| |  | | -- Jon Wiederhorn, with additional reporting
by Gideon Yago
The band was in the final stages of mastering its new record,Weathered, and as is often the case with hard rockers following upmajor hits, Creed were working with their backs against the wall and theirfinal deadline looming ever closer. The disc was due the morning of October19, and the group finished mixing the last track the night before.
When they finally wrapped up the last cut and sent the tapes off to bepressed, they were feeling invincible. To celebrate their loftyaccomplishment, singer Scott Stapp took a long drive in his pickup truck andpopped the master of Weathered in the vehicle's stereo. Hewas horrified by what poured from the speakers. It wasn't the actual songshe was unhappy with — he was appalled that the wrong mix of the single"My Sacrifice" had somehow ended up on the finished album, especially sincethe track had already been shipped off to radio.
"I tried to stay calm, but I was freaking out," Stapp admitted recently at aNew York watering hole. "Mark [Tremonti]'s guitars had been lowered about 3Db, so what was on the radio was quite a dramatic departure from what weoriginally approved for the mastered version. It just deadened the songcompletely. It was a scary moment 'cause those records are forever, and thefirst pressing was somewhere between 3 and 5 million, so we were gonna havebetween 3 and 5 million of the wrong versions out there."
Stapp pulled his truck over, steadied his breathing and called his manager,producer and record label in time for the mistake to be remedied. Millionsof defective copies of the album were removed from imminently departingtrucks that were set to deliver them to record stores across the country,and radio stations were rushed the correct version of the single.
"The record company just happened to have extra trucks standing by," Stappsaid, relief clearly audible in his voice. "I guess they planned onsomething going wrong 'cause it just couldn't go smooth the whole waythrough."
Maybe not, but it was pretty much the only thing that went sour. The writingand recording process for Weathered was fairly pain-free, which isamazing considering that Creed's last album, Human Clay (1999), soldmore than 10 million copies, putting the band under considerable pressure todeliver another successful disc. A lot of groups contemplating such a follow-upbuckle, endlessly procrastinating or getting stricken with writer'sblock. These victims of studio stress often wind up writing and recordingfor more than a year with little to show for their efforts besides a fewgood tales of drinking, decadence and debauchery. But Creed are not likemost others. They wrote Weathered in a mere three weeks and recordedthe disc rather quickly as well.
In fact, when they started working on the album in March, Creed had nointention of releasing anything this year. But when Stapp and Tremonti satdown to begin working on songs, the ideas flowed like water from abubbling brook. Three-and-a-half weeks after they started jamming together,they had penned all the 11 songs.
"Everything was done in a really off-the-cuff and a freestyle type ofenvironment," Stapp said. "I think it happened so fast 'cause I didn't writeany on [the last Creed] tour. I just felt like I needed to live life. Ineeded to experience everything that was going on around me and soak it inand just kind of have a basis to write from. Mainly everything was writtenin my living room or on my boat during that three-week period."
Gigolo Stapp gets cocky: "MTV knows ... we don't need them" ... NEXT 
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