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PAGE 6
MONDAY, MARCH 3, 2014
THE UNIVERSITY DAILY KANSAN
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Creed Bratton proud of his 'cult following'
ASSOCIATED PRESS
ALLENTOWN, Pa. — On NBC's "The Office," the character Creed Bratton was a shadowy quality-assurance director at Scranton's Dunder Mifflin paper company.
Over eight years of episodes, viewers learned only sketchy details about Bratton.
Some of those details are true both of the actor and character. Creed Bratton is the actor's name. And the real-life Bratton, like the Dunder Mifflin worker, had been a hippie, went through financially difficult times and created great music as a member of the 1960s pop-rock group The Grass Roots.
"The Creed character has got this cult following." Bratton says in a phone call from California. "The college kids just love this guy. I hope sometimes they're not too disappointed to find out I'm actually an actor playing him."
Bratton says fanatics aren't likely to be disappointed with his live show. "I will bring him out on stage to annoy the people, for sure," he says with a laugh. "I tell them how to be Creed, basically. How to Creed-up their life a bit, you know? Creed-ify their existence."
a "Samuel Clemens-y, hopefully humorous" series of anecdotes about his life, from "all the crazy stuff I went through before The Grass Roots even happened, then The Grass Roots, then all the very down periods — which there's always humor in that, too."
Bratton says the show will be
to find a band to play songs they recorded themselves as The Grass Roots, including the hit "Where Were You When I Needed You." The 13th Floor became The Grass Roots.
He'll talk about "The Office," the mockumentary show that became a cultural phenomenon, ranked atop many critics' lists and won four prime time Emmy Awards, including Outstanding Comedy Series in 2006. He'll punctuate each tale with a song.
Bratton's group lost its bassist to the Vietnam War draft and brought in new vocalist Rob Grill, who sang on the group's biggest hits, "Live For Today" and "Midnight Confessions." Bratton recorded four albums, appeared on "American Bandstand" and toured with The Grass Roots as it set a record for most continuous weeks having a song on the charts.
"I can tell them how to be Creed, basically. How to Creed-up their life a bit."
CREED BRATTON
Actor
But Bratton says he became disillusioned when producers chose to have famed Los Angeles studio musicians The Wrecking Crew play on the albums rather than the real band. The iconic guitar riff on "Let's Live for Today," for example, was Sloan's, Bratton says.
"The other guys were fine
with it; I was not fine with it," Bradton says. "Because I play, I'm an artist. It's not the ego as much as it's, 'Hey, this what I do,' and I take pride in it. So c'mon. So anyway, that was the big bone of contention why I left the group, basically."
Bratton, 71, became a professional musician during his college years and played throughout Europe before forming The 13th Floor in 1966.
If the stories are anything like the real Bratton's life, they're sure to be interesting.
A year later, producers/ songwriters P.E. Sloan and Steve Barri were scrambling
Bratton drifted into acting, appearing in small roles on TV shows such as "Eight is Enough" and "Quincy, M.E." and in movies such as "Heart Like a Wheel" and "Mask," and continued to release music sporadically, mostly singles. It wasn't until 2001, more than 30 years after leaving The Grass Roots, that he released his first full album, "Chasin' The Ball," which was a compilation of those singles.
ASSOCIATED PRESS
Bratton says there also were times when he was collecting unemployment benefits.
"This was the period where I was really down and out," he says. "Not starving; I was still working. I was doing all kinds of different jobs because I'm a hard-working guy. I managed to stay alive. I had child support; I had to keep working."
Needing a job, he took a position as a stand-in on "The Bernie Mac Show," and "I would joke around and they found out I was funny, so they started giving me bits ... a few lines here and there."
He says director Ken Kwapis
Creed Bratton's "Office" character has attracted many followers. His character is loosely based on what his life would be like if he were still doing drugs.
found out he had been in "The Grass Roots," and he was a big pop fan, so he sent his assistant to get a couple of albums to autograph and we chatted." Kwapis was going to direct the pilot for "The Office," and Bratton says "I literally called him up. ... My little voice said, 'See what you can do.'"
Kwapis told Bratton the show had been cast, but they would put him in the background. Bratton responded by creating "a character based loosely on what would have happened if I had continued with my rock 'n' roll ways and still had dropped acid and still did drugs and stuff.
CHARITY
Jimmy Fallon, Chicago mayor take a chilly dip
Jimmy Fallon, host of "The Tonight Show," participated in "Polar Plunge" on Sunday morning in exchange for Chicago's mayor, Rahm Emanuel, appearing on his show.
ASSOCIATED PRESS
"If you hear a scream like a little girl's ... know that Jimmy Fallon is swimming in Lake Michigan," Fallon told the crowd shortly before running in.
Chicago Public Library T-shirt and shorts, went first, with Fallon just after. Both were soaked as they fled the water to cheers from a large crowd. A group of bagpipers, wearing yellow rain boots and traditional kilts, provided the soundtrack for their rapid dash into the 32-degree lake.
Emanuel, wearing a green
ASSOCIATED PRESS
CHICAGO — Comedian Jimmy Fallon took a quick but icy dip in Lake Michigan — dressed in a full shirt and tie — eyes bulging as he darted out of the slushy water and headed straight for a pile of dry towels. "The Tonight Show" host made good on his promise to make Sunday morning's "Polar Plunge" with Mayor Rahm Emanuel as a condition for the mayor appearing on Fallon's show in New York, following an exchange of tweets and challenges.
The annual event draws several thousand hearty plungers to raise money for Special Olympics Chicago.
scores of people dressed in parkas and polar bear outfits, some carrying signs, gathered along the lakefront early, hoping to catch a glimpse of Fallon. It was 10 degrees during the plunge, and Chicago firefighters in red wetsuits waded in before the waves of brave souls, throwing chunks of ice out of the area.
Seventeen-year-old high school senior Marilyn Lamanna and a friend got up at 5 a.m. to snag a spot where they hoped to watch the feat unfold. With them was a large, cardboard cutout of Fallon's head, which caught his eye. He gave the shrieking girls brief hugs before darting off to take the plunge, telling them, "I've got to go meet the mayor."
"Between Jimmy Fallon and the Special Olympics, it doesn't get much better than that, even though it's super cold," Lamanna said.
Emanuel said last summer that if city's children read two million books as part of a Chicago Public Library program called "Rahm's Readers," he'd jump in the lake.
KANSAN COMICS
Presented by: Jayhawk Buddy System
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