Marty Friedman

We at Crusher Magazine always love to meet an unconventional character, so when an opportunity presented itself to get some insight from one of the most inspiring and outspoken guitarists rock has ever known, we jumped at the chance. Nine years after leaving Megadeth, the band that brought Friedman universal fame, he now finds himself busier than ever, writing new music, reworking some old ideas, exploring new paths, and inventing fresh approaches to music, amongst all this still finding time to give our readers a glimpse into things that inspire him.

Iitoko-dori and the art of uniting things

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Let’s establish first things first. Asked if he follows what is now happening on the metal scene, Friedman gives a categorical reply. “Absolutely not,” he says. “If it comes to me, if I hear about something, then I know about it. But I don’t go out of my way to follow any kind of genre. I hear about stuff, but I certainly don’t search it out.”

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Still, changes in Friedman’s life and changes in the creative direction he has taken since leaving Megadeth, have turned out to be more profound than anyone could initially expect. Not only an avid interest in metal is now a thing of the past, but there has also been another, equally serious change that influenced Friedman’s view on things just as deeply as his departure from a colossally successful band. What happened is that five years ago Friedman had moved to Japan. As a result, he is now finding self-expression in a culture not too many Western rockers have been able to get to grips with so far, despite the fact that Japan has traditionally welcomed American popular music with genuine enthusiasm.

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The aspect of Japanese mentality which allows the Japanese to accept cultural phenomena from other countries and lets them coexist alongside with their own value system is called iitoko-dori. Roots of this remarkable ability to adapt and to absorb new cultural influences are in the spiritual history of Japan which in the past was able to harmonise its earliest religion—Shinto (the worship of ancestors and aspects of nature) with Buddhism which was brought to Japan from abroad in the 6th century. In a surprisingly astute way this process of adapting and accepting parts of different and sometimes contradictory value systems, the inherent and the foreign, is echoed by Friedman’s own flexibility and openness towards new discoveries and new experiences.

Friedman says that moving to Japan has made the biggest influence on the way he now approaches music. “That was my biggest learning curve, so to speak,” he says. “In my musical career, and, first of all, my playing as a guitarist. I look at some of the stuff that I’ve done a long time ago, and go, ‘God, I could do it so much differently now! With so much more attention to detail and so much more love and affection for what it is I’m playing. I think that mainly comes from the opportunity to work with a cast of A-list musicians over here who have so many different things to offer from what I had before.”

“A lot of people over here say I think very Japanese,” Friedman continues, “and I really agree with that because with the mind set over here, if you don’t have it, it would be very difficult to live here. But I have a very easy time living here, so I must have some Japanese blood in me,” he adds, laughing.

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But he still insists that his identity these days remains quintessentially American. “I’m definitely an American,” he says. “But I’ve toured so much that in some major cities and even non-major cities I still know my way around. Sometimes I find myself wondering why I know the streets in Zurich,” he says, laughing.

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Our interview takes place on November 5, and just two days earlier, on the day before the American elections, Friedman took part in a two-hour TV program called The Power of Presidential Speeches alongside top Japanese political analysts to discuss the 2008 US elections race. Known for refraining from discussing his political views, this time Friedman spoke openly on the issue. “I spoke about the American elections because as an American I want the best for the country I was born into,” he explains.

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I wonder what made him move to Japan in the first place, and he tells me that the prime reason has undoubtedly been music. “If not for music, I wouldn’t have decided to actually live here. If it was stuff like food and all that kind of stuff, I would have loved to come here now and then, but it is definitely the music that made me move here.”

Haragei: Live in Europe

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A well-known concept in Japanese culture, among other meanings, haragei stands for communicating in an intuitive way, exchanging feelings and thoughts based on rich experience and boldness, sometimes called “emotional communication”. Hara meaning “stomach” and gei – “art”, couldn’t be a better word for describing Friedman’s latest US release, Live In Europe, as this barnburner of a record really comes straight from the gut and meets its listener the same way, more often than not bypassing the brain—intuitive, nuanced, and full of heart. At the same time, in a very American way and in the best tradition of rock it is a lush, intense, and dramatic record, conveying the whopping energy and swaggering assertiveness of Friedman’s live shows. It’s an impressive evidence to how Friedman’s rock vision, instead of withering and stagnating on foreign soil, instead expanded and strengthened, finally resulting in a ball-breaker of a live album.

