INTERVIEW WITH MARTY FRIEDMAN: 'Cryptic Writings' and the evolution of Megadeth
Marty Friedman discusses his beginnings influenced by Kiss and The Ramones, the recording of 'Cryptic Writings' in Nashville with producer Dann Huff, the evolution of Megadeth's sound toward greater diversity and accessibility, and his perspective on Metallica's changes. He also details his solo work and his disinterest in the 'guitarist olympus'.
Date
October 1, 1997
Media
Madhouse (AR)
Interviewer
Luis Lecumberry
Interviewees
Luis Lecumberry
Could you tell me when you first became interested in music and when you realized that's what you wanted to do for a living?
Marty Friedman
“Do it for a living? At first I didn't consider it as something you do for a living, I just liked rock, I liked Kiss and The Ramones. I picked up a guitar just for fun, I didn't think I would have the opportunity to do it for a living, but I wanted to play the guitar because I thought it was fun. And I really got into it and enjoyed it and had a lot of support from several of my friends in the neighborhood. We had a band and we became really popular, we were all kids between fourteen and sixteen years old and we really became very well known. Then I started thinking 'I have the opportunity to make this real', because it seemed like I was going to be a rock star when I was just starting high school and I felt it was natural for me to do it.”
Luis Lecumberry
You named Kiss and The Ramones. Many people would think that you come from a classical background and listen to things that have nothing to do with those simple ones...
Marty Friedman
“I don't think it's strange that I like The Ramones. When I started, I listened to them and I just grabbed the guitar and it was very easy for me to learn. I felt like 'well, I can do it'; maybe if I had gotten into things like King Crimson or something like that, when I tried to play it, I would have said 'this guitar thing is too difficult' and I would surely have given up, but I listened to The Ramones. It's very good for beginner guitarists to learn because they can say 'I can do it', it's not really very difficult, that's what decided me to make music.”
Luis Lecumberry
Let's talk a little about your new album. Why did you record it in a place like Nashville which doesn't have a rock tradition?
Marty Friedman
“It was good, because if you record in Los Angeles or New York there will be a lot of people coming to the studio to bother you, people from the company, from other bands, journalists and that kind of thing. In Nashville, we were completely alone to do our work and we were very focused. No one bothered us and no one cared who we were. I think people in Nashville were scared of us and that's why no one came to bother us.”
Luis Lecumberry
How did you come up with the idea of calling Dann Huff from Giant to produce the album? Many people think that a musician like him has nothing to do with a band like Megadeth.
Marty Friedman
“Actually Giant is not very important to him, it's just a side project. He is a very well-known studio guitarist, a session musician and a producer, but not of rock, but rather of country music. Dave and I always greatly respected his way of playing the guitar, he also did a lot of production work with Mutt Lange and that was enough for us to give him a chance. It was really good that he had no experience with heavy music, he comes from a very different conception than ours, he is very musical, he is not a hard rock person by nature. When he heard our music he felt a little scared, but he didn't want to show that he was scared, but rather he made it heavier. All we did was try to achieve a sound that was heavier than what we had done before.”
Luis Lecumberry
So you didn't even think about working with Max Norman (responsible for the last Megadeth albums) this time.
Marty Friedman
“No. It was time to try something new.”
Luis Lecumberry
How was the work in the studio? Did you use any new recording techniques?
Marty Friedman
“We used a lot of new recording techniques. The main thing was that we used many different guitar sounds on each song, that's new for Megadeth, if you look at 'Youthanasia' or 'Countdown...', the guitar sounds are the same on every song, the whole album is done with the same sound. On 'Cryptic Writings' each song has a completely different guitar, bass, and drum sound from the other. That represented much more work, a broader concept, that of making the album bigger. We took one song at a time and did it as if it were a separate album.”
Luis Lecumberry
In some songs you used non-traditional instruments, such as the sitar or string arrangements.
Marty Friedman
“Exactly, we used a string quartet on songs like 'Use the Man' and 'Trust'. That was something we had never done and we didn't want to use samplers, we wanted musicians, so we brought them in to do it. I played a sitar on 'A Secret Place' and we had a harmonica player on 'Have Cool, Will Travel'. We wanted to try everything on this album, nothing was against the rules or too strange. We tried a lot of new sounds and that made the album sound more complete to me.”
Luis Lecumberry
Did you learn to play the sitar to record the album, or did you already know how?
Marty Friedman
“It wasn't a real sitar, it was an electric sitar, which is played like a guitar and sounds like a sitar. Basically, every time you hear a sitar on a rock album, such as Steely Dan or Metallica, or a lot of people who include sitar on their albums, they are not real, they are electric sitars. Furthermore, the sitar takes years and years to learn and be able to play something basic.”
Luis Lecumberry
Do you think this album can catapult you to a higher level of recognition?
Marty Friedman
“It already has in the US, at least as far as radio is concerned. Right now, 'Trust' has been number one on the radio for three weeks. The number one rock song on radios across the country. It's a big step for Megadeth, because usually radio shows in the US were afraid to name Megadeth. But now things have changed.”
