Cover Art Direction: Andrew Hreha Cover Artwork: Shane Chambers Photography: Andrea Miner © 2013 Alien Chicken Inc.

By Paul Freeman [May 2013 Interview]

In the ‘60s, Creed Bratton became a Top 40 fixture with his band The Grass Roots. Shifting his focus to acting, Bratton endured decades of struggle. Then came a career rebirth as part of the endearing, enduring ensemble of TV’s hit “The Office.” Bratton played a slightly quirkier, darker, more enigmatic version of himself. He created countless memorably hilarious moments over the course of the series.

Bratton grew up near Yosemite Valley, California. His grandparents had an western band called The Happy Timers. Bratton played trumpet in school, but, at 13, shifted his energy to guitar. Soon, he was performing professionally.

While traveling through Europe with his folk group, The Young Californians, Bratton met fellow American and guitarist Warren Entner. Back in the U.S., in 1966, they formed a band called The 13th Floor. Legendary songwriters/producers P.F. Sloan and Steve Barri dug their demo and a contract with Dunhill Records followed.

With a new bassist/vocalist, Rob Grill, and a new band name, The Grass Roots, they whipped out a string of infectious hits, including “Let’s Live For Today,” “Midnight Confessions,” “Bella Linda,” “The River Is Wide” and “Lovin’ Things.” But, by 1969, Bratton was disenchanted with the lack of creative freedom Dunhill allowed them. So he parted company with the band.

Pursuing another of his dreams, acting, he eked out a living as a waiter, on-set caterer and stand-in for Beau Bridges. Finally, in 2005, Bratton became a cult hero with his role on “The Office.” He has also been seen in such movies as “Liz & Dick, ”Saving Lincoln” and “The Guilt Trip.”

A musical comeback ensued. The singer/songwriter/guitarist’s latest is “Tell Me About It.” One listen and you’ll want to tell everyone you know about this album. It’s that good. With a diverse array of beautifully crafted songs, the collection is described as “An Audio Biography About LSD, Unemployment and Third Acts.”

Enjoying his third act, the buoyant, 70-year-old Bratton took time to chat with Pop Culture Classics.

POP CULTURE CLASSICS:
it was with the input of your producer, Dave Way, that you developed the concept of an audio-biography?

CREED BRATTON:
Yeah. I had been talking with my friends and everybody and had said that, for years I’d wanted to do something with my songs. I had these story songs. I’d written them all through my career, through all the ups and downs. I was thinking of like an off-Broadway thing. Obviously, I’m not going to sing and dance. If I’m going to do anything, I’m going to play guitar and tell stories, kind of like a Mark Twain-y kind of thing. But contemporary. So we were doing the album and I was really happy with all the songs that I’d written and this time I actually actively sought out people that I really respected as writers, like Bleu, Dillon O’Brien, Billy Harvey. I actually met Vance DeGeneres, who co-wrote the ‘Faded Spats’ song with me, at a health food store. And he runs Steve Carrell’s production company. We started talking about music. I found out he was in music. And I heard some of his stuff, which I really liked. So we decided to write a song together. And ‘Faded Spats’ is actually one of my favorites. It’s so cool. Anyway, we were doing the album and it was Dave Way, my producer, who said, ‘This sounds like an audio-biography. It’s telling a story.’ And I said, ‘Okay, let’s continue with that idea.’ And that’s how we proceeded with it.

PCC:
I read that it sometimes takes a year or two for you to fully realize what a song is about. Does it end up being cathartic or therapeutic?

BRATTON:
Well, it can be. Sometimes it’s so cryptic. Who knows how art works? If you’re an artist, the stuff comes through and you write it down. But I have had situations where the lyrics are like the harbingers of things that I should watch out for in a relationship or, in my own personal life, what I should do to move ahead, to fulfill my goals. Other times, I’m okay with a song not resolving, being in a grey area. It’s not from me, anyway. The song come through me... That sounds kind of hackneyed and arty-farty [Laughs]. But it’s true. The songs just come on through. And if other people read something into it, I don’t want to tell them what exactly it means, because they might get something totally different out of a song. And that’s equally as valid. So sometimes I think I’m doing a disservice to have lyric sheets on it. I don’t know about you, but some of my favorite songs, that I hear on the radio, I’m singing along with them, I’m loving them, and it gives me all this positive input. And later, I actually hear what the lyrics are, for sure, and I’m disappointed. [Laughs] It takes away my joy.

