MARTY FRIEDMAN: 'People Really Want Me To Play As Aggressive And As Exotic As Possible'

March 27, 2015

Rolling Stone Brasil recently conducted an interview with former MEGADETH guitarist Marty Friedman. You can now watch the chat below.

Speaking about his latest solo album, "Inferno", Marty said: "'Inferno' was a very ambitious project for me, because my last previous five albums or so were released only in Japan. And so I got an offer from an American record label called Prosthetic. They said, 'I don't know if you know this, but people in America are still interested in what you're doing. I know you're ignoring them, 'cause you're in Japan.' And I said, 'No, I'm not ignoring them. I'm just really busy doing this stuff.' [And they said], 'We wanna release your five albums from Japan. And we want to release a new album from you after that.' And I thought, 'That's a very nice offer.' So I wanted to make sure this first new international release was something that maybe people who forgot about me could say, 'Look, this is Marty. This is exactly what I wanna hear from this guy.' No bullshit. No, like, kind of avant-garde jazz explorations or anything like that. I think people really want me to play as aggressive and as exotic as possible. And so that's what I did. And I tried to tailor it to the whole world rather than just my narrow Japanese world."

"Inferno" sold around 2,100 copies in the United States in its first week of release to debut at position No. 186 on The Billboard 200 chart. The CD was released on May 26, 2014 via Prosthetic Records (except in Japan, where the album was made available through Universal Music). The effort was the 52-year-old musician's first collection of material recorded for the U.S. market since 2003's "Music For Speeding". Among the guest collaborators that appear on the effort are CHILDREN OF BODOM's Alexi Laiho, REVOCATION's Dave Davidson, acoustic flamenco-metal hybridists RODRIGO Y GABRIELA and Friedman's pre-MEGADETH bandmate in CACOPHONY, Jason Becker.

Speaking to Guitar World magazine, Friedman said: Each of the guests on this record took a song from scratch — they would write it and then I would arrange it and add my parts to it. That way we were both invested in it and it's a little bit of a deeper experience."

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