Are Creed fans’ arms still open?

Scott Stapp, the former lead singer of Creed, is back from career exile with an album titled “The Great Divide.� It’s a fitting name -- there may be no more polarizing figure in recent rock history, and the gulf between his fans and his detractors is wide and ugly.

Stapp may have been the most mocked man in rock in the 1990s, but Creed also sold a staggering 25 million albums in the United States alone. The problem now, though, is that pop audiences’ infatuations fade fast, while rock purists know how to hold a grudge.

None of this is lost on Stapp.

“I don’t know what to expect, I really don’t,� Stapp said in a hushed voice during a visit to Los Angeles to promote the solo CD that hit stores last week. “Do I pick up where I left off? Or do I have to start all over again, playing to five people in a room? Do I have to work my way back up?�

Stapp reached great commercial heights with Creed, a band that presented a radio-friendly sound that was part simplified Pearl Jam and part arena-rock spiritual anthem. Stapp’s childhood as the disaffected son of a Pentecostal minister in Florida may have left him privately conflicted, but on stage he was an evangelist in leather pants belting out hits such as “My Sacrifice,� “Higher� and “My Own Prison.�

As the band propelled itself to the very top of rock, Stapp became something akin to the Vanilla Ice of modern rock -- ridiculed as derivative, vainglorious and undeserving. And though Bono has long laced rock with Christian imagery, Stapp’s messianic music videos made him a laughingstock with music critics and even some peers. Dexter Holland of the Offspring, for instance, used to wear an “Even Jesus Hates Creed� T-shirt on stage.

In the end, Creed didn’t even like Creed. The band officially broke up last year, but the first death rattle was in December 2002 on stage in Rosemont, Ill. Stapp’s account of the night is that increasing tension within the band inspired him to turn and call out his mates while performing the aptly titled “Who’s Got My Back.�

Seeing something in their eyes that was less than supportive, Stapp says, he plopped down on stage on his back and sang to the rafters. Some fans at the show had a different interpretation; they filed a lawsuit later claiming that Stapp was drunk or loaded and that the band owed a refund to all 15,000 fans on hand.

Months after the Rosemont fiasco, Stapp and Creed guitarist Mark Tremonti, the musical forces behind the band, came together in the studio to begin work on the band’s fourth studio album. It went nowhere. After that, Stapp, for the first time, found himself running away from the spotlight.

“It was killing me, so I ran off to Maui and spent a lot of time with my son,� he said. “I was internalizing everything. You can’t have a me-against-the-world attitude, and I know that now. This is a business where you have to let a lot of stuff go.�

Stapp may want to let things go, but what about his skeptics? Fred Jacobs, of Jacobs Media, a Michigan-based radio consultant company that works with rock stations, compared Stapp’s fall from grace to the waning interest in Oasis in America.

“Scott has a lot of baggage to overcome,� he said. “This is a lightning rod guy for a lot of radio programmers and frankly that hurts. There’s not a lot of excitement right now to embrace his new music. This is a guy that made people angry. Like Oasis, there was a growing perception that his behavior hurt him.�

Take WNOR-FM in Norfolk, Va., a 35-year-old rock station that made Creed part of its bread-and-butter sound in the 1990s. The station still plays “Arms Wide Open� and other Creed anthems every day. Harvey Kojan, the program director, said the new music is getting a tepid tryout with the station but that the past is hard to forget.

“As time went on, everything this guy did on stage exuded ego and people got sick of it, even the true fans,� Kojan said. “When they came to town, we would get the calls after the show, the complaints. But we will give this some consideration.�

It doesn’t help that Tremonti and his new band, Alter Bridge (which includes former Creed members Scott Phillips and Brian Marshall), have been making the radio rounds promoting their new release, which is also from Wind-Up Records, Stapp’s current label.

“They’re talking about the breakup with Scott and exactly how it all went down.... I don’t know if that helps Stapp very much,� Kojan said.

For a guy steeped in Christian experience, Stapp sounds pretty Zen these days. He won’t talk about Tremonti and company, nor will he discuss any animus toward rock radio, although he does let it slip that some of the current airplay stars in modern rock sound “like Creed tribute bands.� Then it’s back to the basics of humility.

“I’m older now and I’ve [had] time -- a few years -- to reflect on the past and how I got where I am, the good and the bad,� Stapp said as he prepared for an appearance on “The Tonight Show With Jay Leno.� “I thought about the way I handled things, and sometimes I think I came off the wrong way. It was all a function of this chip on my shoulder.�

On the show, Stapp wore a shirt printed with the phrase “Music is the Weapon of the Future,� a motto of Fela Kuti, the Nigerian music pioneer and political firebrand who died in 1997 of complications due to AIDS. But backstage the rock star had a more passive message.

“I can’t live for other people’s opinions, I have to live for me,� the 32-year-old said. “I can only be me. The other way, well, that was killing me. Now, I can admit my faults.�

Stapp has fared far better with blue-collar arena fans than he has with music critics on the coasts and purist fans who put a premium on whatever they define as rock credibility. Looking to speak to his audience, Stapp and Wind-Up struck a deal with NASCAR to weave “The Great Divide� into advertisements and marketing. He performed Nov. 20 at the Ford 400 in his native Florida, where he still lives.

In January he plans to begin a world tour. He hopes that by then “The Great Divide� will have connected with fans.

“We’re watching the first week sales of the album,� he said, “and we’re hoping that if we debut near the top of the charts, radio will have no choice, right?�

Retail reports were hard to pin down and slippery to predict because of the holiday shopping surge, but as of Monday, “The Great Divide� appeared to be on track to sell 125,000 copies in its first week. That’s a far cry from Creed’s heyday and well below the expected No. 1 seller, System of a Down’s “Hypnotize,� which should log in well north of 325,000 copies sold.

Retailers also seem to have mixed feelings about Stapp’s new 10-song CD, which sonically falls not far from the core Creed style. Not only do tracks such as the title song, “You Will Soar� and “Broken� have the yearning and cadence of Creed hits, they also have the sonic stamp of the band. Backing Stapp is Gone Blind, the band that had been an opening act for Creed. “I just grabbed the whole band. They were down with my playing my songs, and I showed them my secret tunings and the things you can do with a guitar to create that Creed sound.�

None of that guarantees a reunion with the old fan base.

“We ordered a lot of copies, but we don’t know how they will sell because a lot of people really feel strongly about this guy in a negative way,� said Bob Feterl, regional manager in Los Angeles for Tower Records. “You see that every once in a while where a band will get so big and ubiquitous and then there’s this backlash. That happened with Hootie and the Blowfish, for example. It’s hard to say what will happen. Creed sold a lot of albums, but I don’t know if people want to go back to them.�

True, Hootie and the Blowfish and the Spin Doctors are others who saw the rubber-band effect of pop stardom, but they were both affable outfits. Stapp’s past is a prickly affair. When asked about the title of the new CD, he seems to say that he has chosen a hopefully rosier path this time around.

“I was at a crux in my life. I had two choices, two ways to live -- go one way or the other. It was right there. That’s what the title is about.... Now Creed fans, that’s what I’m waiting to see, which way they go. What are they going to do? Selfishly, I really hope I can pick up right where I left off.