Health in Orlando, Florida. It’s the very first lifespan Down Syndrome clinic in the southeast, and I have a fundraiser for it December 14 this year again, and we constantly are trying to raise money for that and the National Down Syndrome Society. When I look back on my career, it will be, if not the highlight, one of the highlights for sure. Especially opening up that clinic was probably my proudest moment of anything that I’ve ever done in my career.
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One of the things I love is it’s not like you’re getting up on stage and doing the songs in a t-shirt and jeans. It’s almost like you’re paying respect to the time of the music and what came with it by classing it up. How thought out was that for you — did you want to show homage to the music by dressing the part as well?
Hundred percent. I don’t think anybody’s even noticed this, but since I recorded my Sinatra record, I haven’t worn earrings. [laughs] I had my earrings since I was 18 years old. I don’t think anybody even noticed I took him out. But I remember reading a book, I think it was Bono, saying like, “Yeah, Sinatra don’t like guys and earrings, but we got along. We got along all right.” When I saw that, I’m like, “All right, I’m taking my earrings out. I’m not singing Sinatra songs with my earrings in.”
:: ONE RECOMMENDATION
Mark Tremonti: If you want to remain a professional musician, don’t turn off the writing faucet. Just keep it flowing. I think some artists will take years to put out a record [and] wait years until they get back into writing the next one. But I’ve been lucky enough to have so many projects that I’m not allowed to turn that faucet off. And I’ve noticed times when if I’ve just finished a record and I just want to chill for a minute on the writing and just get into playing guitar, when I come back to the writing, it takes a minute to get that fired back up again. So, I think my biggest suggestion is don’t ever stop writing. That’s the most important part. It’s way more important than practicing your instruments, just writing, being creative.
I think that can apply to a lot of different disciplines too. I mean, it can apply to beyond music.
Be creative and don’t stop being creative. Speaking of that, when I’m writing, one of my dreams is to become a published author. And I’ve tried and tried, tried now for maybe, I don’t know, 10 years now. I find when I’m being creative on my instrument writing songs, I feel like I’m more open-minded and more creative in my writing. And anything creative just kind of comes to life. So, I think [the] creativity muscle is a real thing.
:: SEVEN OF SOMETHING
You’re a huge Metallica fan, that’s been well-established. Currently, they’re on the road and recently did their no-repeat weekend in Boston, and it was just amazing. Let’s say James Hetfield comes up to you and he says, “Mark, we need help coming up with the setlist. Give us seven songs that you think we should play tonight.”
I would say “Orion” number one.
“Fight Fire with Fire.”
“Trapped Under Ice.”
“The Call of Ktulu.”
“Damage Inc.”
“Master of Puppets.”
“Welcome Home (Sanitarium).”
Damn, that’s like half of Master of Puppets.
Ride the Lightning and Master of Puppets were my two favorite records — two of my favorite records of all time. Master Puppets is my favorite record of all time. I’d say my other would be Morbid Tales/Emperor’s Returned by Celtic Frost. Those are my contenders for top record. And if Metallica came on for the encore, they’d have to do the Mercyful Fate medley.
CREED + 3 DOORS DOWN + FINGER ELEVEN :: Wednesday, August 21 at Xfinity Center, 885 S. Main St., in Mansfield MA :: 7 p.m., all ages, $95 to $252.60 :: Event info and tickets