Excellent (long) interview article with Creed Bratton. The Grass Roots to The Office.
Creed Bratton Has a Story to Tell
https://www.esquire.com/entertainment/music/a39662813/creed-bratton-the-office-grass-roots-interview-2022/
He’s a performer to his core and I often got the sense that, having been locked inside, he was grateful for the opportunity to entertain–both me and himself. He’s spry in conversation, with the energy of an adolescent and a maddening ability to veer imperceptibly into improvised bits. As I interviewed his friends and collaborators, several people cautioned me, unprompted, no joke, Word. For. Word., in the same way: Creed fucks with you. But I’d already learned.
Also, no matter how heartfelt his plea seems, don’t buy it if he ever tells you he wants the group in Finland to stop sacrificing small animals in his name. I actually spent hours fact-checking before asking about it again months later. He loved that one.
Creed met the actor Beau Bridges in 1972 when Bridges cast him in a musical staged in his parents’ living room. The play closed, but the two became friends. For years, Bridges hired Creed as his stand-in whenever possible. Film sets were unfamiliar places with unfamiliar people, Bridges told me, and Creed (Bridges calls him “Charles”) was a “positive being” with a great sense of humor. “He was my hook to reality,” he said. Creed did earn a few small roles in several of Bridges’s films. Remember the 1985 Peter Bogdanovich film Mask? The asshole ticket taker at the carnival—“You can ride, kid, but I can't take the blame for what happens to the r----d here.”—that’s Creed.
For another bit in his show, Bratton’s tour manager gives him a critic’s review of a previous gig, actually written by Creed, that has just come out: “Tonight, Creed played the hits from his long-forgotten catalog. This almost-adequate show gave phoning it in a new meaning. He set the bar just high enough, with a lot of inside jokes that no one got. Yet, throughout the evening, he always seemed pleased with himself for no apparent reason. Even though it starts out sort of slow, it really bogs down at the end. You’ll leave the show like me—confused and unfulfilled. Which is apparently just what he wants.” “Yeah, well, all right,” Creed says, rolling up the paper and feigning annoyance.
https://www.esquire.com/entertainment/music/a39662813/creed-bratton-the-office-grass-roots-interview-2022/