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Episode 371: A busy Mark Tremonti

Pinball Profile·podcast_episode·34m 38s·analyzed·Sep 7, 2023
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TL;DR

Mark Tremonti expands pinball involvement with Godfather and Venom soundtracks amid charity success and new Christmas album.

Summary

Mark Tremonti, Grammy-winning guitarist from Creed and Alter Bridge, discusses his expanding involvement in pinball beyond music licensing. He has contributed music to Jersey Jack's The Godfather and Stern's Venom, established a Down Syndrome Center charity through his Frank Sinatra album success, and is releasing a Christmas classics album. He shares his philosophy on game depth, favorite pinball venues worldwide, and argues the current era represents a new golden age of pinball manufacturing.

Key Claims

  • Mark Tremonti raised over a million dollars through his Frank Sinatra album for Down Syndrome charity

    high confidence · Tremonti states directly: 'We raised over a million dollars last year, and we're opening up our own, you know, with Advent Health.'

  • Tremonti has been friends with Jersey Jack's Eric Mulner for over 20 years

    high confidence · Tremonti: 'me and Jack have been friends since, I mean, over 20 years now. It was when I was first buying pinball machines'

  • The Godfather pinball features a 30-musician production with Speak Softly Love theme

    high confidence · Tremonti: 'we put together the biggest musical production, I think, in pinball history...it was, you know, 30 musicians and did Speak Softly Love'

  • Tremonti secured license-free music from his record label for all pinball use

    high confidence · Tremonti: 'I said, hey, when we sign this next record deal, make sure you tell the record label that I want all the music to be license free for anything that has anything to do with pinball'

  • Tremonti is releasing a Christmas album with over 50 musicians and 10 tracks

    high confidence · Tremonti: 'I put together, I think it was over 50 musicians for this record. We did 10 tracks'

Notable Quotes

  • “The Godfather is an absolute masterpiece of a pinball machine. It's one of my all-time favorite movies, I assume, close to you as well. It has everything you want in a pinball machine.”

    Jeff Teolis @ ~10:15 — Host's strong endorsement of Jersey Jack's flagship game establishes it as a benchmark title

  • “I just want to be involved in pinball as much as I can. And it's no skin off my back having my music in a pinball machine. it's a blessing so it's awesome”

    Mark Tremonti @ ~22:45 — Articulates Tremonti's genuine passion for pinball integration beyond commercial compensation

  • “I agree. You know, I say it a lot, though. If Chicago Gaming keeps coming out with these ballet machines and does them the way they're doing, which is absolutely incredible, my game room is going to get more and more of those machines”

    Mark Tremonti @ ~30:20 — Tremonti endorses Chicago Gaming Company's re-releases as driving his collector interest

  • “I think there's a fine balance in between a deep game and a game that's just frustrating and impossible to get through. You know, I don't want to name names, but there's some games where I can't get halfway through the game still years later.”

    Mark Tremonti @ ~14:45 — Identifies design tension between depth and accessibility in modern pinball

  • “There's a lot of pinball in Europe. People wouldn't normally expect that, but any given day where I have a day off, I can find a local pinball joint.”

    Mark Tremonti @ ~36:50 — Highlights European pinball venue density as underappreciated by North American community

  • “You know, some of the games I love aren't necessarily the machines that everybody else loves. Like I love the Avengers. I think that new Avengers machine is Keith Elwin killed it on that.”

    Mark Tremonti @ ~32:10 — Challenges consensus around Keith Elwin's top-tier designs, championing Avengers over Godzilla

  • “I think we've got another guy on the list of just buy before you see kind of designers. To me, you've got Eric, you've got Keith Elwin, and now you've got Jack Danger.”

Entities

Mark TremontipersonJersey Jack PinballcompanyStern PinballcompanyThe GodfathergameVenomgameEric MulnerpersonFoo FightersgameJack Dangerperson

Signals

  • ~

    sentiment_shift: Foo Fighters pinball widely praised for exceptional flow and playability; positioned as Jack Danger's breakthrough design

    high · Tremonti: 'Foo Fighters LE...great machine...flow is just top notch.' Teolis: 'Not bad for Jack's first full game.'

  • ?

    content_signal: Papa tutorial videos disappearing; newer machines lack comprehensive strategy guides due to frequent code updates

    high · Tremonti: 'those videos are starting to disappear for newer machines...they're not around anymore' and Teolis: 'videos need to be almost wait until that code is completed'

  • ?

    design_philosophy: Concern about game difficulty creating frustration barriers; some games remain unfinishable even after years of ownership

    medium · Tremonti: 'there's some games where I can't get halfway through the game still years later...does it need to be this difficult?'

