Creed’s Mark Tremonti insisted on playing live during their 2001 Dallas Cowboys Thanksgiving halftime show, defying lip-sync norms. Despite playback issues, the band’s high-energy performance resonated authentically with the stadium audience.
A full-on production complete with the Dallas cowboys cheerleaders, dancers and acrobatic performances, Alternative Rock Creed’s 2001 Thanksgiving Day Dallas Cowboys halftime performance circulates particularly this time of the year. And now guitarist Mark Tremonti just revealed some information about a demand they had made regarding the production when Creed was at their peak.
“You go in and nobody before you shows up for rehearsals. Nobody tells you what’s going to happen in the production. We didn’t know. We just knew, ‘Hey, you’re going to go onstage. You’re going to perform,'” Tremonti recalled. “So we got up there and I don’t even know if we did a full rehearsal with it with the whole production. I can’t remember, but I doubt it was to the extent of what you saw on TV.”
According to Tremonti, his biggest worry was that during a TV live such as Superbowl, the bands are not actually live. It’s the vocals that are live along with backing tracks and lip syncs which he didn’t want to use. The Creed guitarist continued, that the authorities got back to him pointing out, “You know, there’s going to be how many hundred million people watching this thing. You have to do it.” He mentioned everyone advising him not to turn down that level of exposure.
Tremonti decided to finally do it if his terms were met. The guitarist demanded two stacks of speakers behind him and wanted his amps to be live. “I’m going to turn that as loud as they can turn it. So I’m actually playing for the people in the stadium at least, so I’m not faking my way through it.”
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The organizers agreed and Creed decided to do it. But even after the demands were met, the band had more struggles coming up. Tremonti says when they started playing the song the playback skipped in his ears and a disappointed Tremonti thought that it’d look like they were faking it. But because of the seven second adjustment, they were fine.
So now as he looks back, Tremonti is happy with his decision. That massive level of production is indeed inevitable without backing tracks as he agrees. “I think people understand now when you watch a Super Bowl show, that stuff’s not all live. You can’t set up a production that big without having some tracks going in those situations,” marks Tremonti.
Revisit Creed’s Day Dallas Cowboys halftime performance here:
