Alter Bridge Mark Tremonti Interview: My Champion, Kirk Hammett Hardwired Solos & More
6. The Last Hero's Toughest Solo, Mark's Favourite & B-Side Trivia
S.T: Looking back across your discography, has every album been planned to this degree? And were there any solos or pieces of songs in the past that were hard or challenging to put together?
M.T: When you start a record, I always get out a piece of paper and write down exactly how many solos I'll have to tackle, and then I'll just go through 'em one by one, trying to organise them as best I can.
It's always the first three that are the hardest to do. You're always thinking "Oh god, I've gotta put together 11!" (laughs), and you never think you can do it, but by the time you get through three or four, you start to get the confidence to let it flow and free yourself up.
I can't remember what I started with on this record (The Last Hero), but This Side of Fate was a tough one. It's a very odd tuning, and that's my favourite song on the album, and it's probably my second favourite solo on there.
S.T: Is that the one that has this really cool-sounding 'tapping' technique at the end? It sounds awesome, whatever you guys were doing!
M.T: It's more like an arpeggiated-kinda ending with all the chord changes. I just tried to come up with whatever strange chord voicings I was gonna arpeggiate, through those changes towards the end.
I always really liked that one, but it's funny I didn't even have a hard copy of the new record to know how they finally named the B-side on the record, Symphony of Agony.
I don't know what they call it now (Last of Our Kind), but that's my favourite solo on the record. It's the bonus track, but the wrong title made the album!
It's one of those solos where I had two key melodic sections that I really enjoyed putting together. They worked well together and there's a lot of open strings - there's this little thing I do where I let the B string ring open when the chord changes are going through a certain key change, and then the G string opens up and it gives it this tonality and cool kinda feel.
It was one of those moments where by chance, it all really works well. I was kinda bummed that as the record was finishing up, it was everybody's least favourite song.
Like, "Man, the least favourite song has my favourite solo on it!"