  • ?

    design_philosophy: Elite designer tier expanded to include Jack Danger alongside Eric Mulner and Keith Elwin for 'buy before you see' credentials

    medium · Tremonti: 'I think we've got another guy on the list of just buy before you see kind of designers. To me, you've got Eric, you've got Keith Elwin, and now you've got Jack Danger.'

  • $

    market_signal: Current pinball era positioned as 'new golden age' surpassing 1987-1988 classic era in quality and design depth

    high · Teolis: 'I think we're actually in a new golden age and maybe it's better.' Tremonti: 'I agree...some of the pinball machines that have come out recently are the best machines ever made.'

Transcript

groq_whisper · $0.104

0:00
It's time now for another Pinball Profile. I'm your host, Jeff Teols. You can find everything on pinballprofile.com, all your past episodes, subscriptions, and more. We're on Facebook, Twitter, X, I guess, Instagram, and you can email pinballprofile at gmail.com. And if you'd like to support on Patreon, that'd be wonderful, patreon.com slash pinballprofile. He has won several awards, Grammys, Guitarist of the Year many times. You know him from Creed and Alter Bridge and his own self-titled band. But our next guest has a love maybe bigger than music? Maybe. We'll find out. Say hi to Mark Tremonti. Hi, Mark. How are you? Thanks for having me. It's good to have you back. My goodness, we've got a lot to talk about. The last 12 months have been insane for you, just the things we've going on. So it was almost a year ago. It was in the fall. I'm in London, England. I'm going to the UK Open. and I'm on the tube and I see this big, big picture and I took a picture, I sent it to you. I'm like, look at this. It's Mark Tremonti sings Frank Sinatra, this huge poster. That album did so well. I mean, a different side that we might not have known about you. Yeah, you know, I was pretty obsessed with Frank Sinatra and I didn't know what I was going to do with it. And then when my wife got a diagnosis that my daughter was going to be born with Down syndrome, this girl, this girl right here, I decided to record the record, do it all for charity. We raised over a million dollars last year, and we're opening up our own, you know, with Advent Health. We're partnering and opening up a Down Syndrome Center, the most comprehensive Down Syndrome program, medical program in the country, if not the world. So we're very happy with what we've done with it. Is that happening in Florida? Yeah. Okay. You know, Disney is so close. They're a partner of Advent, so it's the perfect place. You know, if you want families to travel to get medical help, where's better than Orlando to get the kids to come and get their blood work and everything else done. Congratulations on the charity, and I hope your daughter's doing well. And again, great album. In fact, we're going to talk about where that leads us to what you've got coming up in December. I heard about that. So back in the spring, as we're talking pinball now, and it's hard to make that transition, but I'm at Texas Pinball Festival. I finally get to see this game I've wanted forever, The Godfather from Jersey Jack. And you and Jersey Jack have been friends for years. In fact, when you play Wizard of Oz, you'll see music by Mark Tremonti. Now you get to actually play with the symphony to do some part of the soundtrack of that wonderful game. Tell us about that. Yeah, so me and Jack have been friends since, I mean, over 20 years now. It was when I was first buying pinball machines, really. Back when you could buy a pinball of a Williams Valley machine for $1,500, you know. So I bought a bunch from him. We became good buds. And then over the years, he started developing Jersey Jack Pinball. So I saw the whole birth of that whole company. And he had said, you know, can I use one of your tunes for our theme song kind of a thing? And I said, absolutely. And years later, I got introduced to Eric Muner. And he calls me up one day and says, hey, man, you want to be part of my next machine? And I said, four-letter F word, yes. and he's like, all right, you got to sign this NDA so I can tell you what the title is and everything else. And he's like, I want you to sing, do the theme song. So we put together the biggest musical production, I think, in pinball history. Nobody's done, you know, a lot of pinball music has already been written and just placed in the machine or whatnot, but we put together, I think it was, you know, 30 musicians and did Speak Softly Love. I had Eric and Jack sing on the track as well. So you can probably get on Jersey Jack's site and find a video or find an audio of Eric singing it. Jack didn't do it. Jack's version is pretty funny. You know, I don't think he doesn't like singing, but we got him to do it anyways. But you can hear that probably on the website at some point. What's better, Jack singing or his cartwheels? Probably his cartwheels. standing in his head.

