Cover story on Mr. Stapp on CNN.com entertainment

worlie

Instead of a Police/Sting reference he should have said:

N'Sync/Justin
Genesis/Phil
Limp Bizkit/Fred

continue everyone....

BlindMelonade

It looks like a Godsmack album cover...What the hell?

soulsinging

Kenny Olav wrote:

ahahahaha... i had to come back to this thread just to laugh at the album cover.


and by the way, regarding the Stapp vs. 311 smackdown story, here's the blog from 311's MySpace:

Setting the record straight

i agree, it's pretty priceless

the indignation and outrage from 311 fans on their blog is kind funny too though...

Uninvited Guest

The opening sentence of the article says 'I just felt hated so I wanted to go away'. Then why the hell didn't he!?! It would have made the world a better place.

I just read a review of this album in Rolling Stone. They hated it and cited one song (can't remember the title) as being a complete rip off of Release. Not that I'm going to buy to find out but I thought it was worth mentioning.

evenkat

I think i feel sorry for the guy.

http://www.fortwayne.com/mld/journalgazette/living/13348460.htm

Posted on Wed, Dec. 07, 2005

Great Scott

After fall from grace, a solo Stapp’s new creed is being a …

By Geoff Boucher

Los Angeles Times


Associated Press
Former Creed lead singer Scott Stapp, free from the demons – and egos – of his past, is venturing out alone with a new album, “The Great Divide.” He’s hoping fans will welcome him, but the person he most wants to impress is his 7-year-old son.




Scott Stapp, the former lead singer of Creed, is back from career exile with an album titled “The Great Divide,” out Nov. 22. It’s a fitting name – there might be no more polarizing figure in recent rock history, and the gulf between his fans and his detractors is wide and ugly.

Stapp might have been the most mocked man in rock in the 1990s, but Creed also sold a staggering 25 million albums in the United States alone. But pop audiences’ infatuations fade fast, while rock purists know how to hold a grudge.

None of this is lost on Stapp.

“I don’t know what to expect, I really don’t,” Stapp said in a hushed voice during a recent visit to Los Angeles to promote the solo CD. “Do I pick up where I left off? Or do I have to start all over again, playing to five people in a room?”

Stapp reached great commercial heights with Creed, a band that presented a radio-friendly sound that was part simplified Pearl Jam and part arena-rock spiritual anthem.

As the band reached the top, Stapp became akin to the Vanilla Ice of modern rock – ridiculed as derivative, vainglorious and undeserving.

In the end, Creed didn’t even like Creed. The band officially broke up last year, but the first death rattle was in December 2002 on stage in Rosemont, Ill. Stapp’s account of the night is that increasing tension within the band inspired him to turn and call out his mates while performing the aptly titled “Who’s Got My Back.”

Seeing something in their eyes that was less than supportive, Stapp says, he plopped down on stage on his back and sang to the rafters. Some fans at the show had a different interpretation; they filed a lawsuit later claiming that Stapp was drunk or loaded and that the band owed a refund to all 15,000 fans on hand.

Months after the Rosemont fiasco, Stapp and Creed guitarist Mark Tremonti, the musical forces behind the band, came together in the studio to begin work on the band’s fourth studio album. It went nowhere. After that, Stapp, for the first time, ran from the spotlight.

“It was killing me, so I ran off to Maui and spent a lot of time with my son,” he said. “I was internalizing everything. You can’t have a me-against-the-world attitude, and I know that now. This is a business where you have to let a lot of stuff go.”

Stapp may want to let things go, but what about his skeptics? Fred Jacobs, of Jacobs Media, a Michigan-based radio consultant company that works with rock stations, compared Stapp’s fall from grace to the waning interest in Oasis in America.

“Scott has a lot of baggage to overcome,” he said. “This is a lightning rod guy for a lot of radio programmers and frankly that hurts. There’s not a lot of excitement right now to embrace his new music. This is a guy that made people angry. Like Oasis, there was a growing perception that his behavior hurt him.”

For a guy steeped in Christian experience, Stapp sounds pretty Zen these days. He won’t talk about Tremonti and company, nor will he discuss any animus toward rock radio, although he does let it slip that some of the current airplay stars in modern rock sound “like Creed tribute bands.” Then it’s back to the basics of humility.

“I’m older now and I’ve (had) time – a few years – to reflect on the past and how I got where I am, the good and the bad,” Stapp said as he prepared for an appearance on “The Tonight Show With Jay Leno.” “I thought about the way I handled things, and sometimes I think I came off the wrong way. It was all a function of this chip on my shoulder.”

On the show, Stapp wore a shirt printed with the phrase “Music is the Weapon of the Future,” a motto of Fela Kuti, the Nigerian music pioneer and political firebrand who died in 1997 of complications due to AIDS. But backstage the rock star had a more passive message.

“I can’t live for other people’s opinions, I have to live for me,” the 32-year-old said. “I can only be me. The other way, well, that was killing me. Now, I can admit my faults.”