PCC:
‘Bounce Back’ [Bratton’s previous album] and ‘Tell Me About It’ both showcase a lot of different musical styles. Have you always been diverse in your musical tastes? Does the song just dictate the way it wants to go?

BRATTON:
Yes, exactly. I played trumpet in grammar school and all through high school. I played classical music and marching music and polkas, swing music. And then on guitar, I played country, folk, pop, rock ‘n’ roll, punk and jazz. I played every single thing that’s out there. So my palette has a lot of colors. So when the song comes through, I don’t even think about it. My hands just start playing what I think is the mood of the song. I don’t have one style. I am just a songwriter. And the song comes in and kind of says where it wants to go, what genre it wants to do itself in.

PCC:
The song ‘One Guitar’ so beautifully captures that sense of wonder we get when we pick up that first guitar. Was that the feeling you had when you got that first Silvertone?

BRATTON:
That song was written by Willie Nile and Frank Lee. I played that song with Willie a few times and it got a great response. But, yes, yes, when I got that first Silvertone guitar, which was the early Danelectro with the lipstick front pickup. And it had all that silver flake on it. And you feel powerful, when you finally get that guitar in your hand. It’s much louder than a trumpet. And, for a young man, that’s a good thing [Laughs].

PCC:
‘Chemical Wings,’ what led to that song?

BRATTON:
This was after The Grass Roots. I saw this Long-EZ plane, with the Canard wing on it. It came flying in. I was fascinated with the look of the plane. I don’t fly myself, but my father flew. He actually built a plane from scratch, so maybe it’s in my DNA. So I asked about the plane. And he said, ‘Oh, I know the guy that flies that plane. That’s Jerry Sloan.’ I said, ‘Jerry Sloan! I’ve got his phone number!’ I called up and it was the same guy! Jerry Sloan was one of The Grass Roots’ road managers. So I go out to the little Camarillo Airport and he took me up in that thing and he’s flying me around in it. He says it’s basically built out of foam material. There’s not much metal in it. He said a lot of drug runners like to use it, because they come in low and it doesn’t set up a big beep on the radar. So I originally started writing the song for this plane, ‘Chemical Wings,’ ‘surfboards in the sky,’ like a foam plane, flying in, bringing in drugs.

And then it shifted, of course, into a metaphor for, when things are really bad, sometimes we need to alter our consciousness. But I hope that people realize that I’ve got a little bit of tongue-in-cheek in there. Now I certainly wouldn’t advocate anybody doing what I did, at all. But it worked for me.

PCC:
Yeah, back in the day, did it seem that mind-altering substances would enhance creativity? Open up new avenues?

Photography: Andrea Miner

BRATTON:
It did for me. Some people don’t come back. It depends on the individual. You couldn’t say, ‘Go ahead and try it, artist, it’ll help you.’ I know, John Lennon and people like that, around them, people would start saying, ‘Yeah, you’ve got to go there.’ We believed you’ve got to go there, to those places, on the other side of the veil, and get insights, change it from within, and then bring it back and apply it.

But, except for that song, all these songs were written past the point where I was under the influence. And I think they’re really good songs. You can really craft them better.

PCC:
The bit on the album, with Rainn Wilson, does that reflect your own experience, no longer being the party guy?

BRATTON:
Yeah, I was the guy who always did that stuff and now, if people want to go and do things, I just don’t do it, because I don’t anymore. That just came out that way. Rainn said, ‘What do you want me to do?’ We just stood in front of the microphone. I said, ‘Well, break my balls like you do in ‘The Office,’ when we’re f--kin’ around and stuff.’ And he did. And it was so damn funny. And that was the first time, just off the top of our heads, we just threw some stuff out there, because we’d been doing it so long, he and I.