Mark Tremonti @ ~47:50 — Positions Jack Danger (Foo Fighters designer) in elite designer tier alongside Eric Mulner and Keith Elwin

Keith Elwinperson
Chicago Gaming Companycompany
Advent Healthorganization
Black Knightgame
Rushgame
Guns N' Rosesgame
Beatlesgame
Aerosmithgame
Jeff Teolisperson
Monster Bashgame
Cactus Canyongame
Medieval Madnessgame
Pulp Fictiongame
Texas Pinball Festivalevent
Krakow Pinball Museumorganization
Dwight Sullivanperson
  • ?

    licensing_signal: Tremonti securing music license-free rights for entire solo record with new label for pinball exclusive use

    high · Tremonti: 'when we sign this next record deal, make sure you tell the record label that I want all the music to be license free for anything that has anything to do with pinball'

  • ?

    manufacturing_signal: Chicago Gaming Company's re-releases of classic Bally/Williams games driving collector purchasing behavior

    high · Tremonti: 'If Chicago Gaming keeps coming out with these ballet machines and does them the way they're doing, which is absolutely incredible, my game room is going to get more and more of those machines'

  • ?

    community_signal: Mark Tremonti passionately motivated by charitable impact of Sinatra album success (raising $1M+ for Down Syndrome Center); driving upcoming Christmas album release

    high · Tremonti: 'this girl, this girl right here...We raised over a million dollars last year' and Christmas album being 'one of the most exciting projects I've ever worked on'

  • ?

    community_signal: Jack Danger hired by Stern Pinball as full-time designer after Foo Fighters success; previously ran Deadflip Twitch stream

    high · Teolis: 'Hopefully that keeps on putting out machines as good as Foo Fighters. Yeah, it was sad to see he stopped his Deadflip Twitch stream...great hire for Stern.'

  • ?

    product_concern: Tremonti's original Cactus Canyon plagued with manufacturing defects (loose leg bolt holes, mushy artwork)

    high · Tremonti: 'my original Cactus Canyon when it got shipped the leg bolt holes were loose and some of the artwork was kind of mushy...I'm going to get the new one'

