I Met Scott Stapp When

Don't Judge Yourself By Someone Else's Standards. You Will Always Lose

Instead Of Taking The 'i'm Cool, I Hope You Adore Me' Path (with My Music), I Chose The Path Of How To Connect. I Think That's The Reason A Lot Of People Feel A Deeper Connection With Our Band Than Other Bands, And I Also Feel That's Why People Polarize On Us. If You Don't Get It, It Seems Preposterous; If You Do Get It, It's Really Heavy - It Has A Weight To It.

I Was Playing Heavy Metal When I Was 18. I Had To Evolve Out Of That Into An Alternative Consciousness About What It Meant To Change The Way I Played Guitar, And The Kind Of Songs, And The Subject Matter, And Singing About Child Abuse, And All This Stuff. I Had To Come From Somewhere, And I Had To Take Chances To Do That.

I'm An Experimental Artist In A Field That Doesn't Celebrate Experimentation. It Celebrates Self-destruction, Which I Guess You Could Say Is A Creative Endeavor.

What Most People Do Is Try To Find A Comfortable Persona That They're In Alignment With And The Public Likes And Appreciates Them For.