YieldInHiding

Kenny Olav wrote:

ahahahaha... i had to come back to this thread just to laugh at the album cover.


and by the way, regarding the Stapp vs. 311 smackdown story, here's the blog from 311's MySpace:

Setting the record straight

I'm glad my 2nd fave band got a chance to kick his ass. 311's got the groove y'all!

angryyoungman

evenkat wrote:

I think i feel sorry for the guy.

http://www.fortwayne.com/mld/journalgazette/living/13348460.htm

Posted on Wed, Dec. 07, 2005

Great Scott

After fall from grace, a solo Stapp’s new creed is being a …

By Geoff Boucher

Los Angeles Times


Associated Press
Former Creed lead singer Scott Stapp, free from the demons – and egos – of his past, is venturing out alone with a new album, “The Great Divide.” He’s hoping fans will welcome him, but the person he most wants to impress is his 7-year-old son.




Scott Stapp, the former lead singer of Creed, is back from career exile with an album titled “The Great Divide,” out Nov. 22. It’s a fitting name – there might be no more polarizing figure in recent rock history, and the gulf between his fans and his detractors is wide and ugly.

Stapp might have been the most mocked man in rock in the 1990s, but Creed also sold a staggering 25 million albums in the United States alone. But pop audiences’ infatuations fade fast, while rock purists know how to hold a grudge.

None of this is lost on Stapp.

“I don’t know what to expect, I really don’t,” Stapp said in a hushed voice during a recent visit to Los Angeles to promote the solo CD. “Do I pick up where I left off? Or do I have to start all over again, playing to five people in a room?”

Stapp reached great commercial heights with Creed, a band that presented a radio-friendly sound that was part simplified Pearl Jam and part arena-rock spiritual anthem.

As the band reached the top, Stapp became akin to the Vanilla Ice of modern rock – ridiculed as derivative, vainglorious and undeserving.

In the end, Creed didn’t even like Creed. The band officially broke up last year, but the first death rattle was in December 2002 on stage in Rosemont, Ill. Stapp’s account of the night is that increasing tension within the band inspired him to turn and call out his mates while performing the aptly titled “Who’s Got My Back.”

Seeing something in their eyes that was less than supportive, Stapp says, he plopped down on stage on his back and sang to the rafters. Some fans at the show had a different interpretation; they filed a lawsuit later claiming that Stapp was drunk or loaded and that the band owed a refund to all 15,000 fans on hand.

Months after the Rosemont fiasco, Stapp and Creed guitarist Mark Tremonti, the musical forces behind the band, came together in the studio to begin work on the band’s fourth studio album. It went nowhere. After that, Stapp, for the first time, ran from the spotlight.

“It was killing me, so I ran off to Maui and spent a lot of time with my son,” he said. “I was internalizing everything. You can’t have a me-against-the-world attitude, and I know that now. This is a business where you have to let a lot of stuff go.”

Stapp may want to let things go, but what about his skeptics? Fred Jacobs, of Jacobs Media, a Michigan-based radio consultant company that works with rock stations, compared Stapp’s fall from grace to the waning interest in Oasis in America.

“Scott has a lot of baggage to overcome,” he said. “This is a lightning rod guy for a lot of radio programmers and frankly that hurts. There’s not a lot of excitement right now to embrace his new music. This is a guy that made people angry. Like Oasis, there was a growing perception that his behavior hurt him.”

For a guy steeped in Christian experience, Stapp sounds pretty Zen these days. He won’t talk about Tremonti and company, nor will he discuss any animus toward rock radio, although he does let it slip that some of the current airplay stars in modern rock sound “like Creed tribute bands.”

stop right there. are you fucking kidding me? is this guy on acid? creed tribute band? isnt that rich

BUENA

WES wrote:

http://edition.cnn.com/2005/SHOWBIZ/Music/12/06/music.scottstapp.ap/index.html

that should help...

He compares himself to Sting? He will rot in hell for that comment.

BUENA

"although he does let it slip that some of the current airplay stars in modern rock sound “like Creed tribute bands."

If you think about this... the sound was watered down by creed as they stole from pearl jam... enough time has gone by where substandard musicians probably stole from creed over pearl jam as the later albums by Pearl Jam did not resemble the "grunge" sound they started out with.

I always though a band like Revis was more Creed than Pearl Jam.

Sad but true folks... sad but true

OpeningBand4theSun

can anyone shoot this bastard in the head pleeeeeaase????

OpeningBand4theSun

worlie wrote:

Instead of a Police/Sting reference he should have said:

N'Sync/Justin
Genesis/Phil
Limp Bizkit/Fred

continue everyone....

good charlotte singer/good charlotte
a simple plan singer/a simple plan
crappy crap/crappy crap

OpeningBand4theSun

how dare you compare to sting and the police you rat?

tboneo

From the CNN article wrote:

"Stapp didn't have to compromise at all with his new band. He made that clear from the start.

"They knew it was my project and they knew we were going to use the songs that I wrote," he says. "They understood their boundaries and knew what not to touch, which is basically lyrics, vocal melodies and arrangements."

Uninvited Guest wrote:

The opening sentence of the article says 'I just felt hated so I wanted to go away'. Then why the hell didn't he!?! It would have made the world a better place.

I just read a review of this album in Rolling Stone. They hated it and cited one song (can't remember the title) as being a complete rip off of Release. Not that I'm going to buy to find out but I thought it was worth mentioning.

The good thing is when the album falls flat on it face, he might get the hint and fuck off.
the bad thing is shit sells, if the critics tell people to buy it, the mindless sheep will. Good thing Rolling Stone hated it, that's a good start!