Creed Bratton: “You choose to be happy or to be sad. I choose the former, it’s a no-brainer for me…”

To millions of fans across America and the world, Creed Bratton is known as one of the cast of hit US comedy The Office. However, away from the TV screen, Creed has carved out a five decade career as a musician as well.

Following his departure from the American group The Grass Roots in 1969, the musician/actor has crafted a solo career which, last month, saw the release of Tao Pop, his tenth album as a solo artist.

In our latest Cover Story, V13 sat down with Creed to talk about his musical career, balancing life as both a successful actor and musician, how landing a role in The Office changed everything, and much more.

Can we start by talking about your life growing up in a small town, and how music all around you growing up? What do you remember about your early days of discovering music?

“My grandparents, they had a band, a country western band, the Happy Timers. I’d spend summers in Long Beach, California and they’d play these local gigs. When they rehearsed at night, I’d fall asleep behind the amp. I heard all the Hank Williams, the old Western swing and the Patsy Cline stuff. I heard country music by a live country band for years and years. My mother played the mandolin. My father died when I was two, but he was supposed to be a very good banjo player. My stepdad played the drums so we would sit there and he’d play a snare, my mother played mandolin and I’d play guitar. I was playing trumpet from a very young age.

Then, at about 13, my grandfather showed me some chords. I had been listening to the station called KFWB, B. Mitchell Reed, a very famous DJ in Los Angeles, if the weather was right and the clouds formation, how it is, they would get over the mountains from LA into where we were in the mountains. I had a little crystal set with one little speaker and I was supposed to be sleeping at night, but I’d be listening to the radio, Jimmy Reed, I heard all that rock and roll… Little Richard. Fats Domino, Ray Charles, Everly Brothers, Hank Williams, it was all that stuff back then. I started falling in love with the guitar and I was watching people play with my grandparents.

So I got a Sears and Roebuck catalogue and I ordered a guitar from Fresno, California out of the Sears thing. They brought it up on a buckboard with a horse, they brought it up over this dirt road into our little ranch and I got it out and I took it out to the barn. There was my steer in there, my horse over here, the chickens and stuff. I remember opening up the guitar case.

Back then, the Silvertone guitar, the original one, the case was the amplifier so you open up the case, bring the guitar out and you plug the cord into your guitar and you go around and you plug it into the front of the case. Inside the case was a volume control. You plug the guitar case into the wall. I plugged this thing in. I was going to learn Link Wray’s ‘Rumble,’ the first song I was going to learn. And I hit that thing and it vibrated this visceral area right here and that was it. Trumpet schmumppet. I didn’t care about the trumpet anymore. That’s that was it. I was off…”

At what point did you decide music was the career for you?

“I would hear stories or people talk about when they saw The Beatles or they realized you could get all the girls and, how they make a lot of money and get all the drugs and stuff. I was 13 and until I started playing professionally at 17, all the way through, all I cared about was getting the music, right. The music, that’s the thing that stimulates me. Acting? I enjoy it. They are both equal. They’re pretty much the same thing to me is, because of emotion. Telling the truth. As soon I heard it, that was it. I never thought about anything. I didn’t have a B plan. I was going to do that. Act and play music. So die, or succeed.”

It’s worked out well for you though.

“Yeah, it has…”

It’s funny you should mention the Beatles, but my parents grew up near Liverpool and my mom and dad grew up watching the Beatles developing, working the Cavern. They’d go there and see them and in smaller local bars just before they broke in America.

“I got a little chill when you said that…”

Cliff Richard and people like that…

“Telling the truth. As soon I heard it, that was it. I never thought about anything. I didn’t have a B plan. I was going to do that. Act and play music. So die, or succeed.”

“Originally, it was all skiffle back there in England. I was there in 1964. I’d be travelling in Europe with the folk trio. I was sitting drinking with these college kids. They said, ‘Have you heard Eric Clapton?’ They put me in a car and took me out to High Wycombe to this college where he was playing with John Mayall.