PCC:
As touching as a lot of the material is, there’s also lots of humor in the album. Did your sense of humor help you get through the darker times in your life?

BRATTON:
Oh, of course, absolutely. Don’t you think that’s one of the greatest gifts we humans have? It’s really an absurd, sick world. Life is absurdity. Everybody knows that, I think. So you have to laugh. And laugh at yourself, really. That’s the only way I got through it... And good drugs [Chuckles].

PCC:
The brief dialogue between you and P.F. Sloan on the album, did you actually stay in touch with him over the years? Or did you lose track after The Grass Roots, when he went through all his career and emotional descent?

BRATTON:
Oh, no, no, we stayed in touch. I hadn’t seen him in a long time, though, because he was in an insane asylum for a while, you know. And I didn’t know what the hell happened to him. And then, one day, he calls me up, this was years ago, and we’ve been friends ever since. And he had a little gig and said, ‘I want you to come and play lead guitar with me, back me up on my songs.’ And I was honored, because I just think he’s one of the greatest songwriters. And we got back together. We were always close before, but then it was like he just dropped off the Earth. I think a lot of people out there think he’s deceased. He’s not. He’s writing up a storm. I just recently played a show with him down in San Diego and also at McCabe’s and other places around the area. It’s a great double-bill, he and I, actually. We get together at the end and we sing, ‘Where Were You’ or ‘This Precious Time’ or one of those songs together. So it’s kind of cool.

PCC:
Is there a chance the two of you might tour together?

BRATTON:
I don’t think so. My film schedule has gotten so... Lucky, lucky me to have these problems... but I have to be free for a lot of film and TV stuff. So I can’t go out and play a lot. I did a show in Boston in April and that went really well. I’ve got a young crowd, a college crowd, that appreciates my cult-y status.

PCC:
Both you and Phil Sloan worked with producer Jon Tiven not too long ago.

BRATTON:
We sure did. In fact, that’s one of the reasons I went to work with Jon. He did the ‘Sailover’ album [P.F. Sloan’s 2004 release]. That was a great album. I don’t know why it didn’t get noticed. So I went out there [to Nashville] to hang with Jon and Sally, his wife, the bass player. I thought that was a pretty cool album [2008’s “Creed Bratton”].

I met Dan Schwartz, the bass player we used with our band, The Rubbermen, and on the ‘Bounce Back’ album. Both albums. He played with me and a couple of the guys from The Grass Roots at the 35th anniversary of The Whisky A Go-Go. And that was The Doors, whoever was left of The Doors, and Nancy Sinatra, Johnny Rivers, Paul Revere and the Raiders. It was a real interesting show. Dan was the rock that held that ship together that night. We got a good review.

So I was sitting around playing with him one day. He was listening to my songs - this was right before ‘Bounce Back’ - and he said, ‘You’ve got to record these songs. These are really good songs.’ And so he played me Rosanne Cash’s album, ‘Black Cadillac.’ I said, I love the way this sounds.’ And we started talking about sounds and what I heard for how the songs should be recorded and everything. He said, ‘You’ve got to meet Dave Way.’

I think Brian MacCleod, the drummer was going over there. So he took me over there. And instantly, Dave and I hit it off. Next thing you know, we’re in the studio doing ‘Bounce Back.’ And then, naturally, after I had so much fun, and I thought the album turned out so well, we decided to do it again a couple years later. And now we have this album. Of course, now we don’t have Val McCallum [guitarist] on the whole album. We have Billy Harvey. He played with us a couple of times at South By Southwest. And he’s a really interesting guitar player. By the way, that solo on ‘Chemical Wings ‘ oh, my God! It puts the hair up on the back of my neck.

PCC:
What was the South By Southwest experience like for you?