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Friedman explains how the idea of touring Europe came about in the first place. “I really had to do a tour of Europe because I haven’t toured there for so long,” he says. “And Loudspeaker just came out in Europe and the response was great, so I just had to do it, and I’m glad that I did. The album is pretty much a document of that. Everyone who got to be there at the gigs and people who didn’t, finally have it documented. It is pretty much like the show was. We did nine shows in ten days and we have great memories of this tour, so we decided to make a record of it.”

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Asked which elements need to coincide for a good live show to happen, Friedman starts with an astonishing admission. “First off, let me just tell you, I would never go to an instrumental rock live concert, because I’d be bored to tears, no matter who the musician is,” he says while this writer’s eyes bulge and jaw falls open on the other end of the line. (An uninviting sight which makes her for the first time appreciate advantages a phoner may have over a face-to-face interview).

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“It really doesn’t matter, whatever, I’m just not into it,” Friedman continues. “I need some stimulation. That’s my criteria really. Also, when I’m writing an instrumental album, for someone who hates instrumental music it’s very much a vocal-like approach. And it’s really not about showing what I can play. I played all that when I was a teenager and I got that out of my system. It’s really about keeping the listener excited, even though they still like to hear great lyrics and to have some hot chicks singing. How I can get all that kind of excitement into an instrumental format? That’s the criteria when I’m writing. As far as playing live, I’ve never done a solo this time in Europe until I knew that there were a lot of fans in the audience who supported me from my very early days. God bless them. No one knows how few of those guys are out there, but they are enough for me to go back to the stuff from the earliest days of my career and just bust it out. You know, when you play some stuff from way back you know there are a few guys out there going, ‘Fuck, yeah!!!’ I’m that kind of fan, too. I’m a Ramones fan, a fan of Kiss and all that. And of course they are going to play their hits, but when they bust out one song from the early days, I’d be the one who’d be going crazy. I don’t come to Europe that often, plus I don’t really have any major hits, but I like to play the ones where if I was a fan, I’d go, ‘Oh my God, I can’t believe he played that!’ So that’s pretty much it, that’s my criteria.”

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The tour indeed was a blast, to which this writer can testify having witnessed Friedman’s show in London on April 2, 2007. Throughout the set which stretched from tracks from Friedman’s very first 1988 record Dragon's Kiss to songs from his 2006 album Loudspeaker, the exalted audience was now and then spontaneously breaking into chanting of Friedman’s name while sweat was running down the walls and the audience was getting ready to go riot.

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“Fuel Injection Stingray” from the album conveys the gripping sense of urgency of Friedman’s live shows perhaps better than other tracks, its attack sweeping you off your feet in a torrent of raucous sheets-of-flame sound, the guitar roaring over the regimented fury of the tight, dynamic rhythm section. The tandem of Chris Catero on bass and Jeremy Colson on drums is a perfect platform from which Friedman’s powerhouse leads take flight, while guitarist Ron Jarzombek, as always, proves to be an astounding player in his own right. On “Elixir” Friedman’s range, imagination, and brilliant sense of tension and release are showcased at their best, although other tracks don’t trail by much. “Thunder March” from his debut album is, of course, another standout—a contemplative, spirited track that provides the crucial contrast to the more strident moments on the record and takes you back to the time when Friedman was just making his first steps as a recording artist.

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The London guitar community was talking about this show for days after, with everyone involved, from old-time fans of metal to aspiring young indie musicians. “If you live in London, play guitar and have missed Marty Friedman’s show last night, give yourself a good kick in the ass!” read the title of one of the blog posts this writer saw on the net the next the day after the gig. The fact is, it’s not only the guitar players who flooded the venue that night to see Friedman play. Fans of good rock songwriting, all those who appreciate great musicianship, as well as instrumental music enthusiasts were there, too, because Friedman’s wide-ranging appeal attracts all kinds of listeners, from guitar students to teenage girls into goodtime rock’n’roll. The exact reason for this cross-cultural draw can’t be explained in certain terms. It could be the fact that Friedman makes his instrumental music as accessible as it can be with emphasis on melody and great hooks, or that he never gratuitously indulges in his instrument despite his formidable technique, but, after all, haragei is a subtle concept. To the Japanese, if you need haragei defined, it means you can’t use it. Like with all intuitive things, there is magic at the root of all great music, and Friedman’s art belongs to that indefinable sphere, beyond things that can be explained by logic.

