This is the story of Mark Tremonti being the local crew for Ozzy Osbourne

In a recent interview with Neil Jones of TotalRock, Mark Tremonti, guitarist for Alter Bridge and Creed, was asked regarding the existence of an anecdote involving Ozzy Osbourne, as per Blabbermouth.

I did local crew for Ozzy back when I was in college. Yeah, back in — it was 1993. I was a freshman in college at Clemson University in South Carolina, and I was walking to the cafeteria and there was a big signup sheet: ‘Ozzy Osbourne tour. Local crew needed.’ And there must have been 350 signatures on there. And it was, like, ‘$40 for the day.’ So everybody made 40 bucks working all day, but it was worth all the work. But anyways, I go up to sign on the sheet, and just the timing was so perfect — it’s almost like they knew my future was gonna be in the business. That’s what made me want to do this so much more. This guy comes to take down the sign and he says, ‘Hey, just so you know, one of these top people on this list said they couldn’t do it, so if you wanna fill in their spot.’ ‘Cause he saw how excited I was. I said, ‘Absolutely.’ So I got the job.

I volunteered for everything, ’cause you’d have a group of maybe 20, 30 people in there. They’d say, ‘Who wants to do this?’ ‘Who wants to do that?’ I’m, like, ‘Me, me, me, me.’ So after I volunteered to work for pretty much free for the second half of the day, ’cause there was a pre-show, a post-show crew. I did both crews for the same 40 bucks. And I stayed there. I got to go on Ozzy’s tour bus and look at footage of a DVD they were shooting, or maybe it would have been a tape back then. And then I got to touch [then-Ozzy Osbourne guitarist] Zakk Wylde’s guitars. I didn’t get to meet Zakk. I kept on telling ’em, like, ‘I would love to meet Zakk.’ And Zakk, it just didn’t happen. But Alice In Chains was opening. Sepultura was the first band. So, as you can imagine, I’m just backstage backing up gear and lighting and all this stuff going, ‘I need to do this with my life.’

Did he have a chance to tell this to Zakk Wylde?

Of all the musicians that I haven’t been able to spend quality time with, it’s Zakk, for some. We just haven’t crossed paths too much. I’ve met him him once or twice, and he’s a gentleman, but it’s always been around, like, 20 other [people]. Last time I met him, it was at a NAMM [show], and it was me and Zakk and Kerry King and Jerry Cantrell and Vinnie Paul and all this line of — you know, a lot of my heroes. So it wasn’t really conducive to sitting down and having a deep conversation.

Too bad. It makes for a great story, though!