BRATTON:
Fantastic! There’s all this eclectic stuff going on. People trying stuff. They don’t have to fit into the template for the record companies anymore... because the record companies don’t exist, basically. So they’re just doing their own thing. And you can actually hear bands that actually have their own sound. On the radio, you hear all the singers trying to sound just the same, because that’s what sells. And the guitar sounds the same. The structure of the song is the same. I want to go back to the ‘60s, when you heard the radio, ‘Hey, that’s The Grass Roots. That’s The Doors. There’s The Byrds. There’s The Mamas and Papas. There’s The Rascals.’ You know right away. You hear their spirit. Nowadays, you can’t do that. I myself, I put on a record, put on the radio, I can’t tell them apart.

PCC:
And there was such a diversity of sound on the Top 40 back then.

BRATTON:
Absolutely. It’s just sad, what’s happened. The art has gone out of it. It’s all commercialism, just to make the almighty dollar. But that’s not how it started out. It started out for the joy of the music.

PCC:
Your own start in music, playing in streets of Europe, were you always an adventurous kind of guy?

BRATTON:
Yeah, I was. I was always getting up on my horse, getting up to places I wasn’t supposed to be going, climbing up stuff I wasn’t supposed to be climbing up. And when I got out of college, I spent almost two-and-a-half years in Europe. First year-and-a-half with this folk trio. And we played all the way from Copenhagen, Scandinavia, clear down to Morocco, all the way across North Africa, headed down towards the Sudan, got turned back, went back over to Beirut, went down to Israel, went to the Greek Islands with this girl I fell in love with, and then I went all the way through the Red Curtain countries, Poland, back into East Germany, which was a very scary, weird place at the time. 1965. It was nuts. And then I ended up starving, literally, in England. Dropped down to 145 and came home, because I thought I was going to die. I was just not eating.

PCC:
And where were you when you came up with the name Creed Bratton?

BRATTON:
I was in a cafe in Greece. This was after my lady friend, she had to go back to college. I had to go back, because I got a draft notice in Cairo. I was sitting there with this couple from Oregon who were English teachers. They were going to the island of Crete - it sounds like a joke, it isn’t - they were going to the island of Crete to teach English to the Cretans. [Chuckles]. I told them my name, which was William Charles Schneider. My mother remarried,this guy named Ertmoe, so I was Chuck Ertmoe. Horrible name.

I said, ‘I’m going to be an actor and a musician.’ Primarily, I was thinking of getting into film, because that was something I studied. Music was just something I did. Acting, I knew I was going to do that. They said, ‘Well, you can’t use that name. It’s horrible.’ I said, ‘You’re right.’

So cut to the next morning. I'm sitting at the bed & breakfast place. I can’t get out of bed. My head is splitting ouzo, the worst thing to drink. You get the worst hangover in the world. If you want the worst hangover, drink ouzo. That’ll do it to you. I look up and sitting on the table is this tablecloth, And it’s got all these names, looks like graffiti. And they’re all crossed out, except one is circled - Creed Bratton. I went, ‘Oh, that’s right! That’s my new name.!’

PCC:
When you were with the 13th Floor, was the folk-rock sound already there? Was it shaped when you got together with P.F. Sloan and Steve Barri?

BRATTON:
For me it was already somewhat there. I’d already played folk music. The Young Californians did some recording in England with Mark London, who eventually was the producer on that Mick Jagger movie, ‘Performance,’ an old, classic, weird rock ‘n’ roll film. But we were approaching it, trying to play rock ‘n’ roll music with acoustic instruments. So we just had it ass-backwards, basically [Laughs]. What we should have done was play folk music with electric instruments.

But The 13th Floor, we were a hard-driving band. We liked Otis Redding and psychedelia and we would just get there and turn our guitars, our amps up really loud. Just blast away. We were very aggressive.

It was great. P.F. Sloan and Steve Barri did wonderful things for us. Changed my life.

PCC:
The Dunhill label using The Wrecking Crew on some of the tracks, did the band members have any issues with that?