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Looking back, Friedman says that the ecstatic response given to him in London amazed him. “I was surprised because every time I’ve been in England with Megadeth, it was really good but it seemed that there were a lot of dudes with their arms crossed, going, ‘Impress me’,” he says. “It’s always been like that compared to Italy where everybody’s going apeshit, Spain, and all those countries. In England they are like they’ve seen everything. It’s like being in New York. That’s what I really expected, especially with instrumental music. The English people are brutal with their reviews and that kind of stuff. I love it personally, it cracks me up, but… I can still totally remember in Kerrang when the first record came out and they covered me in Kerrang, all it said was that it sounded like the record was recorded on cardboard.” Friedman laughs while I try to tell him that Kerrang has never been an authority on music critique but rather a PR agency for the latest rock fashions and trends. “Well, when I read it I was bummed that they were talking about me, but I was still cracking up because I thought it was such a freaking funny thing to say,” he chuckles. “That whole biting wit! I didn’t know what to expect and I didn’t think I’d go down so well with instrumental music but I was pleasantly surprised.”

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He then says he regrets having spent so little time on that tour. “Being very busy in Japan it’s a rare treat being able to do much stuff outside of Japan. The main thing is not being able to do too long of a tour outside of Japan because I have a lot of weekly television responsibilities and magazine responsibilities. I can’t get away much for more than a week at a time.”

Future Addict

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What Friedman modestly calls “responsibilities” is, in fact, great popularity in Japan he owes to the wonder of modern civilization called television. In fact, these days he is a bona fide TV star in his adopted country. “I came to Japan because I wanted to play Japanese music,” he explains, “and that’s pretty much what I did. I then suddenly got on this TV show which is called Hebimetasan and the show was a hit. I had no real intention to do any kind of TV but they said I should try it, and it became a hit. The show started and was picked up by the top television production company. And as a result of that I’ve done a lot of TV in the last five years – maybe 300 shows or more.”

But then, when his 2006 studio album Loudspeaker came out, it turned out that the majority of people who know him in Japan had no idea what he had done musically in his career before he came to Japan. This has now been changed with the release of Friedman’s new record entitled Future Addict which came out in Japan on March of 2008 and which is a compilation of tracks from various stages in Friedman’s career, although it also featurs three original tracks: “Simple Mystery”, “Barbie” and “Tears of an Angel”.

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“The majority of people in Japan thought that Loudspeaker was my first record,” Friedman says. “So the record company I’m with here in Japan asked me to consider making an album of my favourite songs from my career to let people know about the music that I’ve made before moving to Japan.”

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The trouble is, the record has still not been released outside of Japan. Asked when his fans in the West will be able to get hold of the album, Friedman admits that he still doesn’t know. “To be honest with you, I’ve kind of ran myself into a corner over here in Japan,” he says. “When I started to work over here and when I got picked up by my management company, there was so much work to do over here and I, quite happily, wound up in a lot of projects. I don’t have so much time. I feel that record companies can’t do as much as a management company can, and if I had the kind of management that I have in Japan, if I had that in America and in Europe, it would have been a different story, but there is just not enough hours in a day for me to cover all that. This is not something I’m happy about, and it doesn’t mean that I don’t care about my fans. As a result, sadly, people who want to hear my music out there now have to go an extra mile to find my music, and when people from outside of Japan do that, I appreciate their effort even more.”

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He laughs when asked if the record’s title hints at the fact that he is taking his material into a direction that perhaps is going to fit the future trends better than it did in its original form. “That’s a really nice way of putting it,” he chuckles. “I think I am going to say it from now on.” But talking seriously, he explains that his focus has always been on the future as opposed to the past. “I am very much a future-looking person rather than looking back on stuff,” he says. “I’m always looking at what’s coming next rather than looking on the past, and the idea of doing covers of stuff that’s really old felt hard for me to do, so I tried to concentrate on what’s coming next rather than looking back. There are people who are drug addicts, whatever, alcohol addicts, sex addicts, and I’m a future addict. So it kind of came out that way.”

