Creed Bratton Originally Tried To Distance His Music From ‘The Office’
"It wasn’t like I was a TV actor trying to fake it as a musician."
Creed Bratton knows all too well that he wouldn’t be venturing to Australia with his music on the verge of turning 80 if it weren’t for fans of The Office, but there was a time when the US musician/actor tried to draw a dividing line between the two.
Well before he portrayed a fictionalised version of himself– albeit a twisted one – in the long-running series, Bratton was an established musician who got his start in the music industry in the ‘60s as lead guitarist for rock legends The Grass Roots.
He departed the band after recording three albums and began a solo career, which didn’t quite take off as he’d hoped and he shifted his creative focus to acting, which eventually led to The Office.
“For a couple of years, while the show was going on, I started touring and I thought, ‘You know what, I’d just like to talk stories about the music and I’d like it to be about the music,’” Bratton tells.
“But how can I do that? How could I possibly do that? Because I wouldn’t be out playing my music now if The Office didn’t open up all these people to know who I was [and] that I was in this band.
“Because it wasn’t like I was a TV actor trying to fake it as a musician - in my 20s I had Gold records and stuff in the top of the pop charts and things like that.
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“I realised, ‘No, I can’t have my cake and eat it too, I’m going to have to allow the stories in-between to be about The Office and be about funny stuff.’
“So, I always mention The Office and I know how lucky I am to be on that show, because that’s once in a lifetime; nobody gets to be on a show like that - very, very few people.”
Bratton now embraces the connection wholeheartedly and his ninth studio album, 2020’s Slightly Altered, even opens with a song named Mose Was A Runner, referring to a character from the show who is somehow even more bizarre than Bratton’s.
Added to that, castmate Brian Baumgartner used Bratton’s Bubble & Squeak off the same album as the theme for his The Office Deep Dive podcast.
“They come to the show to see Creed from The Office and I hear from so many people – and I’m not blowing smoke up my own ass, unless it’s menthol, of course – but they come to see The Office character and they go realising, ‘Oh, those songs are really, really good.’
“And they are - I have some introspective, plangent lyrics and meaningful, deep, resonating songs that work. Now I’ve been playing professionally since I was 17, so I’m 79 now, so thank god I have all these biohacking things I do to keep healthy,” he laughs.
CREED BRATTON 2022 AUSTRALIAN TOUR
The Triffid, BRISBANE – 21 Sept
The Factory Theatre, SYDNEY – 22 Sept
Basement, CANBERRA – 24 Sept
The Corner, MELBOURNE – 25 Sept
Freo Social, FREMANTLE – 27 Sept
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