There are stories that sound made up, and then there’s this one. In 2004, Alter Bridge and Creed guitarist Mark Tremonti walked into a Florida wedding and walked out having jammed Led Zeppelin’s Rock and Roll with Brian Johnson of AC/DC. The venue? A reception for former MLB star Johnny Damon. The mood? Utter chaos, the joyful, drunken kind.
“Johnny’s a famous baseball player in the States: he lives in my neighbourhood and he’s a friend of mine,” Tremonti told Metal Hammer. “He invited us to his wedding, and Brian Johnson was there. Somebody’s like, ‘You should go up to Brian and see if he wants to get onstage and jam with you. Go barge in on the wedding band’s gear!’”
This isn’t one of those hesitant, polite musician exchanges, either. Tremonti recalls, “He was getting a drink, and I walked up behind him like, ‘Hi, Brian; I’m Mark, I’m a guitar player. Do you want to go onstage and jam some songs?’ He grabbed his junk and went, ‘F**k yeah, mate!’ Immediately. No second thought about it!”
What followed was pure rock ‘n’ roll instinct. The pair tore through three songs, kicking off with Rock and Roll from Led Zeppelin IV, the only one Tremonti can still remember clearly. “We didn’t play a single AC/DC song,” he admitted, as guests and even random attendees piled onto the stage, the night devolving into glorious, unplanned bedlam.
For Tremonti, it was a rare spark of joy in a year otherwise defined by upheaval. Creed had split earlier that year, and he’d just formed Alter Bridge with Myles Kennedy. A wedding jam with Brian Johnson wasn’t a publicity stunt, it was a reminder that even in the wreckage of endings, music still brings people together through noise, sweat, and sheer audacity.
Johnson, the eternal showman, didn’t need a stadium or a pyrotechnic budget. A wedding band and an open bar would do just fine. For one night, two generations of rock collided under chandeliers instead of stage lights, and the result was the kind of memory you can’t manufacture, the kind that keeps the legend of rock ‘n’ roll alive long after the amps cool down.
