Mark Tremonti Explains What Pissed Him Off 1st Time He Heard Metallica’s ‘Black Album,’ Recalls What He Told James Hetfield When They Met

The Alter Bridge guitarist also recalls Lars Ulrich’s Led Zeppelin question when they met.

During an appearance on Speak N’ Destroy, Alter Bridge guitarist Mark Tremonti talked about Metallica, how important the metal giants are to him, meeting the band, and more.

Alter Bridge has a new album out titled “Walk the Sky.” When asked, “What were some of the first riffs you remember working out from the Metallica catalog?”, Mark replied (transcribed by UG):

“Probably ‘Welcome Home (Sanitarium)’ [from 1986’s ‘Master of Puppets’] is the first thing I learned, and then maybe ‘Fade to Black’ [from 1984’s ‘Ride the Lightning’], some of the more ballad-y guitar parts.

“When I was younger, my brothers always messed with me and said, ‘Can you play a song from start to finish?’ I could always play little parts here and there, but I could never play a song from start to finish.”

I read somewhere that you were talking about how [1986’s] ‘Orion’ always takes you back to your childhood, how you have a memory of, was it painting your parent’s porch…?

“Oh yeah, ‘Orion’ is my all-time favorite Metallica song. That song to me is just the most… I mean, it’s just epic and it just brings back so many memories, and I listen to that song more than any other Metallica song.

“I’m a huge Metallica instrumentals fan. when the ‘Black’ record came out [in August 1991], I was pissed that there wasn’t an instrumental.

“I listened to the whole thing and I’m waiting ’til the very last track, and once there wasn’t an instrumental, I was just, you know… It’s a great, obviously, a humungous record, but I was just mad that there wasn’t an instrumental on there.

“‘To Live Is to Die’ was so good off [1988’s] ‘…And Justice for All’, and every time they do an instrumental is amazing, so I’d like to hear some future Metallica instrumentals.”

There was one on ‘Death Magnetic’ [‘Suicide & Redemption’], and that was the first probably since ‘Justice.’

“Yeah, I just wished it was something that they would always do. To me, that’s just one of their strongest, they can create such a mood with just their instruments, and it’s something I always strived for since I heard that.”

What was your first opportunity to meet those guys?

“The first time I met James [Hetfield, vocals/guitar] I was in LA at The Whisky. Sunset Marquee was the hotel, and there’s a bar there called The Whisky where a lot of celebrities and band people would hang out.

“And my security guy Aaron, we were hanging out, he had known James, and he went over to James and introduced me to him, and then kind of walked off and left me and James there.

“I was very nervous, it’s probably my biggest hero at the time, and we just talked a little bit, I talked to him about King Diamond, how they covered some King Diamond tunes, and I left them alone, I didn’t want to bother them.

“But after that, I met Kirk [Hammett, guitar] a bunch of times, and he was always really nice, easy-going. We were in a bar somewhere and Rob [Trujillo, bass] came in, he’s like, ‘Yeah man, I’ll use your wah pedal on stage [the Morley Mark Tremonti Wah].’ That was pretty killer.

“After that, I met them a bunch of times. Some of my best memories of playing festivals with them, my good friend Tom Robb worked security for them, and he used to do security for us back in the day.

“He came over after our show, and he’s like, ‘James doesn’t often spend a lot of time watching, you know, they’ll check out one or two songs of all these bands, but you’ll never see them watch the whole set, and he just watched your entire set,’ at Download.

“So I was really excited about that, and then he’s like, ‘Kirk wants to say hi to you, why don’t you come over to the dressing room? I’ll leave your name, walk you in.’

“So I walk over, he walks me in, and he had to go somewhere and he kind of left me standing on this balcony, and up comes Lars [Ulrich, drums], he’s like, ‘Hey Mark.’ He knew my name, and he asked me about how cool was it that Myles got to play with the guys from Led Zeppelin, how cool that must’ve been.

“So we had a little conversation; we did a show with them a long time ago, and he had invited us all to the afterparty and he was a gentleman, we had a good time.

“I was watching Metallica onstage, and the security guys were like, ‘Yeah, you’re part of the family up here, you can go wherever you want, let us know if we can do anything.’ I’ve been watching the show, Kirk comes out from behind the curtain at the beginning of ‘Fade to Black,’ and he’s like, ‘Hey man, how’s your show?’

“And he’s explaining to me his rig, and I could hear his solos coming up in like three seconds, he’s like, ‘Oh shit, gotta go,’ he jumps on stage to play his solo, and then later in the night, you know, they have their fan group, like, the fan-club people on both sides of the stage during the set, and I was kind of standing about 30 feet away from them on the side stage.

“And James comes over, I think it was [1984’s] ‘For Whom the Bell Tolls’ or something, and he’s rocking out, he looks to the fans, and he kind of gives them the ‘rock’ face, then he sees me side stage, and he kind of stops picking and kind of gives me a wave and smiles – takes off the ‘rock’ face and just smiles.

“And that was probably one of the coolest moments, being recognized by your hero.”