MARTY FRIEDMAN Is 'Completely Fine' With 'Little Inaccuracies' On His New Live Album

Guitarist Marty Friedman (MEGADETH, CACOPHONY) recently appeared on "The Official Danko Jones Podcast". The full conversation can be streamed below. A few excerpts follow (as transcribed by BLABBERMOUTH.NET).

On whether his new double live album, "One Bad M.F. Live!!", was inspired by KISS:

Marty: "In a lot of respects. I think KISS's two live albums, and the albums that are in between those two live albums, are just such a stamp on the history of music and influenced so many people that have made important contributions to music in the world that it can't be overstated. When it came time to do a live album, of course I wanted some of the things that are on those two albums — mainly being a fold-out so you can clean the stems and seeds of your pot in the middle of it. Now that pot's legal everywhere, I find out that they don't have stems and seeds anymore, so it was all for nothing. I wanted that in there and if you look at the back cover of the album, it's got four squares just like 'Alive II'. Just the basic feel of the performance — everybody has solos on the record. If you see, 'Oh, it's Marty Friedman,' you might think it's just one guitar player soloing out, but my thing is it's a band — it's so much like a band. On the album you can really see [that]. Everyone quite outshines me, to be honest. There's drum solo, bass solo, other guy guitar solo and I'm soloing all over the place. It's really a wild, intense night all over, but it's a very equal band-type of feeling. It's kind of an old-school live album feeling. I was definitely going for that. The audience is definitely in the cast of characters on the record. They play a big part in the record and do a lot of participation with us, singing along even though there's no words, and doing a lot of great audience stuff. As a kid, we didn't have DVDs to actually watch the concerts. When you listen to the live album, your imagination takes you to this place, this venue, that all kinds of crazy shit's going on — bombs are going off and everybody's just having a wild time. Your imagination runs wild, and I wanted that feeling on the record... I wanted to document how cool I think my band is at this point, and that's basically what it was — a very typical show on tour. It came out really good. The only songs I really cut out were songs that were on a previous live album that I did in 2007, in almost KISS fashion. When they did 'Alive II', they didn't put any of the songs that were already released on 'Alive!'. I didn't want to repeat too much. The pace of the live show was the top priority."

On whether he felt any pressure after deciding to record the album in its entirety at a single show, rather than as a composite of multiple performances:

Marty: "The first second you start playing, you're like, 'Oh, this is what I've been doing every day for the last X number of weeks. I'll just do it again.' About halfway through the first song, you forget that it's anything different from any other show. I was really more concerned about any kind of equipment failure that might possibly mar an otherwise really good performance. I'd rather leave a bad performance on tape than have an awesome performance that gets ruined. That would really piss me off... It's kind of stupid-sounding, but sometimes magic happens, and you really love that one moment, and for that moment not to actually make it to people's ears, that really, really grates on you. Unless it's a serious train-wreck, which can happen — our music has got a lot of twists and turns in it — but unless it's a serious train-wreck, usually, I'm completely fine with any little inaccuracies. Sometimes, the inaccuracies are better than what I was intending to do in the first place, so I'm cool with that, but I really hate when there's a technical difficulty that prevents something cool that was about to happen. That gets my goat."

On how he ended up using one of Slash's guitar picks while recording MEGADETH's "Rust In Peace":

Marty: "I was recording 'Rust In Peace', and Mike Clink was producing. He had just finished GUNS N' ROSES. I was having trouble on one of the rhythm guitar parts — they're really quite tricky — and I saw a Slash guitar pick on the console. I'm like, 'Let me try this pick.' [I] nailed the thing in one take with Slash's pick. The mojo is somehow... Whether or not it's who our absolute hero is, it's irrelevant. It's people we respect and admire, and we hopefully will get a little bit of magic from it, and lo and behold, the magic comes sometimes."

"One Bad M.F. Live!!" was released on October 19. The album was recorded in Mexico City on April 14 during the final concert of Friedman's world tour in support of his 2017 album "Wall Of Sound", which debuted on Billboard's Heatseekers chart at No. 12.

Joining Friedman on "One Bad M.F. Live!!" are his bandmates Kiyoshi on bass, Jordan Ziff (RATT) on guitar and Chargeeee on drums.

Friedman will kick off an American tour in support of the album in San Diego, California on January 23. The Texas-based "super metal" group IMMORTAL GUARDIAN will open.