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Guitarist’s new band is an Alter-native to Creed
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Ex-Creed guitarist Mark Tremonti says it wasn’t the music
that broke up one of the world’s biggest bands.
“It was personal,” he says. Singer “Scott (Stapp)
separated himself from us. At one time, we were his closest
friends. But put people in a bus for years and little things about
us just rubbed him the wrong way.”
By the time the group entered the studio to record their fourth
album, last November, they were barely speaking. Several days into
the sessions, Stapp and the band had what Tremonti calls “a
little argument” _ clearly an understatement since it caused
the four members to kill a goose that had sold tens of millions of
records.
The band’s company, Wind-up, didn’t announce the bustup
until seven months later, in June. They also revealed that two
members – Tremonti and drummer Scott Phillips – had
formed Alter Bridge.
That band, named for an overpass Tremonti mythologized in his
youth, issued its debut, “One Day Remains,”
Tuesday.
Tremonti says the label paired the stories of the old band’s
death and the new one’s birth to get the most media play for
Alter Bridge. Stapp releases his first solo album early next
year.
Cannily, the band chose the song “Open Your Eyes” as
its first single, since it sounds the most Creed-like.
“We didn’t want to come with something in a completely
different direction right away,” Tremonti explains.
Yet, on the full CD, Alter Bridge sounds more like Soundgarden, if
only because new singer Myles Kennedy has a similar high-pitched
yowl to that band’s Chris Cornell.
Tremonti and his cronies plucked Kennedy from the Mayfield Four,
which had opened for Creed. They also hired Creed’s original
bassist, Brian Marshall, who’d been fired several years
back.
“The arguments between Scott and Brian would escalate, and
there was nothing I could do to defend him after a while,”
Tremonti says.
As with Creed, Tremonti wrote most of the Alter Bridge melodies,
and many of its lyrics. But he considers this band more of a
democracy.
“In Creed you’d do a lot of work and nothing would
materialize,” he says. “This time I can get across all
my ideas. And everyone’s open to everyone’s
opinions.”
He says Creed also suffered from pressures to hold its commercial
power.
“You always had to worry about how long a song could be, or
what radio stations would play it,” he says. “It turned
out to be a big puzzle on how to continue to be successful. I
wanted to be able to put out exactly the music I want.”
Jim Farber
New York Daily News