Despite Creed’s success, Alter Bridge (a band created after Creed’s breakup that featured everybody except Scott Stapp) struggled to reach the same levels of fame. Despite Alter Bridge’s 2004 debut album “One Day Remains” reaching gold status in the U.S. within a year of its release, sales for their 2007 sophomore album “Blackbird” were less than impressive.
Now, in a new interview with Classic Rock, guitarist Mark Tremonti admitted that he and his bandmates went into massive debt in order to release “Blackbird” – so much so, that they just recently paid off their loans.
“The music industry is tough and there’s been a lot of ups and downs,” Tremonti explained. “When you’re a kid, you don’t want to disappoint anybody, so you don’t question anything. You never want to say: ‘Hey, this contract is seven records long – why should I do this?'”
“I think the toughest moment for Alter Bridge was when we were trying to get out of our record deal for the second album [2007’s Blackbird]. We had to pay off the loans it took to pay off that deal for most of Alter Bridge’s career. Right up until covid hit we were still paying off debts. That was a tough lesson for us.”
Tremonti went on to note, though, that success comes with its own difficulties. This is especially true when it happens in such a short period of time, like it did with Creed. According to the guitarist, he and his Creed bandmates were unprepared to skyrocket to the level of fame they reached so quickly.
“As a kid, Creed’s success was hard to take on,” he said. “There was some stress within the band itself. Each person has their group of talking heads telling them that they’re the special one. It poisons the well. It was definitely tough to watch Scott [Stapp] go through his troubles, because sometimes when he was going through it I hadn’t spoken to him in years. I think we’re all way more mature now than we were then.”
