Creed’s Mark Tremonti has opened up about the band’s reputation, saying he’d “rather sell tons of records and have people come at you” than the alternative.
The Tallahassee, Florida band broke through as part of the late-’90s post-grunge movement and became well known for tracks like ‘With Arms Wide Open’ and ‘My Sacrifice’.
They were commercially successful, selling well over 20 million records, but have long been critically reviled and dismissed by certain audiences – Rolling Stone even named them the worst band of the 1990s in 2013.
Now, in a new interview with Ultimate Guitar, guitarist Tremonti, also known for the band Alter Bridge, has reflected on the band’s critical status and how he balances it with their huge success.
“After a while you just kind of realise if you want to be in a band where it got as big as Creed did, there’s gonna be people that love you, there’s gonna be people that hate you,” he said.
“Look at all the biggest bands in the world, especially pop artists. If it becomes a household name, there’s gonna be people that hate on it. And you’ve gotta take the good with the bad.”
“Would you rather sell tons of records and have people come at you or sell no records and have everybody love you?” he pondered. “And I got to see both sides of that when we started Alter Bridge. When we started Alter Bridge and we had gotten into a few records, we got a lot of critical praise, but we weren’t selling the millions of records that Creed was. So I got to see what it feels like on both sides.”
In April, the band reunited and played their first show in 12 years as part of the ‘Summer of 99’ cruise, on the occasion of Tremonti’s 50th birthday.
They went on to play a North American reunion tour later in the summer, taking in 40 cities across the continent.
Frontman Scott Stapp has also stated in January that he has “hope” that Creed will write new material.
“I think there’s gonna be some writing happening and it’s gonna be organic and I think it’s gonna be beautiful, man, if we get back to that place and that chemistry, which I think we’re gonna fall right back into once we start playing these songs together and we reconnect with through our relationships, through the songs that we created together,” he said.