    • 4:14
    1A and 1B. They're close. That's right. But I've said this to Eric. I've said this to Keith Johnson. I've said it to you. I've said it to Jack. The Godfather is an absolute masterpiece of a pinball machine. It's one of my all-time favorite movies, I assume, close to you as well. It has everything you want in a pinball machine. And I applauded when I saw it at TPF for the first time. I've played it several times since. I absolutely love that game. It's a theme that's near and dear to my heart. What does Godfather mean to you? Oh, it's amazing. You know, when he told me the title, I'm like, that's got to be one of the most epic licenses you could ever pull off for pinball. And, yeah, I mean, if you ever want somebody to design a high-tech, great, classy machine, you know, it's Eric. So I got to play it yesterday. You know, there's Marshall from Little Shop of Games here in Florida. he brought over some parts to help me fix some things and brought over Godfather along the way. And he took my Elvira. But I got to play in the garage. I think it was about 95 degrees out there yesterday. We were sitting there playing for hours, and it's a great machine. It's beautiful. I mean, it's just a classy, classy machine, great play. So much depth, I have no idea what's going on yet. But I'm waiting for the collector's edition, which is hopefully coming in September. Don't you love how deep these games are? I mean, that's one thing I've always told Keith or Keith Johnson is when you make these games, and they're big purchases, as you say, we were talking about the prices earlier. But when you have that in your home collection, you're playing a different game every time, and you're not seeing everything all at once. There's just so much packed in that game. Yeah, you know, and I've never been somebody to focus on tournament play where I'm focusing on what's going to get me the biggest points. I'm like Roger Sharp. I remember talking to Zach Sharp. He's like, yeah, my dad just likes the fun shots. He doesn't care about the points. He likes the flow. I'm the same way. I like to hit the ramps and have the ball fly around. And with games like The Godfather, it's going to take a hell of a lot of work to figure out the best way to earn points because it's so deep. I mean, it's, you know, I think there's a fine balance in between a deep game and a game that's just frustrating and impossible to get through. You know, I don't want to name names, but there's some games where I can't get halfway through the game still years later. and it's like, come on, does it need to be this difficult? Yeah, that's a good point. I've had games for many years and never been able to get through all of them, in fact. And finally, when it came time to sell them, I'm like, I guess it's not going to happen. If I can't do it at my house, it's not going to happen. But the key to these games, and Godfather is one of those games, is you want to press play again. You want to start it over again because there was just so much. Maybe you pick a different family. Maybe you enjoy killing that criminal element that is Mark Tremondi in the game. That's pretty funny images.
    7:01
    He sent me all the different images and all the poses you did and stuff, and so they might be on Pinball Profile, but you had fun with that. Put them up. I took a video of that yesterday because, you know, when we pulled up the game, we got to that point. You know, you beat me up in the machine. It's great. I love it. Yeah. Yeah, it's pretty cool. So, I mean, that's just one thing, and I don't want to just brush that off, but you've done a lot in the last year. in fact last month or just a few weeks ago we saw venom get released and look at that the music of mark tramonti and first of all i don't know what your history is with uh the venom character the universe spider universe was that something you knew about going into this game yeah you know my brother mike my oldest brother used to read me comic books when i was a kid you know before bedtime he'd come and he because he loved them he loves he loves reading books to people and comics. So he would read to me all those comics. So I was very familiar with him. So it was another one of those situations where when I was talking to the folks at Stern, like, we think we have a project coming up for you that would suit your music really nicely. And I had to sign the NDA and check it out and it was Venom. So when you hear Venom, you know it's going to be a high action, high paced kind of machine. So the music for my solo band Tremonti suited that style very And I also wrote an original song for the for the machine as well. That's amazing We're gonna get to the writing of it in a second But I just wonder you know when I heard venom it kind of reminded me of when we first saw Black Knight sort of rage and what Scotty and of anthrax did and just just shredded and just went crazy on it It so fit that fast game I wonder what it was like when you first saw Black Knight sort of raging were you thinking okay that works I got to do something like that for Venom Yeah, you know, it was, you know, when I saw Black Knight, you know, I just, I love the theme. I love the music. Like you said, it fit really well. And there was an LP you could get with that machine, which I think was great. I already, previously, before that, I wanted to write music for pinball. So that was kind of one of those moments where I'm like, damn it, he beat me to it. You know, so, yeah, no, I've been wanting to do that for years. I want to get involved in the pinball world as much as I possibly can. I would love to do my best to grab a license that maybe one of the pinball companies can't get and be like, hey, here's this license. Can I be involved in the development of this machine? I would, you know, not that I'm an engineer. These guys are I think people outside of the pinball world have no idea just how difficult it is to lay out a pinball machine.
    9:31
