MARK TREMONTI RECORDS TG AN EXCLUSIVE TRACK

December 2005: despite the rise of the Internet, print media still rules. And that means when magazines ask for a favour, sometimes extraordinary things happen...

- Jenna Scaramanga

One surreal aspect of being TG is that sometimes our biggest guitar heroes turn out to be fans of us. Kirk Hammett and Joe Perry have both told us they read the magazine, as have Yungblud and Fontaines D.C.’s Conor Curley in more recent times. But nothing tops the time Mark Tremonti wrote Ahavo Rabo Taco Salad exclusively for TG and got the rest of Alter Bridge to play on it. It also marked a changing of the times. After the guitar solo wasteland of nu metal, Mark Tremonti spearheaded the return of shred.

Did you want to really exploit your shredding capabilities that don’t get used as much in Alter Bridge?

Totally, because when I’m backstage, I’m practising the real shred stuff, whereas in Alter Bridge I play mostly pentatonic solos. This is strictly shred! I’d actually been playing the original rhythm track as the start of my live guitar solo, so it fitted the mood that I was trying to get for TG.