I never took drug to escape. I know some people take drugs to escape, but I took drugs because I was an experimenter. And an artist. And I was always trying to go to the other side of that veil and get information, like all writers have done through the millennia. To get some insights on how the whole thing works, if there's any way to know how it works, and write about it.

Women in stores will pull their children away from me sometimes so they won't catch the crazy Creed virus. Other folks are disappointed that I'm not that guy in person.

I wake up in the morning, or the middle of the night when an idea comes through. My songwriting style, basically I just write down information given to me from the muse and how that works for songwriters. Record the muse and the muse delivers.

I don't sit down to write a song, per se.

I love it [music]. I always have loved it. There's something about playing music that inspires me. When I've had some really down periods in my life, debauched beyond belief, not knowing what the hell I'm gonna do with my life, [Rolling Stones'] "Street Fighting Man" or something like that would come on the radio, and I'm pounding the dash and the rock and roll will inspire me to keep going. It inspires me. It's true.

I don't want to take myself too seriously. That's my lesson to myself.

When I first went on [Facebook], I found there were five or six Creed Bratton sites. It was all over the place. I had to compete with other people saying they were me. It was nuts, so this is nice that people know that if they're gonna send something to me, I'm gonna be with my weird little mind looking at what they have to say. And what they're seeing is actually me.