I thought of myself as a pretty good guitar player then I heard Clapton playing and I almost just took the guitar and broke it because I just felt this bad. This is unconsciously good because he had been practising and playing those records over and over and over. He was dedicated to getting that sound but to me it sounded like it was so effortless like he just had this channel he did but he had done the work too.”

From that point, you went through bands early on in your career then embarked on a solo career. Where did acting fit into that?

“I was in the Grass Roots, in the Sixties. I was in a hit band. We had gold records and stuff. Acting was something I had done from a young age too because I stuttered, I had a bad stuttering problem. They had to pull me out of school as it got to the point where I couldn’t even articulate. I had a stutter coach, the teacher, and the speech therapist they said, ‘Why don’t you try to stutter?’ This was something she’d heard from somebody and that was it. It was one of the simple little things. I went and I tried to emulate what I sounded like when I stuttered then, in a couple of weeks, it was gone.

She said, ‘Okay, you took to this well.’ I was traumatized as a young kid, that’s what was doing it. Once I got control of that mechanism, but I could feel it there. I could see it coming down the road. I knew that two paragraphs from now, there’s going to be one word, I could see it coming that, I’m going to blow up on. She said, ‘I want you to get up in front of people in the speech class, maybe acting class. Try for a play.’ I said, ‘Alright.’ I wanted to get rid of this stutter thing.

V13 Cover Story – Issue 066 – Creed Bratton

So I auditioned for a play and I got a little part and I enjoyed it. Then I got a response that they thought I was pretty good at it so I thought, ‘Okay, this is something I can do.’ Music was something I’d always done but then I became a drama major and by the time I was in college, I was a drama major and that was it. It was going to be that and music. It was the two of them.”

They both worked out fairly well for you. I was a disaster in drama at school…

“I took to it well. I was very competitive too. I wanted to be the best. What’s the point of doing it if you’re not going to do that? Later on, I decided that I thought, right before The Office, I made a declaration with the powers that be saying, ‘Let’s forget this thing about being Richard Burton or Richard Harris or any of the Richards from England, that’s not going to happen.’ I can’t drink enough with those guys but I would like to be a competent character actor.

Someone who people look at and say, ‘He can play these parts, he can do comedy, he can do drama, and we can bring him in for all these different parts,’ and I thought, ‘Okay, that’s, I can do that. I see myself doing that,’ and, once I made that declaration, The Office came along, and boom, that was the luck. I’ve done the work. I’ve been studying for years but you have to work and work and work and then you have to get a little luck too.”

Regarding the hard work, that goes back to what you said about Eric Clapton, doesn’t it?

“Yes. There’s nobody who says it happens overnight. It doesn’t.”

You’ve talked about the Grass Roots, leaving that group, and then your debut solo album although you were writing and recording all the time. What did you do with that material during that time?

“I probably threw most of it away. It’s shite. I wrote a lot of stuff that my friends say, ‘What the hell is this song?’ I remember I had a song called ‘Looking at the Oranges in Lemon Cove,’ and I thought that was the greatest title but, to this day, I have no idea what I was trying to say. ‘Looking at the oranges at Lemon Cove…’ I see this little nebulous thing there but I could never put it together. So I kept trying to put stuff in.

There were a lot of songs like that but I had a goal. I had this very esoteric lyric kind of thing, Joni Mitchell kind of thing if I could get there. Not that I’m going to get that as she’s a genius. So like, what she’s done, but in my way, that was the goal to go there.

“I was very competitive too. I wanted to be the best. What’s the point of doing it if you’re not going to do that?”

I met Joni Mitchell’s producer, Henry Lewy, and he liked my voice and liked some of the songs so he recorded a few songs with me. The earlier stuff he recorded, gave me this moment. I think it was, ‘Please Let The Telephone Ring.’. Then he brought in Peter White during the 80s. Peter White worked with Al Stewart, he was the guitar player for Al Stewart for a long time, he’s in America now doing the cool jazz thing so we started playing in the band together. We had a little three-piece who played around LA for a while. I played a lot of different bands and just kept doing it, just kept recording.