    But I would love to just be part of that think tank. you know, just to kind of throw ideas around. That would be a dream come true. Well, tell us a little inside, if you will. I mean, obviously you did that with Eric and with Keith, with Godfather. You did that with Jerry Thompson of Stern and also Dwight Sullivan with The Coding. It's one thing to just write the music, but it's got to fit. It can't be too long. It can't be too short. You've got to kind of know what's going to happen with the ball state. What's it like making the music for that and working with these teams? Well, those guys, you know, I don't want to take too much credit. All I did was give them lengthy songs and let them cut it up for their needs. If I have a funny story where the music that you see on a lot of the Instagram posts is a song called Thrown Further from my last solo record. So I got with my manager and I said, hey, when we sign this next record deal, make sure you tell the record label that I want all the music to be license free for anything that has anything to do with pinball. And then the record label is like, ha ha, whatever. Yeah, fine. Sure. And then a year later, I can go to Stern and say, listen, I've got an entire record free and clear that we can cut up and copy and paste and take the vocals out and make it fit the pinball machine. And then I wrote some original music as well. But to me, it's a dream come true to get to be a part of one of these machines. So I'll keep on doing that. Every time I do a new record, I'll say, you know what? This song could really fit a pinball machine. Let me get that license for pinball. And I just told, you know, I tell the guys, you don't have to pay me. Just give me the machine it's in. You know, that's all I want. That's a pretty good deal on their part. Yeah, both. You know, I get to be in a game and I get a free machine along the way. It's perfect. Don't tell anybody you would have done it for free. You don't just, you know, you're going to get everybody calling. But it's probably true, isn't it? No, I mean, I just want to, like I said, I just want to be involved in pinball as much as I can. And it's no skin off my back having my music in a pinball machine. it's a blessing so it's awesome no no we're glad that you're doing it and uh great creations i'm i haven't played venom yet looking forward to it have you played it yet i played it in its um before it was done went up at the factory but that was when the ball was shooting over ramps and going into the cabinet you know it's just a whiteboard yeah the videos i've seen man that game looks fast and and furious it looks awesome it's pretty cool that you can play different games We talked about owning a game at home, and you want it to be deep so that it's not the same game all the time, and you want to play it again. It looks like Venom is that. I mean, all the different characters alone. Oh, absolutely. That was a big thing they were pushing when I first talked to them.
    12:11
    With the whole approach on the music, we might have to use some other music for different characters. Like, say you go to Gwen, and she's more of an 80s kind of music. Then we have you for Venom, and you've got you for three characters, but we might have to have. some different kind of vibes for some of the others, which made sense to me. Yeah, there's a lot of music packed in that, and Jerry's obviously such a master when it comes to putting together sound. So who knows? I mean, we mentioned the Grammys and Guitars to the Years. Maybe there's a Twippy and some other pinball awards coming down in the future. You know, that would be amazing. That would be amazing to be involved in something like that. Yeah, that would be cool. I know you say you don't play tournaments and stuff, but you do watch a lot of videos, don't you? You watch whether it's Papa tutorial videos or tournaments or I don't know if it's Twitch or whatever, but you're still doing a lot of that? Yeah. You know, if I get a new machine and I want to see a proper strategy on it, I'll look for some videos. But those videos are starting to disappear for newer machines. Like if a machine's out, usually Papa would go and do this great in-depth strategy guide on it, but they don't have – they're not around anymore. So we need to get some new, you know, like Jack Danger does it sometimes, and he'll just show you some tips. But it would be great to get some folks to do some new release strategy guides for you. But with code changing every month or every couple months, that's hard to keep on top of as well. Yeah, the videos need to be almost wait until that code is completed. So you're probably not going to see that within six months of the game being released because of all the updates. I can sense, and I felt it too, whenever you talk about Papa and a little tear in your eye. I know that place meant so much to you. You used to always try to frequent it whenever you could. Fred Cochran, a good buddy of yours, too.
    13:56
    It's sad to see that go, but you get to travel a lot, so there's got to be some hot spots you found. Nothing will replace Papa, but maybe you can share some of the good spots. Yeah, the Krakow Pinball Museum.
    14:09
    You've always liked that one, haven't you? I love it, yeah. It's great. It's like a dungeon with hundreds and hundreds of pinball machines. There's a place in Nashville about 30, 40 minutes outside of downtown that I absolutely love. I forgot. Galaxy? Game Galaxy? It might be Galaxy. It's kind of two different big rooms. One of them has all the old school games. What about in Europe because you do a lot of traveling? What do you do when you're in Europe? In Poland, there's a couple that I really love. There's one in Denmark, the Danish Pinball Museum there. They've given me tours a lot, and they send me all their merch and their T-shirts and stuff. I always like to get in there.
    14:53
    There's a lot of pinball in Europe. People wouldn't normally expect that, but any given day where I have a day off, I can find a local pinball joint. And if it's got two machines, I'll go. I want to see that, and I can't remember the name. I should have researched this before asking the question, but that place in Japan that is just off the charts. I've got friends from Australia that go, and they just say it's got everything. I don't know if you had a chance to see that. Last time I was in Japan, every time I've been to Japan twice, and we're just so busy while we're there and going over the jet lag. Last thing I get to do is go play pinball there, but I wish. I see in the background there, I can see your last action hero. And as you mentioned last time on Pinball Profile, and this was four or five years ago, you have that love. And basically, it's what got you into pinball was that 90s Bally Williams, that East era and kind of that sweet spot from 87 or 88 to 87.