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With a lot of tracks on the record being substantially reworked and re-written, I ask if he saw this as an opportunity to get things right this time around, given this time there were no tensions between his personal creative vision and concessions he had to make in the early days to account for external circumstances. “Absolutely,” he agrees. “Most of the old stuff suffered more from the lack of budget. So I got to pick up on that, and also in the musical sense approach it with a fresh ear. A lot of parts did stand my personal test of time, but some got overhauled. I thought, what if I was to do it exactly the way I would do it, to record my own interpretation in my own way. It’s not too far different from the original, but it’s definitely more in my style now.”

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It is interesting to explore Friedman’s views on compromises that are inevitable in the process of making a rock record. To what degree does he think such compromises are healthy and when does he thinks it’s time to stand firm? “That’s a great question,” he replies. “It’s always good to know when it’s appropriate to compromise. You gotta choose your battles, you know what I mean. You gotta keep your eye on the prize. Sometimes you gotta let go, when you know you’d rather do it one way but the overall opinion is another way. Sometimes you gotta let it go, but sometimes when you really, really love something and you are really into it, you gotta stand by your work. The difficult part is knowing when, which is which, if it’s a really small thing or something really big. For example, when you are in a studio playing a passage and the record company people are there, the manager is there, a bunch of other people are there, and you don’t think it’s all that great yourself, but when you play it everybody goes, 'Wow, it’s great!' and they get all excited. I know that I can come up with something that I like better, but do I really want to kill the mood in the room, bring it down, you know? Maybe they know something I don’t know. Those are the times when you have to give in. But sometimes when you really, really love what you are doing, at that point you gotta say, ‘Sorry you guys, but I’m gonna do it that way.’”

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Can Friedman see himself going back to the songs on Future Addict and some point later and changing them one more time? “Those same songs again?” he asks, too polite to point out the goofiness of the question. “No. If I can’t get it right the second time, I’m pretty much done. There is one song that I’ve done a few times and still haven’t gotten right, it’s called “Thunder March”, and as far as my whole material goes, that would be the one that I would probably record again.”

Wabi-Sabi and the subjective perception of guitar mastery

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In Japanese culture wabi-sabi stands for a distinct sense of beauty which emphasises simplicity and lack of polish and requires from the viewer (or the listener) to complete the work of art in their minds. Most importantly, it is an antithesis to clichéd, imitated and widely propagated notions of what is supposed to be universally accepted as beautiful. For Friedman, whose attitude to the guitar and the entire genre of instrumental rock is not what you come across in most other guitarists, value of any musical work lies in this kind of subjective perception, in the spiritual resonance the outer has evoked in order to get a response from within.

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When asked about musicians who influenced him when he was growing up, he instantly names Kiss and the Ramones. I put it to him that their material is simple stuff, and he agrees, but then names another influence that he says helped him expand his view not only on rock, but on music in a wider sense. “You know, it’s very funny,” he says. “When I heard Uli Jon Roth I kind of figured out that the guitar is a serious thing. And not just the amazing but simple stuff that I still liked, and still do, but when I heard Uli Roth I knew it was totally different, there was much more to it. So that’s pretty much where I branched out from. And oddly enough, Uli is playing in Japan next week and I’m going to join him on stage for two concerts.”

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In fact, out interview took place just a few days before Roth's Tokyo dates at the Sun Plaza Hall where the legendary vet was going to celebrate the anniversary of the release of the Scorpions’ seminal album Tokyo Tapes recorded at the same venue 30 years ago. Friedman admits to being really psyched up about this upcoming gig. “That’s like a complete dream come true, let me tell you,” he says, sounding genuinely excited. “I can’t believe it. But there are also so many wonderful, wonderful guitarists that I respect like Brian May from Queen. But, you know, I never really got into guitar players, or guitar as an instrument, believe it or not. It’s just always been a fan of a good song. And I never liked those guys who got into guitars, into their instruments, I was always too busy making the music.”

