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5 Things Creed Frontman Scott Stapp’s Tell-All Book Must Address

Creed's Scott Stapp / Photo by Getty Images

When SPIN interviewed Creed frontman Scott Stapp in 2009, he said, “If I could take it all back and do it all over again from the middle of 2002 to November of 2006, I would.” Anyone who’s followed the baritone’s journey into the mainstream in the post-grunge ’90s, though, would assume there’s a lot more time he’d like to take back. Years of hurting people’s ears with songs like “Higher,” a track on the Passion of the Christ soundtrack, and some painful public battles with drugs help explain why Creed earned the No. 4 spot on our list of the Biggest Punching Bags in Pop History. Now Stapp has announced a release date for an “uncensored, tell-all” memoir, titled Sinner’s Creed and coauthored by David Ritz, due out October 2. A press release promises the book will cover “his suicide attempts, alcohol-induced rampages and intimate details about his abusive childhood.” While all but the last feature sound entertaining, there are a few stories, detailed below, that we hope the book will definitely address.

The time his fans sued him for sucking
In 2003, four Chicago-area fans filed a class-action suit against Creed for having to witness the band live, requesting a refund on the price of tickets and parking fees. The suit contended that Stapp could not sing the full lyrics to any song, instead rolling about the stage “in apparent pain or distress.” It also said he then passed out. The case was eventually dismissed, but not before Creed’s PR team defending the performance as “unique.”

The time he received oral sex with Kid Rock on camera
Three years later, a sex tape filmed in 1999 surfaced, depicting Stapp and Kid Rock both receiving oral sex from a woman. While Stapp may contest the definition of oral sex (“There’s no sex on the sex tape,” he told SPIN in 2009. “For it to get characterized that way, I mean, that kind of sucks”), there is no contesting what took place — and the fact that Stapp filmed it, kept it, and was careless enough to let it leak to the public. “We were in Tampa playing with Metallica, and I walked into his trailer and there were some strippers,” Stapp said. “It’s a time in his life and a time in my life that we’d like to put behind us and not publicize because we have children now, and they’re in school, and their friends read. I know he was pretty pissed off at me when that came out.”

The time his sister drove him to a Florida Denny’s to hook up with a girl he met at the airport
Whether completely true, or just perfectly sarcastically inflected, LiveJournalist TomLuv’s 2005 account of how he and some friends went to a Gainesville, Florida, Denny’s to see if Stapp would actually show up. Apparently someone Luv knew had met the singer at an airport bar; she gave him her friend’s number, which he called. She then convinced him to drive two hours from Orlando to the Denny’s, which apparently his sister did for him. Stapp arrived, was taunted, was mockingly flirted with, was asked for insincere autographs and on and on. In the end, Stapp reportedly drove back to Orlando, his love unrequited.

The time he got into a fistfight with 311
Stapp was touring to support his solo album, The Great Divide, in 2005 when things turned ugly in a Baltimore hotel lobby — on Thanksgiving night, no less — with members of 311. In an interview with that band’s S.A. Martinez for Rolling Stone, he recalled how one of the first things Stapp announced was that he likes to fight. Reportedly, Stapp then began doing shots, breaking glass and hitting a member of 311’s crew. The Creed singer made an unwelcome comment to Martinez’s wife, after which drummer Chad Sexton, who was friend with Stapp, tried to calm him down. “That’s when he sucker-punched me,” Martinez told Rolling Stone. “He hit me right in the face.” Stapp then reportedly hit Martinez’s wife, someone called P-Nut got involved, and eventually hotel security shut it down. Martinez suffered a fractured knuckle.

The time he threw a bottle of Orangina at his wife’s head
In 2007, Stapp — whose band by that point had broken up and re-formed with a different singer — was arrested after his wife, Miss New York Jaclyn Nesheiwat, reported him for aggravated assault with an intent to commit a felony. The charges stemmed from an incident where Stapp had thrown a bottle of Orangina at her head, which it missed. In a bizarre turn of events, the defense attorney was able to convince the judge reduce the charges to a misdemeanor because an Orangina bottle is “not a deadly weapon.” In the wake of the arrest, Stapp apologized to his wife… sort of: “We both know we were wrong in how we handled the argument,” he said. He later added, “As in most cases like this, the next day everyone is sorry and wishes they didn’t get the police involved and said what they did about their partner.” Uh, you are forgiven?

For a more sundry list of speculative hilarity in the book — realizing the initials of his adopted name (Anthony Scott Stapp) spelled “ASS,” associating himself with a band that had the NAMBLA-ready name Naked Toddler — click here.