Biography.

Early life

Mark Tremonti was born and raised near Detroit, Michigan. He listened to hard rock and metal like KISS, Celtic Frost, and Metallica. At the age of 11, he bought his first guitar. It was a Tara, which was a Gibson Les Paul copy and cost about 25 dollars. Mark then attended music lessons but decided to quit because the teacher would not teach the style that he wanted, "They were teaching me 'Mary Had a Little Lamb' when I wanted to learn 'Master of Puppets'." Instead, Tremonti learned guitar autodidactically with tab books. One of the first songs Mark wrote was called "Yesterday". Mark played in many bands before his venture into Creed, one of which was known as Night Stalker.

 

 Creed era (1994-2004)

After high school, Tremonti went to Florida State University. At FSU, he met up with singer Scott Stapp, whom he knew from high school, and former guitar player Brian Brasher and started writing music. Contrary to the common belief, Tremonti and Stapp were not friends in high school, they knew of each other but hung out in different crowds. Together, Tremonti, Stapp and Brasher held auditions for a bassist and a drummer that resulted in the selection of Scott Phillips and Brian Marshall. They initially named themselves "Naked Toddler" (from an article title on a press clipping that Tremonti used to carry in his wallet. The band eventually settled on the name "Creed" at Marshall's suggestion (having previously been in a band called "Mattox Creed"). Creed went on to sell over 30 million records worldwide in seven years, and performed up to 5,000 live shows. Due to increasing differences between Stapp and the other band members, Creed split and Alter Bridge was born in 2004.

 

 Alter Bridge era (2004-present)

Since Creed split up, Tremonti has worked with many different guitarists and musicians such as Michael Angelo Batio, Thomas Gospodareck, and Fozzy. He took extensive lessons from guitarist Troy Stetina. He stated, “After all Creed achieved professionally, I felt that I needed to refocus on the goals that I had personally. One of those goals was to get back to my rock and roll roots. After Creed took a break, band-mate Scott Phillips and I started to jam together again and realized that we both shared the same vision and were surprisingly anxious to get back out there and start doing it again. " ^[1]. They reunited with ex-Creed bassist Brian Marshall and recruited former Mayfield Four vocalist Myles Kennedy to form Alter Bridge. The name symbolized going over and into the unknown, and while the new band mates decided collectively on the name for the new project, it was inspired by Tremonti's youth in Detroit. Alter Bridge is a real bridge in Detroit located near his childhood home. The children in the neighbourhood weren't allowed to cross the bridge as it led to a bad section of town, and thus to them what lay on the other side was unknown. Since Alter Bridge's formation, the band has released two studio albums: One Day Remains in 2004 and Blackbird in 2007.

 

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