Sometimes I wake up… We were sitting in the producing with Dave Way, the multi-Grammy award-winning Dave Way I should add, because he likes to be referred to that way, and I started with my fingers because I didn’t have my abacus and we went, ‘Wow, really? That’s all?’ This is the fifth one I’ve done with Dave Way and Dylan O’Brien. I’ve always played that stuff and every time I’d finish an album, then I’d go, ‘Yeah, but it could be better.’ and so then I’d start writing the next one.”

Tao Pop is your 10th solo album now, is it?

“My God, Tao Pop was my 10th album. The first two songs that I recorded was during COVID, and they were ‘Breathe Easy’ and ‘Tall Grass,’ and it was just like the other ones, I’d set up, go in the studio and I’d play them a couple days before I play the songs for them. Then we’d go this one, this one, and this one, let’s do this one. Then, I just go. I like to do it the old-fashioned, the old ways where I go in on a stool, there’s a mic on my guitar at the sound hole and there’s a mic up here to sing so I play and sing at the same time.

There’s bleeding, the guitar is gonna bleed in the vocal and vice versa, you can’t separate that once the balance is set. That’s it for the guitar and vocal. Once we got that established though, then COVID was over and I brought in Dave Tweedy, I believe, on drums and I’d put a lead guitar solo on it, kind of a Steve Cropper thing. Then I’ve got friends, made friends with Elliot Easton from the Cars and it was played with him on a couple of times and then I went, ‘Oh, would you play this song of mine, ‘Tall Grass’?’

One thing leads to another, you find better people. I’m a good singer and a writer. I do okay for serving my songs but I’m not the lead guitar player that is Val McCollum or, Elliot Easton. If I’m lucky and I can get them to do it, I will have them do it for sure. It’s like anybody could say, ‘Oh, you’ll, you’ll do better.’ Why not use it? Is ego going to make me stop and say, ‘Well, I want to play the solo…’ when somebody else can do it better now. What I do my songs touring. It’s just me and my guitar and they get the bare bones. The basic stuff, the basics of the records.”

How does it work for you live? Is it just you the guitar?

“Me and the guitar! It’s scary sometimes. No, it used to be. It used to be. Now I just look forward to it. I don’t like travelling. I don’t like flying anymore. Once I’m on stage with fans who know the songs and know me from The Office and have heard the albums, then I’m a happy guy because they came originally because of The Office. They don’t know that I was a rock star or ostensibly still am. I don’t think they take that away from you. Once you get the gold records, do they say you’re a certain age you can’t be a rock star? Once a rockstar? Always a rockstar. Minus the drugs.

They said they come to the show because of The Office then I’ll talk to them afterwards and they’ll say, ‘We came because we wanted to hear the funny stuff and the laughs but when we heard those songs, we’re going to go download that one. I really love that song.’ or ‘I like these three…’ I’m weaning myself away. I’ll never get away totally and I obviously shouldn’t with The Office reference because The Office made me able to perform, I see the downloads, I see the sales and I see how the fans react so more and more, the albums, the music is making leeway for me as an artist.”

“Once you get the gold records, do they say you’re a certain age you can’t be a rock star? Once a rockstar? Always a rockstar. Minus the drugs.”

As an artist and a songwriter, having something like The Office and seeing people come through that connection rather than your music it must be really rewarding to speak to fans after shows and hear them say, ‘We didn’t know about this. We’re going to go back and dig out your back catalogue or your new album…’?

“I get a little misty-eyed because it’s hugely rewarding. It’s the whole thing, why I came into existence because you work for years and years and years, which I have been. There were like 30, 35 years between the Grass Roots and The Office where I was struggling just to stay alive. I want to tell this important thing to other artists, not to give up the dream.”

When you were approached about the American version of The Office were you aware of the British version of The Office?

“There was a situation where I was actually in England right before The Office. People think there’s a story about me being on Bernie Mac and going on to do the show and that’s true but that wasn’t the final thing that got me on The Office. About a year before The Office, I was in a restaurant in London, visiting friends and this little Yorkshire Terrier was barking and barking and barking. Everyone’s looking over, ‘God, shut this dog up.’

