CREED BRATTON

AS A MEMBER of the hit-making, late-Sixties pop-rock group the Grass Roots, guitarist Creed Bratton lived the life of a king. But as he tells it, all that excess — the girls, the drugs, the girls — was nothing but hard work. “Led Zeppelin were a bunch of pussies compared to us,” he says. “We parted like crazy. But see, I was an athlete. I was a swimmer in college. When we got successful with the Grass Roots, I became a reluctant rock star.

I didn’t like getting high, but I had to do it. It was part of the deal, so I joined in. I'd wake up in the morning and go, ‘I gotta do drugs again today. I gotta throw a TV out the window again today. I didn’t want to, but I soldiered on.”

He pauses for effect, then laughs. “That's my stage bit. Of course it was great! Are you kidding? It was the Sixties, the Summer of Love, and I was in a hit band. It was the absolute best! In a perfect world, all young men in their twenties would have experienced what I went through.”

For a while, it was smooth sailing. Bratton and his Grass Roots mates — singer-guitarist Warren Entner, singer-bassist Rob Grill and drummer Rick Coonce — ruled the charts with AM gems like “Let's Live for Today” and “Midnight Confessions,” among others. But by 1969, Bratton grew frustrated at the band’s musical direction, one guided by Dunhill Records staff producer-writers P.F. Sloan and Steve Barri. Not many people would split a successful band, but that’s exactly what Bratton did. As it turned out, he had a long view of the kind of career he wanted.

“The truth is, I studied drama in school, and I always planned on being an actor,” he says. “I played music to make money, and then the whole Grass Roots thing happened. Acting was always something I would pursue.

It took a while for the whole thing to take off, but when it did, it went bigger than I could have imagined.”