Scott Phillips
Leaving Creed Behind

There have been lots of changes for Scott Phillips since MD featured him on the cover of the March '02 issue. Right around that time, Creed's Weathered came out, and the band did a long tour to support it. The group then took a year off, and in July of 2003 Phillips' daughter was born, which he describes as "a huge life change - amazing."

When Creed got back together in the fall of that year to work on their fourth album, Scott admits, "It wasn't there. It felt contrived. That passion we all once had seemed to have fallen by the wayside. It was time to make a change. Mark [Tremonti, guitarist] and I felt that we wanted to go one way, and Scott [Stapp, vocalist] wanted to go another."

Tremonti and Phillips decided almost immediately to begin a new project, and with the addition of original Creed bassist Brian Marshall and singer Myles Kennedy, Alter Bridge was born. "We wanted to get back to heavier music," Phillips explains. "It seemed like in the latter days of Creed, the focus shifted to radio songs and not on what we felt close to, which was hard rock. So the focus on our new project is on having fun and playing songs we want to play."

After not playing for about a year, Phillips had to work on his stamina and chops. Even so, he is proud of One Day Remains, which was released this past August. "There is a lot of cool stuff on it," Scott says, "and a variety of tempos. Creed got locked into that mid-tempo, not quite ballad, not quite rock song. This has a lot of variety."

Robyn Flans

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