BRATTON:
I had an aversion to that. Even though I respect The Wrecking Crew so much. And Warren and I played on ‘Live For Today.’ I got to play guitar on a bunch of stuff, in the beginning. After a couple years, we’d be out on the road, we’d come back in and the tracks were cut. And they just wanted our vocals on them.

So then it became like a machine. And I resented it. I can play guitar. I knew for a fact and acknowledged the fact that I was not as good a musician as Glen Campbell and these cats, Tedesco and these guys playing guitar. But I had what I thought was my own sound. And I thought we should have done it. I told them, ‘If we don’t do our original songs and play these things, we’re going to fall by the wayside. We’re going to be like The Monkees.’ And they didn’t think it was a good idea. And financially, it wasn’t a good idea. Artistically it was. Financially, it was not. It turned out okay for me. It it had hadn’t, it would have been a disaster for me to get out of that group. They were around for a couple more years. Nobody made any money, anyway, because Dunhill Records cheated everybody. Everybody, not just us - Three Dog Night, Mamas and The Papas, everybody on Dunhill, that’s what happened to them.

PCC:
Phil Sloan certainly has horror stories about that.

BRATTON:
Oh, yeah, absolute horror stories.

PCC:
The ‘Feelings’ album is more The Grass Roots on their own.

BRATTON:
Yes, yes. Have you ever heard that album.

PCC:
I have. I think it’s great.

BRATTON:
I think it’s a great album, too. We were very proud of that album. I feel that, if they had just given us another chance to continue on that path... woulda, shoulda, coulda. But I think we sounded just like a raw band, a lot of energy. And there was fun stuff on there. But I have no regrets at all.

PCC:
Then the ‘Loving Things’ album moved towards a more horn-driven, soul sound.

BRATTON:
Well,we had done ‘Midnight Confessions’ before that. And I loved ‘Midnight Confessions.’ It was a really good song. It was impossible for us to duplicate live, with the horns and everything. Ridiculous.

PCC:
Having appeared on bills with all these great artists, Janis Joplin, The Doors, who made the biggest impressions on you?

BRATTON:
The first time I heard Moby Grape walk out on stage and play ‘Omaha,’ I almost shit in my pants. Oh, my God! They scared me. We had to go on after. They were our opening act. We had to follow that band. And they were powerful. That was the time I realized how powerful you can be on stage, when I heard Moby Grape. They fell apart, of course. But, at that time, they were powerful. And the very first time I heard the three-part harmony of Three Dog Night, and that band, they blew me away, too. Blew me away! There were a lot of great groups. We toured for a while with Cream, for God’s sakes.

PCC:
For you, how did the reality of rock stardom compare to the dream?

BRATTON:
Well, it’s like anything else. It’s the same deal, when you think about being on a hit TV show. It turns out to be work. It turns out to be a 12-hour day. It turns out to be traveling around and a lot of work. People don’t realize there’s a lot of work involved in it. No complaints. I love it. I love my job.

PCC:
Do you have mixed emotions about saying goodbye to ‘The Office’?

BRATTON:
Oh, yeah, yeah. Nine seasons is a long time. I’ve watched these kids grow up, a lot of them. And I just sat there at my desk and had a couple of lines. What a great gig I had, huh?

PCC:
Did you have any input into how your character was wrapped up for the finale?

BRATTON:
Well, they asked everybody to come in. I came in and told them my ideas and what I thought I wanted to do. And actually, they did allow me to do one thing that I wanted to do, which was very, very kind of them. And I’ll thank Greg Daniels [executive producer] and the writers one more time again, for letting me do this thing. But I can’t tell you what it is, because it hasn’t aired yet and I don’t want to take away from it. But I will say, we tie up my character pretty coolly, I think.

PCC:
Going through those difficult years between The Grass Roots and ‘The Office,’ what enabled you to persevere?

BRATTON:
Because I love acting. I love music. I just couldn’t give up. Most people, after 30 years, would have given up. I stayed in class. I’m a very hard-working cat, really.

PCC:
And resilient.

BRATTON:
And apparently, I’m resilient.

For more on this artist, visit creedbratton.com.