    15:53
    Well, now here we are in 2023. And it was about four or five years ago. I kind of always thought of that. I call it golden era of pinball. But as I look at all these companies, I look at Stern and Jersey Jack and American and Spooky and Multimorphic and Haggis and everybody that's in here. I'm like, I think we're actually in a new golden age and maybe it's better. What do you think? I agree. You know, I say it a lot, though. If Chicago Gaming keeps coming out with these ballet machines and does them the way they're doing, which is absolutely incredible, my game room is going to get more and more of those machines because I absolutely love them. I mean, it's going back to your childhood and having the best movie you've ever seen redirected by Steven Spielberg.
    16:37
    So I absolutely love those machines. I've got Cactus Canyon. I've got Monster Bash. I've got Medieval Madness from Chicago Gaming, and those are incredible games. I think you had Cactus Canyon before Chicago Gaming did it, though. I did. So you switched it. And as me being an alarmist, when everybody said Chicago Gaming is going to make Cactus Canyon, I put my Cactus Canyon on sale knowing that the price was going to get chopped in half eventually.
    17:05
    And my original Cactus Canyon when it got shipped the leg bolt holes were loose and some of the artwork was kind of mushy So I was like you know what I going to get the new one And I absolutely love it But yeah speaking of the golden age thing I think some of the pinball machines that have come out recently are the best machines ever made. You know, some of the games I love aren't necessarily the machines that everybody else loves. Like I love the Avengers. I think that new Avengers machine is Keith Elwin killed it on that. But that doesn't seem to be everybody else's favorite Keith Allen machine. I think everybody else thinks it's Godzilla. Yeah. Bad Keith Allen machine is still a great pinball machine. If you have to rank them, I mean, there's no losers in those games that he's made. Even his Bond 60th is a spectacular single-level game. I heard that that's when Marshall came over yesterday to help me on some things. He said that that's his favorite current machine. Yeah. No, it's fun. And, again, you want to press start again. And that's the joy of games like that, for sure. In fact, the last time we were on, we did, I think Iron Maiden was kind of a newer game at the time. And it shot to the top of the charts on Pinside. And so I thought, oh, you're going to pick eight rock games and see what Mark Tremonti, what would he pick? And it came down to, in the finals, it was Iron Maiden beating out the Data East Guns N' Roses game. You know, it knocked off ACDC and Metallica and all these other things. but I've put together a new list for you, Mark, because there have been some new games since. So six new music-themed games since we last did this on Pinball Profile, and two games that are in the top 100 on the list. So ranked based on Pinside here, a little mini bracket for you to go and tell us why you think they're maybe your favorites. In the 1-8 group, Queen Pinball, I don't even know if you had a chance to play that, it's fun, versus Foo Fighters, which is really high on the pin side chart. So give us your thoughts on those games. I haven't played Queen, but I own Foo Fighters LE, and it's a great machine. I had a little flipper issue with it that I had to fix, but now it's fully functional. And it's like everybody else says in the world, the flow is just top notch. I'm still yet to be able to dive, to get far in the game, to really enjoy it as much as I should because I'm on and off tour. But great machine, great heart, great flow, great music. I think Foo Fighters is getting your win. You'll like Queen when you play it too, but Foo Fighters is pretty spectacular. Okay, they move on. A game you can't see, but it's sitting right there. I'm in Canada. I have to have the Holy Trinity. Rush is sitting right there. Rush in the number two spot versus a game that was kind of a dream theme for a lot of people. And I was really excited to see Multimorphic get this in Weird Al. A perfectly themed game for that type of gaming system. Yeah, Weird Al was fun. You know, it turned out to be more than I thought it was going to be when I played it depth-wise. But that being said, Rush, I think Rush is definitely the winner. That's a great game. You know, that's one that it's fast, it's deep, it's complicated. It's got a lot of great shots. I played that machine before it came out at the Stern factory, and I thought it was great even in the whiteboard form. It's going to get tough for these next ones. So as Rush moves on, how about the new Guns N' Roses game by JJP? Eric's your buddy, so this is going to be tough. Against the Fab Four. You've worked with Jerry Thompson. He worked on Beatles. You've got to pick one. Both great games, completely different. Beatles, JJP, Guns N' Roses. Who's going on? Jeez, that's a tough one. You know, I have to stick with my buddy Eric. I can't vote against him. But I do think that the Beatles game was a lot of fun. I think I would own that machine if the prices didn't go nuts on the resale market of that game. But I think my first no-ramp game that I'll probably ever own, other than an old-school Haunted House or Centaur or something, would be the new Pulp Fiction that's coming out. Fun game. Oh, yeah. I've seen it twice at shows. The lineups have been huge, so I still haven't got to play it yet. But I might go to Josh Sharp's house in October and get a few rounds in at his garage. Okay, so JJP, GNR is going to move on. This is going to be interesting. In the 4-5 category, Aerosmith, great American band, no question about it, versus that game right there, your favorite band, as you once told me, Led Zeppelin, maybe not the best pinball machine, great music. Aerosmith, Led Zeppelin, pinball machine, who moves on? That's a very tough one.
    21:56
    I think they're almost dead even, those two machines. I think if the Aerosmith machine was designed more on early Aerosmith kind of themes instead of the more current stuff with the box and the Joker and all that, it would have been the winner. Zeppelin, I think the speed on Zeppelin is great. I think the shots are better than most people have given it credit for.
    22:20
