Ex-MEGADETH Guitarist MARTY FRIEDMAN: New 47-Minute Audio Interview Posted Online

Riff-Mag.com recently conducted an interview with former MEGADETH guitarist Marty Friedman. You can now listen to the entire 47-minute chat below.

On Japanese food:

Marty: "I love it. It's my favorite. I think if you don't like Japanese food, it would be really hard to live in Japan. [Friedman moved to Japan in 2003. — Ed.] It was very natural [for me to get accustomed to eating Japanese food]. I always ate a lot of Japanese food when I was on tour around the world or living in America. And it's probably the healthiest food that I like. I mean, I like almost everything — all kinds of food — but Japanese food, on the whole, is really quite healthy. So once I moved to Japan, I became much healthier than I ever was before — [I just had] much more energy, and healthier skin, and [I was] overall in much better shape than I was before. So that really kind of helped me do more work and do better work here."

On what it was like being in Japan when the 8.9-magnitude earthquake and subsequent tsunami struck the country in March 2011:

Marty: "I was here in Tokyo when the earthquake happened. It was definitely the scariest thing — ever — that I'd been through, but I wasn't where the tsunami was, and my house, my apartment at the time, was just completely wrecked, but I was OK, and my band was OK. I was actually with my band at rehearsal when it happened. But it changes the way you think of everything, because you're kind of constantly living with a little bit of fear that it will happen again and happen worse or happen closer by. And so there's always that little bit of fear, but you really can't let that fear become paranoia, because then that's just no way to live your life that way."

Friedman will embark on the "Guitar Universe 2012" European tour in October. Support on the trek will come from Israel's Yossi Sassi (ORPHANED LAND) and France's Stéphan Forté (ADAGIO).

As previously reported, three recent albums by Marty Friedman — whose groundbreaking work with MEGADETH and CACOPHONY continues to receive international acclaim to this day — will be released in North America by Prosthetic Records on August 14. Two of the titles — 2010's "Bad D.N.A." and 2008's "Future Addict" — have until this year only been available in Japan, where Friedman now lives, while 2006's acclaimed "Loudspeaker", originally released Stateside by Shrapnel Records, will be made available domestically once again. You can head over to the Prosthetic store now to pre-order a bundle consisting of all three titles.