I’ve got to the point where I had a few drinks at that time, I look over and I see this guy stand up and I can see he’s going over to the dog, and I get up like this, ‘hold it right there,’ I said, right to his face. Ricky Gervais was there in the restaurant. He jumped up and he said, ‘Oh, brave American dog lover. Good for you.’ He didn’t know that right after I was going to say, ‘Hold it right there, let me kick the dog.’

That’s what I was going to say. I was going to pump that little bastard across the room. Later on when I was auditioning, when I got on the show, I found my manager calling his people, I said, ‘You remember me, blah, blah, blah. I was the guy that saved the dog. So, I’d like to publicly apologize to Ricky right now for that ploy.”

When The Office in the US took off and you became a household name, how did you balance the music and the acting when that happened?

“I’m still doing it. Still good. I’m still touring, recording, and still doing film. I’m still doing TV. Nothing’s changed. It’s just the back and forth between I get a part here or I part there on something or I go out and do a show here or a tour there. It’s either the audience, this emotion to the audience, these lines, or it’s the camera or it’s the microphone and recording… there’s the camera, there’s the audience. It’s the same deal. It’s me on stage when I’m performing when I’m acting, it’s not me.”

“Once I’m on stage with fans who know the songs and know me from The Office and have heard the albums, then I’m a happy guy…”

Since leaving the Grass Roots you’ve constantly been writing. When you started writing this record or any record, is there a trigger where you sit down and think, ‘Right, I’m now going to write a record, I’m going to look at a collection of songs I’ve written.’ How do you get to the point where you start writing an album?

“That’s a good question. I never have, per se, sat down to write a subject. Occasionally, yes. ‘Turn the Corner of the Universe’ was one I wrote with my friend. I had read this article in a magazine about how the ozone layer was healing itself up in the Arctic. It was growing back together. Now, nothing in the newspaper is a lie so I knew it was true. It’s a little tongue-in-cheek reference to how I do believe if you can get enough people to believe that things are going to be okay, it might start shifting the paradigm shift in the thought processes. It’s a chance I’m taking.

Mostly though, when one album is done, the guitar or the piano, they will dictate if I’m walking by and I’ll just sit down to doodle around. The next thing I know, a song just comes. Like, regarding ‘Chip In My Brain.’ That came about after I’d read this book called The Singularity Is Near. It was about how AI becomes sentient in 2045, Ray Kurzweil wrote the book. I had read the book a couple of days later, and it germinated while I was sleeping.

I got up the next morning, and I was sitting there and, boom, next thing I know, I’m singing. I don’t know what the song’s about, just writing lyrics down, and I write, ‘I guess I had a chip in my brain,’ that’s obviously, I’m talking about this and using a reference from the book but then it goes into a much more spiritual and esoteric direction, which many of my songs tend to do that. So that one was stimulated by a book.”

Staying on that song, that looks into the future. You’ve commented that the world is there to help us. A lot of people probably don’t share that view. There’s a lot of negativity in the way that the planet is going forward. You’ve talked about AI and things like that, do you feel like that’s a good thing for the planet? Are you positive about new technology, or is it something you’re afraid of?

“I know it’s going to help us in many, many areas, but it’s also very scary. There is a very good chance that we won’t be able to control it. I’m not the only one that thinks this. There are a lot of people far smarter than I am who are very wary and, no matter how many safeguards we put in, once it starts learning, once it starts educating itself at this, the quantum level it will go at, we’ll just be left behind. Then what if it decides it’s just too slow and then for efficiency, we don’t need these little meat sacks getting in our way? Matrix. I’m in a quandary. It’s scary stuff.”

As somebody who’s worked in the entertainment or the creative arts industry for the last five decades or more, that’s an industry that’s changed dramatically even over the last five years.

“Right now we’re already seeing this deep fake stuff, right? It’s a lot of problems and it’ll only get worse. Then who do you believe can put stuff out there? They’re going to say, ‘This is real,’ and it’s so good. They’re going to be able to lie. Not that politicians would lie. Where would I get that idea from? I don’t know… I think it’s easy to see the negative side and that’s an easy way to go, but my saving grace, if I have a saving grace, is I always find the humour in this life. I was always able to make people laugh.

