Alter Bridge Mark Tremonti Interview: My Champion, Kirk Hammett Hardwired Solos & More

3. The Coolest Part Of My Champion & Writing Drop-String Riffs

S.T: Back on My Champion, for all us 'inside baseball' fans, is there one really cool thing about that song that, so far, maybe hasn't been talked about enough or that you can reveal now?

M.T: For me the most unique part of that song is the tuning, being able to do that opening riff with that open string droning- I originally got that tuning and thought it was bizarre, 'cause I was so used to doing the Drop B on the low string, going to C was very strange.

I was sitting down with John Connolly from Sevendust - one of my best buds - and we were talking about tunings and he goes "Well that tuning goes with that Drop C tuning", just the bottom string, so I tried it out and years and years later, I thought why not try that Drop C again, and I came up with the riff.

S.T: Was that the same process as Crows on a Wire too, writing a riff around a specific string?

M.T: Yeah that [song] started with that riff. I wrote it and played it to Myles over the phone, and when we were putting Crows on a Wire together, we had Elvis (Baskette, Producer) saying it sounded a little too much like the Tremonti stuff, like heavier and more aggressive, and he wanted to keep it separated so he kinda gave a little pushback on it.

Then we started throwing out more parts, he started liking it better and we - as a band - knew it would be a great live song, and now it's fun to play live for sure. I'm glad it made the record!

Back when I started going over which solos I was going to do and how many I had to write, I was working on the solo for that song, and it wasn't inspiring to me. The chorus and chords with the solo, it wasn't something where you were gonna have big soaring chord changes so I said "Myles, why don't you do the solo!" (laughs)

I'd attacked it for a good couple of days and didn't come up with anything that was inspiring to me, and I didn't wanna have any filler solos on the record, so I asked if he wanted to tackle it and he came up with something great.