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I put it to Friedman that Roth is a big Jimi Hendrix fan, while he himself is known for being not so keen on Hendrix. He laughs. “I’m just really dreading when I go on stage with him and he’ll say, ‘Let’s play "Purple Haze"’.” We both laugh while this writer suggests a few more Hendrix song titles. But Friedman proves to be a good sport. “It’s like a dream come true but it would be so awkward!” he says. “Even then I would be completely happy to do that, don’t get me wrong. You know what’s odd, all the guitar players I respect, they love Jimi Hendrix. Go figure. Different people like different music and it has absolutely nothing to do with the quality of music. It’s still quality music. It’s not good or bad, it has to do with how music mixes with the experiences of your life. If I heard Jimi Hendrix when I was losing my virginity, I’d be the biggest Hendrix fan in the world right now. It’s all completely random. So I really never get into that – who is better, who is smarter, who is cooler. It’s all completely random.”

A study in hampuku: J-pop vs. heavy metal

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But sometimes it is glaringly obvious something goes wrong and a vibrant tradition begins to deteriorate into a dead formula, and Friedman would be the first to point it out when it happens.

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The constant repetition of a pattern or a form is referred to as hampuku in Japanese art. Originally used by Zen temples to spread its instructions and art patterns to other followers and further generations, this practice of following set forms was at first resisted by many Zen masters as a freedom-restricting formalisation, but soon became an inevitable strategy to popularise Zen in Japan. This method, which in Japan served to spread temple art is, of course, a universal phenomenon in all creative areas, from Byzantine icon painting to heavy metal. Such emphasis on outer forms, rules, and standards, is what Friedman vehemently resists. Everything that is rigid, inflexible, everything stuck in its form and unable to depart from it he rejects outright. “I hate genres, period,” he says. “There are songs that I like and songs that I don’t. Some of them are metal, some of them are not. I don’t have the inclination to separate the genres. I’m a huge song guy. And I think maybe the English people can relate to it maybe more than people in America. In England there’d be a lot of song people, people like Wakefield, and Transvision Vamp… These are all song people. I was always into songs and it doesn’t matter what genre it is.”

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His willingness to explore as many creative outlets as possible over the last few years has led him to take part in a variety of projects—from playing on a record by psychedelic trance musician Takeomi Matsuura to recording J-pop songs. His latest J-pop project is called Lovefixer which is a duo of Friedman and singer Shinichiro Suzuki. I put it to Friedman that a lot of his Western fans have been surprised to see him take such an active interest in what is seem by many as an antithesis to the rock model.

“Man, if people are surprised by that, they should hear the other stuff I’m doing and producing over here,” Friedman says. “It’s like a mix of Britney Spears and Slayer. The thing is, in heavy metal there is loyalty to the genre, and I don’t buy into that at all.”

He then elaborates on what drew him to J-pop in the first place. “Anything goes,” he says. “You can look at the top of the charts in Japan and this stuff has rivalled the heaviest of death metal. And you know why? Because the choruses are in the Japanese style of melodic singing, and they’ve got these brutal riffs that you throw in because the guys who are making it are metal fans or whatever. But I just love the freedom working outside of genres. In metal there are sometimes a lot less great songs, in my opinion. Metal is more about great riffs and great guitar phrases and stuff… That’s what I love about metal as a genre. But even that gets repetitive if you don’t have a great song around it. I’m a song guy! I like the excitement of a well-constructed song.”

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Not following forms blindly but combining influences in the most unexpected ways is what Friedman admires in J-pop. “If you are a metal fan, particularly, in J-pop you can hear pop music with elements of metal in it, which is great,” he says. “There is so much posing in metal, it’s funny, when they try to outgrowl each other, it’s so gay. So gay! Those are elements of metal, but why do I have to hear some posing dude? It really kind of bums me out, you know? But I love it when the elements of metal are used in a professional framework. There is a band over here called Maximum the Hormone, and it’s so freaking heavy, but it’s so incredibly well-done. I have to applaud that stuff. I’m really not into stuff that just sounds like metal. Heavy riffs and some tassels, and bass drums, and some growling, it’s not gonna cut it. It’s gotta be wrapped around a song where you go, ‘Oh, that’s so exciting, the way it makes that change in the middle,’ or, ‘That break is awesome,’, or ‘The chorus, I can’t get it out of my mind.’ It’s gotta have something more than just the elements of metal.”

