While Creed has been the butt of jokes for many years, they are in the middle of a huge renaissance and are preparing for a reunion tour following the release of Scott Stapp‘s solo album on March 15. In advance of these activities, Stapp chatted with Vulture about the highs and lows of Creed’s career, including an encounter with a surprising celebrity fan.
Asked to detail his weirdest awards show experience, Stapp says, “I have quite a few incredible memories of the 2001 Grammy Awards. I’ll never forget seeing these four six-foot-eight, 320-pound security guys walking by and then all of a sudden an arm reached out and touched my shoulder. It was Janet Jackson.”
“She was very familiar with Human Clay. Knew it from top to bottom,” Stapp continues, referring to their 1999 album. “And she was very complimentary and said some incredible things to me.”
That same night, Stapp was thrilled to meet U2‘s The Edge because he says, “U2 is probably my favorite band of all time; Joshua Tree is probably my favorite album of all time.”
He notes, “Human Clay went Diamond around the same month Joshua Tree went Diamond. It blew my mind that we did it in two years, and it took at least a decade for an album I thought was one of the greatest of all time. And that’s still sinking in. That’s still hard to process.”
As for the bad rap Creed has gotten in the past 20 years, Stapp says, “I could be wrong, but it wasn’t the fans who created the bad narrative about us, it was the press … the narrative was kind of a manufactured one. I think it was because we didn’t fit into the clique.”
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