By Andrew Bansal
To metalheads and guitar enthusiasts, the name Marty Friedman needs no introduction. After a long, isolated exile wherein he concentrated his musical efforts solely towards his adopted home country of Japan, the former Megadeth and Cacophony guitarist and solo artist is finally ready to make a worldwide comeback with his new solo album ‘Inferno’, due out on May 27th via Prosthetic Records. He made an appearance at this year’s NAMM in late January to promote the album, meet fans and demonstrate his new signature PRS guitar. On January 22nd, I spoke to him in detail about NAMM, the new record, and the guest musicians featured on it, among other things. Enjoy the conversation below.
Marty, good to see you again. How are you doing today, what does NAMM mean to you this time and what are you planning to do here?
Good to see you too! I’m doing good. Well, this year I have a signature model guitar coming out from PRS Guitars, and they were so kind to have me come out here and announce that. I’ll be playing some guitar for them, and also at the Roland/Boss booth which is always fun, and doing a bunch of signings. Basically I came here because I’ve got a record coming out and it’s time to meet some American people (laughs). Actually everybody from the whole world comes here to NAMM and it’s a good time to be here. It’s definitely a guitar-oriented record. Big surprise from Marty Friedman, right? (laughs) But this time it’s a worldwide release, not just Japan, so I’m going to do stuff outside Japan and that’s why I’m here at NAMM and getting ready to party!
Yeah, I’ve met you here a couple of times before but usually you do just the one low-key signing but this time you’re clearly more active because of your record and it means more to you.
Sure, the main thing is obviously the record but it’s really important for me to get a signature model from a guitar company that I really like which is PRS. I’ve been playing their guitars for some time in Japan, and they approached me to do my own model. So I’m just so thankful and appreciative, and they asked me to come down. I’m more than happy to do it. It’s been a while, I was here may be three years ago. NAMM is kind of a necessary evil of rock ‘n roll. If your idea is to enjoy yourself, you can have a pretty good time here.
Over my past NAMM experiences I’ve noticed how musicians take it. Some of them hate it, others are just spaced out. How do you deal with it? Does it get taxing when you’re surrounded by a lot of people?
No, the thing I like about NAMM is meeting fans and playing guitar, my favorite things to do. So I play here sometimes and get to meet people, and that’s all good. The thing that I don’t like about NAMM is, and I’m sure everybody can relate to this, there’s a lot of people around and when you’re talking to somebody, all of a sudden, somewhere near you is a person whom you haven’t seen in like ten years. You can’t just say, ‘Wait a minute!’ You haven’t seen them in ten years so you want to talk to them, but you’re already talking to somebody else, and you get pulled in so many different ways. You come off looking like somebody who’s not cool, but what other situation do you actually get in where you meet people that you haven’t seen for that long, all in one place? It’s so unusual, and I don’t really like that because I don’t like people to think that any one person is any more important than another person. For example, I just met somebody now who told me he’s been working with my cousin. We started talking about my cousin and it got really family-oriented, and then I saw someone else I hadn’t seen for 5-10 years that I had worked with. You can’t just blow someone off when it’s a familiar face that you really like and you’re glad to see, but you’re right deep in a conversation! It’s like having a dinner party at your house and then all of a sudden some other friend comes in who wasn’t invited (laughs). So it’s a very strange situation.
Exactly. So, we last talked in September of last year when things were very primitive in terms of your new album. You had just signed to Prosthetic and they had brought you down to LA for a meet-n-greet with fans, to reintroduce you to the LA public again. What more can you reveal about the album now?
Yeah, we put out a one-minute teaser of the title track and just today we put out the song ‘Steroidhead’. So if you listen to those, you get more of an idea of what the sound is like. I guess I can tell you who played on the album. For the most part it’s basically another solo album of mine, but I always have fantastic guests on my record. This time, Alexi Laiho from Children Of Bodom sang and played guitar on one song and co-wrote it with me, and Rodrigo y Gabriela played with me on some stuff. Danko Jones, one of my favorite singers/songwriters is also on a couple of songs. I collaborated with my friend Jason Becker too, and this is the first time we’ve collaborated on anything in a long time. This is really special to me because when we used to work together before, he used to play guitar too and we played together. But now when we collaborated, I had to play all the guitar myself. But I wanted to make it feel like something that we would play together. I don’t want to say I copied his style because I can’t, but I kind of thought, ‘What would it sound like if Jason and I were still playing in 2014-15 and evolving together?’ Of course, we’ve evolved separately, but I was imagining what it would be like if we we did it together all this time. It would pretty much be the sickest cacophony yet! But then I wound up having to play everything (laughs) which was quite a challenge but I’m really happy with the song we did together. That’s kind of exciting and I guess I didn’t talk to you about that last time. It’s just a very dense record. So if you like my music you’re really going to like it, but if you don’t like my music at all, you’re going to hate it so badly. It’s like one of those things, but that’s what I intended to do.
That’s awesome. It’s interesting you mentioned Danko Jones because I actually listened to a podcast that he did with you a couple of years ago and the two of you were geeking out about KISS.
Oh yeah, we’re like KISS buds but I didn’t even know he was a KISS guy when I heard his music first. I became a huge fan of his and he found that out somehow and reached out to me. Ever since then we’ve been like two high-school kids. I always wanted him to collaborate with me on a song, so it’s kind of like my dream album. A lot of people that I’ve just been thinking about like, ‘Wouldn’t it be great if this person work on my song?’, everybody has just come to the party. Danko is just an amazing singer first of all, so I just loved having him sing on my record. We wrote a song together, he wrote some lyrics and sang on some other stuff. So he was a really important part of this record. The song we did together is kind of like a heavier version of what he does. It’s exactly what you would expect if Marty and Danko were in the same project together. That’s the only way I can explain that song.
That’s very cool. So, I have just one more question, coming back to NAMM. Aside from the commitments that you’re fulfilling for your companies, do you get to do anything else in terms of hanging out with other musicians or checking out any of the shows?
I’m not a big hangout kind of guy, to be honest with you (laughs). I wind up meeting a lot of people during the course of NAMM that I’m glad to meet and hang out with at the time, but I’m not a big drinker first of all, and if you’re not drinking you’re not really hanging out. The crazy thing is, I’m on a big time difference from Japan and I have so many commitments in Japan that when I finish my day stuff in America, I’m usually doing Japan stuff with the time difference. I’m trying to live in two continents at the same time, and actually I’m mixing in Sweden right now (laughs). We’re got this great thing called Source-Live with which I can actually be in the studio in Sweden and be in LA at the same time. So I’m on three time schedules and it doesn’t leave me a chance to hang out with friends and stuff. I get to meet some people and have a good time, but I don’t do so much of the after-partying and stuff.
I respect that. In the kind of genre you’re immersed in, that’s a commendable thing to be able to do.
Well, it’s not on purpose though. I mean, I’d love to party (laughs). It’s just that I can’t really party and then do all this stuff at the same time. The only time I really party hard is may be at the end of a tour when I have a whole day or two days off to recover. I don’t like to half-ass party here and there. I like to do it when it’s something big. Like when this record comes out, that’d be a good time to do something. But I’m not really a daily party type of person, like my friend Andrew W.K. is.
Related: NAMM 2014 Recap [Writeup + Photos + Audio]
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