“I remember Eddie going: ‘Hey, who’s the guitar player?’”: Mark Tremonti recalls how Eddie Van Halen took him under his wing during Creed’s early days
Many guitarists have mentors, but how many can say they’ve been taken under the wing of Eddie Van Halen himself?
Creed and Alter Bridge guitarist Mark Tremonti forever had claim to those very unique bragging rights after Creed supported Van Halen for two nights in 1998.
READ MORE: Mark Tremonti says the other members of Creed would “constantly push back” on him trying to make the band more metal
In an interview in the new issue of Classic Rock, Tremonti recalls the short support stint, and how Eddie Van Halen picked him out to offer him tutelage and even a free guitar.
“I remember Eddie going, ‘Hey, who’s the guitar player?’ and I raised my hand,” Tremonti remembers.
“He’s like, ‘Come here,’ and he showed me his whole guitar rig and how everything worked. He’s like, ‘What colour do you like?’ I said: ‘Black.’ The next day, he brings me a black guitar, the Wolfgang guitar. It’s one of my prized possessions.”
Tremonti also recalled the encounter in a 2021 interview with Guitar World, where he added that EVH saw him again on the way out of the venue, and stopped literally to give him setup instructions for his new guitar.
“Eddie saw me out of the corner of his eye and walked through hundreds of people to come over and say, ‘Hey I forgot to tell you – you need to take out two springs to make it play right – sorry I forgot to tell you that earlier!’
“Then he gave me a kiss on the cheek and walked right through all the people clamouring for him again. He did that for me?! He had his kid and his wife with him and knew he’d get caught up by everybody, but he took his time out because he gave a shit about his products and passing on knowledge.”
Elsewhere in the new Classic Rock interview, Tremonti recalls the moment he felt Creed had hit the “big time”.
“It was when we started playing arenas that it was like: ‘Alright, this is the big time, this is what I’ve dreamt about my whole life.’ I remember specifically being in an arena and opening up a guitar case that had my signature guitar, my PRS Tremonti model. That was one of those peak moments in my career, like, ‘I can’t believe I have a guitar with my name on it with the best guitar company in the world.’”
The post “I remember Eddie going: ‘Hey, who’s the guitar player?’”: Mark Tremonti recalls how Eddie Van Halen took him under his wing during Creed’s early days appeared first on Guitar.com | All Things Guitar.
Source: www.guitar-bass.net
