The moment that Creed singer Scott Stapp realised the band’s 1999 second album Human Clay had catapulted the group into a rarified realm of success came in 2001 when they were presented with a Diamond certification to mark 10 million sales. Stapp checked out what sort of company the Florida four-piece were keeping, and the U2 nut was shocked to see that Bono & co.’s The Joshua Tree had reached the landmark only a short while earlier. The Joshua Tree had been out since 1987; Human Clay had done it in less than two years.
“That put it in perspective for me,” says Stapp today. “That’s when it was like: ‘Whoa, this is mind-blowing.’ It gave me clarity and perspective on what was happening.”