    Jeez, that's a toss-up for me. This is going to be on like loud wire. This is all your cred, Mark. I mean, it's all coming out of this.
    22:30
    Since I've done a tour with Aerosmith, I'm going to go Aerosmith. Okay. All right. Saving grace. Oh, Robert Plant was just going to call you. I think he clicked off there. Oh, hey, whatever. You know what, Robert?
    22:43
    The funny story about Robert Plant is my buddy works security for Robert, and he said he played him the Sinatra record, and Robert really enjoyed it. So I was like, are you kidding me? Can I get a quote? Yeah. No kidding. well that's the thing about Robert he loves all different types of music you know he could have just played the hits from Zeppelin on his tour but it's Alison Krauss now it's uh you know all these different things and his uh shapeshifters oh I went to go see him a couple years ago and I heard a song that I was like what what in the world is this song it was it sounded like it could have been an old Zeppelin song beautiful it's called all the king's horses oh yeah yeah great song okay so sorry Zeppelin you're not moving on no upsets in the first round but now we go one to four real quickly here this can be i think this one i know where you're going foo fighters versus aerosmith foo fighters is gonna win that one yeah foo fighters okay now you got rush versus guns and roses jjp will guns and roses the different machine make the final two and mark germonti's best of i'm gonna have to say rush on that one i'm sorry eric that's uh eric will understand you know it's funny i went up and played guns and roses with eric at jjp and The first time we played, I beat him. He'll never live it down.
    23:58
    And then he had a contest who had the bigger calves, and then he evened the score. Anyway, okay, so Rush versus Foo Fighters. You've got to pick one. I'm going Foo Fighters. It is such a great game, and not bad for Jack's first full game. I'm so proud of what he did. You know, I think I was just telling Marshall yesterday, I think we've got another guy on the list of just buy before you see kind of designers. To me, you've got Eric, you've got Keith Elwin, and now you've got Jack Danger. Hopefully that keeps on putting out machines as good as Foo Fighters. Yeah, it was sad to see he stopped his Deadflip Twitch stream, but if it's spending more time with family, then that's good. If it's spending more time making games like Foo Fighters, great. We'll see you once in a while on Deadflip, but I think you made the right decision and a great hire for Stern. I think Mark Ritchie is another one of those designers. Anytime he comes out with a machine, I want to buy it. Yeah, for sure. Your schedule is going to get pretty busy because I saw on the news recently, again, probably based on the wonderful success of you singing Sinatra songs, this holiday season you've got Christmas classics new and old coming out. Oh, yeah. That's amazing. Tell us about that. Yeah, that's one of the most exciting projects I've ever worked on. You know, it's the reason I got into Sinatra singing like Sinatra was singing Christmas songs. So I remember, you know, me and my friends will party and we'll do karaoke and I'll sing Christmas songs. My God, it really feels good to sing this. You know, it's just to me, my voice was more way more suited to that than it is to scream in all the hard rock stuff. You know, so when I did the Sinatra thing and there was a lot of people that said, you know, we'd love to hear you sing Christmas songs. I was like, well, I would love to sing Christmas songs. because that's how I got into this. So I put together, I think it was over 50 musicians for this record. We did 10 tracks I wanted to do 14 or 15 but my guy that I did all the arrangements with is like dude that just going to cost you a million dollars to do these So we chose 10 tracks I wrote one original song Since I was a kid, my father's like, Mark, you got to write an original Christmas song. You want to be one of those legacy artists that they play for hundreds of years. And I said, Dad, I can't do that. I'm a rock guy. People will laugh. So once I did the Sinatra thing, it opened the door so I can now to do the Christmas thing. And it's an exciting record. I love it. It's got a choir on there. It's got this symphony. It's got the brass of all the Sinatra band members on there. And I'm real excited to put it out. That's funny you should talk about that. And if you want to call it the cred from the rock guys or the metal or whatever it is, did you go through that when you put out the Sinatra album? What are people going to think? Or did you care? You know, what's funny is they loved it. All the rock, even the heaviest of heavy metal people were like, This is great. I could have written a hundred rock albums and not gotten the attention from certain people that this record got. I remember walking into a show where we were opening up for Judas Priest, and I go into catering, and Rob Halford's sitting there. He sees me. He gets up, and he's like, come here. That record is beautiful. Oh, my gosh. Slash gave me – Slash was so nice about it. Kirk Hammett from Metallica. Like I said, Robert Plant. These guys, you know, Paul Stanley from Kiss, all these people came, you know, came out and supported the record and said how much they enjoyed it. And those, you know, those folks would have never looked twice at anything else I had done, you know. But this record opened some new doors. That's funny. All those people you just mentioned, Judas Priest sang at the Rock and Roll Hall of Fame. He sang Jolene with Dolly Parton. It was great. Paul Stanley did a kind of a classics album as well just recently. I think Eric Singer was on drums, but it was a big band, like you say. And Metallica, they've played with the symphony. I mean, it's not that big of a stretch. It's all music. And, I mean, one of the greatest voices ever. You see the picture there on the top left of the screen of old Blue Eyes. You can't knock his incredible skills. Oh, he's amazing.
    28:08