“Right now we’re already seeing this deep fake stuff, right? It’s a lot of problems and it’ll only get worse. Then who do you believe can put stuff out there?”

They say, ‘You can go through life and you can go, woe is me. And it’s all horrible,’ or think ‘I’m going to make the best of my life.’ Now, rather than tell somebody what to do, which I’m not, I’m not here to tell anybody what to do. I’m here just to show through how I live my life that I’m a happy person. I’ve done this through A to B and luck and all this stuff.

Does negativity exist? Of course, it exists. Do I have to buy into it every day and feel miserable or choose, I’m not being pedantic at all but it’s like stoic philosophy. You choose. You choose to be happy or you choose to be sad. I choose the former. It’s a no-brainer for me.”

Away from music and arts and your acting, what makes you happy and what makes you laugh?

“Like anybody else, Monty Python for years. Kept me alive. Ricky Gervais! He’s the most irreverent son of a bitch on the planet. So funny. The Golden Globes that speech he gave to the industry, somebody had to do it. God bless you, Ricky. It used to be the point where all I cared about was writing that song. I wanted to write John Lennon’s ‘Imagine.’ I wanted to write that song that people would just gravitate to.

That’s still the goal, to write one of those but my career, and family, my son and my daughter and their spouses and my granddaughters, just getting together with the family. I love to go fishing. I like to ride horses when I can. I like to be out in the wilderness and I still get a tremendous amount of joy playing guitar and singing. That’s not work for me.”

Going back to what we’ve talked about, AI and how it’s developing, as somebody in the creative industry, are you excited by new technologies or different ways of working?

“As long as they don’t clone me. Until I look up and the AI is doing better than I am… If that happens, it’s gonna put a lot of people out of work but right now I don’t think, and I’m sorry kids, there seems to be buy-in. All the CGI and the same formulas with music that same cookie-cutter stamp… everything sounds the same. I can’t take it. Back in the ’60s, you’d hear a band and you knew exactly who it was. You could hear the singer. You could hear the music, and you could know it.

Nowadays, they all come on and they all sound the same to me because it’s a formula. The movies too. I know people out there have original ideas but it’s a matter of they don’t want to spend the money to do it. This is the formula and you see it and you go, ‘Oh my God, here’s the car Chase. He’s gonna go over to the side of the road and he is gonna drive against the traffic,’ you know? If there’s a window in there and they’re after him, he’s gonna jump out, fall into a garbage can… It’s the same process over and over again. I’m sorry. No, I’m sick of that stuff.”

“Until I look up and the AI is doing better than I am… If that happens, it’s gonna put a lot of people out of work…”

On a more light-hearted note. If you could go back and eradicate one thing that annoys you, what would it be?

“Lima beans. When I was a kid, we had these canned Lima beans, and I had to eat them. I was forced to eat them. It was torture. It was the Gulag, the culinary Gulag. A few months ago I was at a restaurant with some friends and they were eating lima beans. They had me try them and, they were really delicious. There’s a big difference from fresh, organic form, lima beans from these old canned ones that have been sitting around for years on a shelf.”

Just to finish off then, as a musician, an actor, a person who’s travelled the world and experienced a lot of different cultures and lifestyles, what’s the one piece of advice you’d give somebody to help them navigate life?

“I talked about this with my friend Rainn Wilson on his show. If you have a dream or a vision, and this is something you want to accomplish, your friends and your family, will try to talk you out of it because they, subconsciously sometimes, don’t want you to leave them. They want to keep you at their level or maybe they don’t want you to rise above them.

It could be just as simple as that they don’t want you to be hurt. If you allow that stuff to happen, then you’re not going to achieve your dreams. So, if you have something, don’t let them talk you out of it. Stick with it. I’m a living example of suffering physically, mentally and emotionally for years and years and years. I stuck with it, got healthy, turned my life around, and here I am, 81, touring, making movies, doing TV, and about as healthy as I’ve ever been. It’s pretty great.”

To pick up your copy of Tao Pop, head over to the Official Creed Bratton website here.