Creed's Scott Stapp Recalls Getting Rocker Advice from Eddie Van Halen

Creed’s Scott Stapp Recalls Getting Rocker Advice from Eddie Van Halen

2012-04-07

Story by Anne Erickson

Creed singer remembers first meeting Van Halen guitarist at Madison Square Garden

It’s hard to fathom, but post grunge rock mainstay Creed celebrate the 15th anniversary of their seminal debut album, “My Own Prison,” this year. To commemorate the milestone, the boys are jetting off on a North American tour next week, which will see them playing “My Own Prison” and their follow-up, “Human Clay,” in their entirety on different nights of the jaunt. Frontman Scott Stapp says Creed have come a long was since their early days, and he fondly remembers getting some advice from Van Halen guitarist Eddie Van Halen when the guys were starting to hit it big in the late-’90s.

“We were playing Madison Square Garden for the first time,” Stapp told Rolling Stone. “The first and only band that we ever opened for was Van Halen at Madison Square Garden, and [Eddie] came into our dressing room and gave us kind of a ‘music 101’ about how we should handle our commissions, how we should approach each performance, how special this whole thing was and we should never take it for granted and how quickly it could be gone.”

In addition to touring, Creed are working hard on their upcoming fifth studio album, and Stapp says the set is coming together swimmingly. “We’ve got about 12 songs right now,” Stapp said. “It’s heavy and hard as we can be as a rock band, but we always had that other side, that introspective, emotional side with a dark slant to it.

“When you get away from something for a period of time, you can lose your identity, and everything you’ve been doing and all the projects that you have been working on apart from each other can bleed in and confuse the identity of the band. We’re just reconnecting with our identity.” Read the full chat via Rolling Stone. (Courtesy photo via Wind-Up Records.)

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Anne Erickson

Meet the expert - Author, writer and editor Anne Erickson is a Detroit-based reporter and radio host. She is an award-winning writer and has written for the USA Today Network, Consequence.net, Blabbermouth.net, and many more. Anne holds a master's degree from Michigan State University. Contact Anne regarding Audio Ink Radio at anne@audioinkradio.com.