    One way you can judge him is when you hear all these other so-called best singers out there, they'll do a version of a song. as soon as he does a version of that same song you've forgotten about all the other versions you know, Tony Bennett you know, rest in peace you know, he did Best Is Yet To Come, you know, that was his song, then Frank does a version of it, that's the version you hear you know, so many versions, so many songs that he did, he just left everybody else kind of, they don't remember those other versions anymore once he does it he's the guy he is the man for sure And, you know, he stood the test of time, and we're seeing these, you know, reiterations of what you're doing and others, and it's spectacular. It's great for the next generations and several beyond. So I don't know how you have the time to do all this stuff. I mean, we talk about Tremonti, Alter Bridge. We've got something else to talk about in a second, this Christmas album, of course, and the pinball, doing all this. How do you have time for this? How do you have time for Pinball Profile? Hey, man, you know, I always want to talk pinball. whenever I do rock interviews they're like hey yeah I hear you're a pinball fan that's when I go yeah let's keep talking you know I love pinball this is uh you know I I don't have a ton of pinball friends I might have five or six guys that will always want to come over and play pinball but uh you know for the most part in the rock world there's not a lot of them out there my tour manager I've turned a lot of people into pinball fans you know my tour manager now has four or five machines. He loves it. Every time we have a day off, he finds the local place to go. You know, a lot of my bandmates, I've turned into big pinball fans. And I feel like I'm like one of those door-to-door religious Bible salesmen trying to get people to, come on, pinball. This is such an incredible thing. Put down the video games, get yourself one pinball machine. Find out just how deep that machine is, and you're going to fall in love with it. You know, just spend a few nights where you could spend four or five hours on that machine for a few times, you'll fall in love with it. Well, I thought your trick was when your game room got so big that you would say, hey, can you hold this pinball machine to your buddies that weren't pinball people and then maybe they'd get hooked and buy one, two, three, four, five and stuff like that. Yeah. I've gotten, you know, the best thing now is my buddy Marshall I keep on bringing up, local guy, he'll rent you his pinball machines for $300 a month. It's the perfect, like this last action arrow, that's a rental. You know, I told him, anytime you get a Data East machine in, which I love Data East machines, but do I want, if I have spot for 12 machines, period, I might want to rent the Data East machines because I'm not going to replace a Jurassic Park with this Last Action Hero. But I'd love to play it for a few months, you know. I want to get the Royal Rumble. I want to get the Star Trek. I want to get, you know, Tales from the Crypt. I love all the old Data East machines. I know you had said you were getting into this a few years ago. I don't know where it's gone, but you were talking about adding a bunch of mods, maybe cabinet art, maybe a whole playfield restoration. Have you got into that yet? No. I mean, I try to do the mods that make sense for my machines, but I like to get into some sort of business.
    31:21
    Just yesterday, I was talking about I've got a buddy who does – he takes my guitars, and he turns them into these panels that look like your guitars, but they're thin, and bands can sign them, and they look just like your guitars. So imagine if you took play fields, pinball play fields, and you sold them to people. And you can do metal versions of them or you can just stick them in your playroom. Instead of having to spend $400 on a real play field, you can spend $100 on a fake one that looks just like it. Sure. Yeah. I think I saw Ed Robertson of Barenaked Ladies take a Quicksilver play field and make it into an actual working guitar. Have you seen that? Incredible. Yeah. I saw a picture of it and I was, man, he beat me to it again. With the lights and everything, it's great. Okay, so I don't want to keep you, because you are a busy guy. Big, big news just a few weeks ago. It's been over a decade, but in 2024, Creed is getting back together. The Summer of 99 cruise. That's huge. Yeah, you know, you never know what to expect when you take that much time off. And it was always just a matter of when all of our schedules made sense to do something. And when we put the cruise on sale, we didn't know how it was going to react. And the company that we're working with, Six Man, I think they've been in business for 21 years. They said this is the fastest they've ever sold out a cruise. So we're very happy. And that's a good sign to see what we can do in the future. Maybe that one day we can have a Creed pinball machine. I'm sure you'd like that, right? Again, speaking of free of charge, here you go. What do you need? You got it. Yeah. But that's exciting. That's going to be a big cruise. Buck Cherry, Tonic, Three Doors Down, a lot of huge bands. Have you been rehearsing yet? I mean, I don't know how this all came about. No, no. We probably won't rehearse until a couple weeks before the cruise. That'll be next April. Yeah. I'll fumble around with stuff along the way just to get familiar with it again. Well, it's got to feel good. almost, is it a weight off your shoulders? Like, okay, you know what, we're older, we're more mature, cooler heads, all that kind of stuff. I mean, I don't want to get into what happened, but it's kind of nice to say, you know what, this is for the fans. Yeah, absolutely. Because there was, you know, we, you know, at that one point we had millions of folks, you know, buying records and tons of people come to the shows. And I know how it is when your favorite band breaks up. So there's a lot of people that didn't care about all the drama that went on in the band. They just wanted to hear the music. So now they get to come back and do that again. So we got together for a photo shoot this month and everybody got along great. And it was, we're all looking forward to seeing what we can do. Well, that's nice. And it's going to be exciting. You're a busy man. Again, we will post the website up for your charity to help with some Down syndrome awareness and whatnot. But Venom, Godfather, Christmas Carols coming out, the Sinatra album. Mark, you're a busy guy and we appreciate you taking the time here. Thank you. Thanks for having me. Okay. This has been your Pinball Profile. You can find everything on pinballprofile.com. I'm Jeff Teolis.