Creed's Circle Is Complete

Six years ago, post-grunge heavyweights Creed disintegrated into an unholy mess of drama and acrimony.

With singer Scott Stapp embarking on a solo career and a painful public flameout and the rest of the band (bassist Brian Marshall, drummer Scott Phillips and guitarist Mark Tremonti) forming Alter Bridge, the idea of a reunion seemed laughable, if not impossible.

This past spring, however, Creed came back from the dead (kind of like Jesus, but we'll get to that later) with a newfound maturity and a slew of material which would become their brand new album, Full Circle.

CHARTattack talked to Tremonti on the tail end of the band's big comeback tour to find out just how much has changed.

CHARTattack: Your split was far from amicable. Even a few years ago, the idea of a reunion seemed impossible. What changed?
Mark Tremonti: Six years is a lot of time. A lot of things changed, and we all have kids and families and we all matured a little bit and realized what's really important in life. We realized we had something back in the day that only a few people have been able to achieve, being able to tour on the level that we were, and it would be a shame to throw that experience away.

Are there any residual issues between you at all?
No. We just didn't ever bring up the past. We're just being courteous and respectful toward one another now and looking forward.

How did your tour go? What was it like being on the road together again?
That was the easy part. The hard part was getting the business settled between record companies and promoters and setting all that up for the tour. Once we got on tour, it was simple. It was great.

How different are things internally for Creed now as opposed to then?
Well, we have different management now. We have different record labels. Creed is under Wind Up Records now. They used to be with Sony; now they're with EMI, I believe. There's just a lot of different things on the business side of things.

In the band, we've incorporated another guitar player to kind of fill out the sound. We got used to two guitar players in Alter Bridge, which gave us a lot more opportunity to have bigger, dynamic sound and we decided to add that to Creed as well.

What about your place in the music industry now versus then?
Well, back in the day, we were very successful. We hope our music still resonates with people nowadays. We're still getting our foothold now on this new record and the tour, so we hope people still like us.

How have the fans been? Have you maintained them? Are there new ones?
Yeah, obviously all the younger kids that come to our shows would have been too young back in the day. We have another generation. We have such a wide range of ages of folks that come out to the shows.

How important is commercial success at this point in your careers?
Well, I mean, it helps keep everybody afloat and on tour and have a career of it, but we don't need to necessarily go out and sell the amount of records we used to. The industry's changed so much. As long as people come out to our shows and we can keep putting records out, we'll be happy.

Has the critical reception for this album been any different than it was for your past releases?
Yeah, it's been much more favourable this time around than on previous records. I think that the success we had back in the day put a big target on us. I see it with any successful act. Now that we've taken time and gone away and come back and improved our sound, people have nice things to say.

Lyrically, Full Circle is an album that never could have been made if you guys had somehow, miraculously, managed to stay together over the past six years. Do you think that's true on a musical level as well?
Yeah. The last six years, we've been out there struggling. We formed Alter Bridge and we still continue to do Alter Bridge, but it's a struggle out there and we had to work very hard and we've used all of the experience of the last six years and put it into this record.

How do you feel about your old material compared to your new material?
It makes me feel like I'm playing stuff that I wrote when I was a kid when I'm playing the older stuff. I think the new stuff's more dynamic. We've got more tools to use for our music now. It's still fun to see the connection with the crowd when we play the old stuff.

How do you think this new chapter of Creed will affect your place in music history?
Who knows? As long as I can look back and have my kids be proud, that's all I really care about.

Jesus allusions that have always followed Creed. Are you sick of all of the resurrection jokes around your reunion?
Gosh, I haven't heard too many of them. We've always had that Christian kind of thing thrown at us because Scott grew up in a Pentecostal home and some of his lyrical lines that he's come up with have direct quotes from what he knew best when he was a kid.

I grew up listening to speed metal, so it's kind of strange to think that I'd ever be thought of as being in a Christian rock band. It comes with the territory of working in this band.