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Glimpse into the future: gambari

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Friedman lets it slip. Then realises that he probably shouldn’t have mentioned it at all. But nevertheless he is generous enough to share a few words about the new album he is currently working on. “I shouldn’t even talk about it,” he says. “I don’t know if this album will be released in the West. We started just about three weeks ago. I’m so excited about it. Maybe it would give me another chance to get back over here to play some of the new stuff. And people who didn’t come to that very short European tour I will hopefully be able to meet the next time around.”

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The fact that Friedman finds time and energy to work on so many projects at the same time—his TV appearances, J-pop collaborations and his new album—to a certain extent resonates with the Japanese concept of gambari. Even though gambari is now losing its traditional strength of meaning in the Japanese society, once it used to be an admirable, fundamental quality to the Japanese culture, signifying doing one’s best, keeping up hard work and achieving one’s goals. To this day at the heart of gambari there is earnest striving, endurance, and, importantly—the original historical meaning of this word—asserting oneself. This latter quality is what Friedman applies to his creative vision exceptionally well these days, standing firm on what he believes has to be achieved. His stance begins to transpire when he is asked if the new album is going to be a multi-genre record, which he denies unconditionally.

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“That’s another thing,” he says. “My music, other records that I’ve done pretty much have a theme throughout the whole thing. I’m not the kind of guy who’s gonna have one pop song, then a country song, then a metal song, like a resume album. And that is something you find often, especially in the world of instrumental rock and guitar music: here is my country song, here is my rock song… I freaking hate that more than anything. If you can’t construct the whole thing from the beginning to the end like an album, what is the point of doing it? I’ll say this one thing: my stuff is deep, for better or for worse. It evolves over a long period of time with a lot of different experiences, so it’s not something I take lightly, and hopefully, I got a little better at it since the last time. What I did the last time, I wouldn’t have released it if I wasn’t ecstatic about it, and I was bummed that people didn’t get to hear it for longer than ten days.”

Last words

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What kind of rock interview would it be if there wasn’t that final dose of goofiness, that last, no matter how desperate, attempt to turn an in-depth earnest conversation with a bright, accomplished artist into a feature that any of the UK teenybopper mags (which seem to amuse Friedman so much) would go crazy for? So in the end he gets to answer the ultimate ludicrous question this writer has perfected in interviews with dozens of Friedman’s colleagues. What would he write to his younger self if given an opportunity to send a letter that would travel back in time?

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He laughs and says, “‘Don’t worry. Keep doing exactly what you’re doing.’ I don’t really regret anything. Maybe, ‘Work a little harder’, you know? If anything. I don’t think I would have anything really interesting to say.” He then pauses and says, “‘Keep you hair long!’ That would be a good one!”

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This writer then tells him the answer his pal Paul Gilbert had once given to the same question, and which was “Don’t perm your hair.” Freidman laughs. “When you play music long enough,” he says, “especially rock, your hair goes through a lot of different phases. Unfortunately, my hair can pretty much do only one thing which is a long poodle. There is nothing I can do about it, for better or for worse, and I’m stuck with it. So ‘Don’t cut it short’ would be my advice.”

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So there you have it: work hard and don’t cut your hair short. Although tempted, we won’t delve into the Samson parallels, even though there could be some truth to the old myth that linked a man’s energy to his hair. What remains important, is that throughout all the changes in fashions and trends, Marty Friedman has always remained an honest artist, these days becoming an ever more flexible, explorative musician, a mediator between cultures, whose broad understanding of music is guided as much by instinct as by knowledge. This, ultimately, allows him to preserve freshness and a sense of adventure in what he does, which is crucial at the time when the industry is in turmoil and many popular forms are in dire need of an overhaul. Without perhaps consciously striving to achieve this goal, Friedman makes sure that the music we love continues to expand and to grow by bringing together unexpected and at times little known elements of diverse cultures to help propel popular music into the 21st century.

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First published in Crusher magazine in November 2008.