Mark Tremonti says Creed singer Scott Stapp stopped talking to him when he realised the band’s 2009 reunion wouldn’t be permanent.
The guitarist previously told how Stapp travelled on a separate bus to the rest of the band on the tour, and he now reveals Stapp assumed Tremonti would walk away from his other band Alter Bridge to devote himself full-time to Creed.
Tremonti tells Kerrang: “I think Scott just thought that we’d get back together with Creed and we’d forget about Alter Bridge. He doesn’t understand how hard we’ve worked to build Alter Bridge.
“When you singlehandedly bring a band to its knees like he had done, and we all split up, and then you build something, you’re not all of a sudden going to just jump back to the other band and forget what you’ve built.
“I think he took all his frustrations out on me. We were having lunch in catering. He was like, ‘Hey man, what are you doing in January,’ and I’m like, ‘I’m going to the studio with Alter Bridge, we’ve talked about this.’ He’s like, ‘Really?’ From then on we didn’t speak. On tour. On stage. Didn’t speak.”
Although he says he’ll “never say never” to working with Creed again, he doesn’t see it as realistic as he has his hands full with Alter Bridge and his solo project.
He adds: People ask, ‘Are you gonna do Creed?’ I’ve just got to the point with my life where I’ve got so much going on that I’m excited about that I don’t want to get back into anything that’s stressful or brings any kind of negativity into my life. I think I’ve worked hard enough to have other positive things to work on.”
Stapp suffered a public meltdown last year, claiming someone was trying to kill him and that he was living in his truck. He has since been through rehab and says he has been diagnosed with bipolar disorder.
Tremonti’s second album Cauterize is released on June 8. He plays Download on Sunday, June 14.
