Imagine for a second that you have written a song that is home to some of the most raw, honest and emotionally resonant that you have ever conjured. Imagine that it had taken a sticky situation too far to help pry such a revelation out of you and place it within your music, the one thing that keeps you going.
And as you show it to the powers that be, they say, "Can you make this sound a bit more like It's Been A While by Staind?"
That was the reality for Papa Roach when they handed Scars over to their A&R, who then showed it to their new label chairman, who proclaimed it wasn't what they were looking for.
Though it speaks volumes to the limbo the band found themselves in as they plotted their fourth album, How To Get Away With Murder. After the runaway success of sophomore record Infest back in 2000, and within that the genre-defying rise of Last Resort, they were immediately under pressure to keep the streak going. But as nu-metal was taking its last breaths and their follow-up, Lovehatetragedy, severely underperformed, the quartet were forced to stare into the possibility of oblivion with every move they made.
"We were always on edge," vocalist Jacoby Shaddix told the Sarasota Herald Tribune. "We didn't know if we were going to get dropped or anything. So there was like, an underlying sense of doom, you know what I'm saying, to the writing of that record."
Though it wasn't just business that was affecting them. 2004 served as the moment when he decided that it was time to try to tackle sobriety properly. Though alongside the stresses of not knowing if the one thing that truly kept him going through the darkness, that being making music, was going to keep him afloat, it made the recovery that little bit harder.
Though perseverance was key, especially after a particular epiphany in Las Vegas, which he admits was a major inspiration for the lyrical content of Scars. The specific details of said incident are still kept close to Jacoby's chest, but from a moment of self-inflicted harm delivered on the pavement outside of the Hard Rock Hotel and Casino, so severe it resulted in a trip to the emergency room, came a clarity. That it cannot go on like this.
"It was a bad night," he told Las Vegas Weekly. "I landed up in the hospital with 11 staples in my head. It was a wild experience and pretty much an awakening for myself to pull my life together."
With the tightness of those staples still pulling on his scalp, Jacoby considered what there was to lose if he just let things carry on the way they were going. The band, of course. Himself, perhaps he was already on route with that. But the one that stuck out the most was losing his wife, Kelly, whom he had been married to since 1997. In taking accountability for what he was putting himself and her through, Scars was formed.
For such heavy, historic emotions, with the choral hook of "Our scars remind us that the past is real" rooted in both Jane Austen's Pride & Prejudice and Anthony Hopkins's portrayal of Hannibal Lecter in Red Dragon, a change of pace was needed, too. So the band produced an instrumental that sat closer to balladry than they have ever been before. A considerable step, considering part of what had made Last Resort such a phenomenon was just how pit-ready it was. But change is only possible when you face it head-on. And if you never try, you will never know.
"It was such a different type of track for us at the time," Jacoby told SongFacts. "But when we finally step out of our comfort zone as a band and as writers, that's always when we see the most growth as a band, and when we connect to new people. So we'll just keep forging that path. That's what's natural to us: to progress and evolve."
It's because of this that being told that it wasn't right by Geffen, their new home following their previous label Dreamcast being acquired by them, hurt so much. Of course, the heartwrenching yearning feel of Staind's hit was something to look towards for some bands, but in using it to heighten something so personal, which had come from such personal intent, felt like a slap in the face.
"We were so pissed about it," guitarist Jerry Horton told the BBC. "We go back into the studio, we try it, and it was just the biggest turd we had ever recorded, and I think they felt the same." The feeling even extended all the way to the top with label president Jordan Schur bellowing, to quote the band, "WTF am I going to do with this DEAD band?". On paper, all signs were against the Roach, but ultimately, it is the people who are listening who truly make or break you.
After finding a home on rock and alt radio around its release at the start of November, by the time 2005 rolled around, Scars had broken through into contemporary hit radio in the US, a place Last Resort never truly was able to, thanks to its heavier nature. A whole new audience was suddenly available, allowing the connection to such open, heartfelt words to flourish like never before. From there, the track would hit Gold certification by Summer, cementing its status as a hit. Getting Away With Murder would follow, hitting Platinum status by the Autumn of 2005. No longer burdened by the past, the future was more open than ever before.
But for Jacoby, it was important to reiterate that it was never their intention to write a song that made such a switch. It was just them following what felt right, as they had always done.
"When we wrote Scars, it wasn't about how we were going to connect with a mass audience," he told V13 in 2006. "It was like, we wrote it, and we were like, 'Oh my god, this is so different, but fuck, this is so good'. How can we deny ourselves the opportunity to explore this territory musically?"
Because through every ebb and flow that Jacoby has experienced, music has been the thing that has pulled him through. It's a sentiment that continues to this day, with the band riding their own self-made wave, pushing themselves in whatever way the wind takes them. From collaborating with everyone from Carrie Underwood to Toby Morse in the last 18 months alone, it is that sheer passion for creating that would keep the lights on even if the band weren't still dominating charts and selling out arenas.
It's that love and desire that helped Scars come to fruition, a song that to this day he still reiterates changed his life, and as long as that same fire burns, not a lot is going to change.
"I have music as my saviour, straight up," he admitted to Las Vegas Weekly. "I mean, sometimes I seem miserable now, but then I imagine my life without my band, my music, and it would be horrid. I learned that music is a creative way to cope. I ate, breathed and shit music while we did this record. As I said, it is an imperative time in our career and we have something to prove. But it has always been like this from when we were punk rocking it in a band, to when we blew up, to where we are at now. There is always a new challenge. And this record was another chance to prove ourselves as a band."
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