Tremonti: How I snubbed Eddie Van Halen

Mark Tremonti almost missed out on meeting his guitar hero Eddie Van Halen – because he was too caught up in a band meeting.

The Creed and Alter Bridge guitarist recalls the night in May, 1997, when Creed were supporting Van Halen at Madison Square Garden in New York. The Creed members were holed up in their dressing room and ignored repeated knocks on the door as they were deep in discussion.

It turns out they were snubbing Eddie Van Halen himself, who was only trying to hand over a guitar to the young Tremonti.

Tremonti tells Fanpass: “The biggest memory I have of that day is getting the guitar from Eddie. He came in the room and was knocking on the door, but we were having a private band discussion and didn’t answer it.

“He knocks again and we don’t answer it, then finally he comes in and he’s like ‘here’s your guitar.‘”

The pair have remained friends ever since, and Eddie’s son Wolfgang now plays bass in Tremonti’s solo project.

In the rest of the video below, Tremonti and Creed/Alter Bridge drummer Scott Phillips discuss their festival highs and lows and their careers with the two bands.

Stef wrote close to 5,000 stories during his time as assistant online news editor and later as online news editor between 2014-2016. An accomplished reporter and journalist, Stef has written extensively for a number of UK newspapers and also played bass with UK rock favourites Logan. His favourite bands are Pixies and Clap Your Hands Say Yeah. Stef left the world of rock'n'roll news behind when he moved to his beloved Canada in 2016, but he started on his next 5000 stories in 2022.