Luis Lecumberry
Do you think there are thematic changes in the lyrics of the new songs?
Marty Friedman
“They may be more personal than before. I'm more on the music side, I don't write lyrics, but I feel like the new ones are more personal and easier to understand. In the past the lyrics were more intense, with a lot of tricky wordplay, a lot of complex words and some things that were difficult for ordinary people to understand. I like simple material, which can still be intelligent. This time there are really intelligent and easy-to-understand lyrics. Changes like that help us for things like the radio.”
Luis Lecumberry
How do you see the evolution in each Megadeth album from 'Rust in Peace' (the first one you played on) until now?
Marty Friedman
“This is the biggest one. 'Rust in Peace'; 'Countdown...'; and 'Youthanasia', were all a variation of the same thing. First-take sounds in the recording as if they were live. It was like 'guitar, bass, drums and go'. We didn't work too much with the sounds. On 'Youthanasia' I simply used the set of amplifiers that I use live just as I have it on stage. 'Cryptic Writings' was a big step, the biggest evolution, because we spent many more hours, days, and weeks simply looking for more interesting guitar sounds to make the songs more interesting, we hadn't done that before. When the album was finished, the songs sounded completely different from the previous ones, it was definitely an evolution.”
Luis Lecumberry
Do you still live in Phoenix?
Marty Friedman
“Yes.”
Luis Lecumberry
Can you tell me what happened to the studio you built there for the recording of 'Youthanasia'?
Marty Friedman
“We destroyed it (laughs). It was a one-time plan. We only recorded 'Youthanasia' in that studio and then we destroyed it and sent the machines back to Los Angeles.”
Luis Lecumberry
When you work in the studio, do you do it as a team or does Dave bring the songs and the others play them?
Marty Friedman
“We definitely have a team attitude in the studio and part of that is getting in there, doing your part and getting the hell out. We recorded in Nashville, Tennessee; it's so far from our homes, and we didn't want to waste time, we went straight to work. I think being away from home was good for the team spirit, because if we had been at home no one would have worked completely in the studio, because there is family and friends, and you have to take care of them. But doing it in Nashville, in the middle of nowhere, definitely makes you take a team attitude.”
Luis Lecumberry
In 'Cryptic Writings' the material is very diverse from one song to the next. There is traditional hard rock, songs with heavy and fast riffs, and others that are more accessible. It seems like you don't want to lose old fans, but at the same time you want to reach new ones...
Marty Friedman
“Yes.”
Luis Lecumberry
Is that correct?
Marty Friedman
“It's exactly correct... (laughs). The very heavy and fast material is natural and easy for us to do. But there was no reason to make the whole album with those kinds of songs because we already have albums like that. What was the point of making another album the same? We wanted to emphasize what comes naturally to us, like 'The Disintegrators', 'Vortex' and 'FFF' but we wanted to grow and become more accessible. That is why there are things on the album like 'Trust' and 'Almost Honest', where we really needed to use our imagination at the time of recording them to make them real.”
Luis Lecumberry
What is your opinion about bands like Metallica making so many changes, and perhaps turning their backs on old fans?
Marty Friedman
“I think Metallica is a great band and they made a great album. You can't be making the same album every year. You have to be a musician who grows. Maybe they went in a direction that some of the old fans may not enjoy too much, but they are still great and... what can I say? It is a band that gave a lot to heavy metal and focused a lot of attention on hard rock.”
Luis Lecumberry
A couple of months ago I read an interview where Dave said he wasn't going to let anything get between him and his fans. When you are making an album, do you think about what you want to play or what the fans want you to play?
Marty Friedman
“First you have to think about what you want to play, then, what the producer wants you to play (laughs). I usually work very focused on what I want to play because when I play something I'm almost always lucky that the producers like it. Regarding the fans, we know -because we tour around the world permanently- what they are going to like and what they are not going to like. I think something that Megadeth fans have always liked is that we are honest, we are not going to treat them like shit by playing something that we think certain people or in certain countries will not like. We are honest with ourselves and the fans respect that perhaps more than our music.”
Luis Lecumberry
You once said that all your energy was put into Megadeth, but you still release solo albums...
Marty Friedman
“Yes.”
Luis Lecumberry
As a guitarist, do you have a lot of material that doesn't fit into Megadeth or do you have some kind of contract or commitment with your company to do them?
Marty Friedman
“The music on my solo albums is very different from Megadeth. They have no point of contact. When I record that material, I am giving space to a different side of my musicality. I want to show it and have people listen to it. I released a solo album a couple of months ago called 'True Obsession'; I couldn't dedicate much time to the release because the 'Cryptic Writings' tour has just started, it's really big and you have to put all the other things aside. When I make solo albums I want to be very focused on that because I'm a perfectionist. Right now Megadeth is at the top of the priorities.”
Luis Lecumberry
Did you play all the instruments on 'True Obsession'?
Marty Friedman
“No. I wrote all the parts for all the instruments but I only played the guitar.”
Luis Lecumberry
Carmine Appice plays drums on one song. How was it working with him?
Marty Friedman
“It was interesting because he is a legend among drummers. I wanted to have him on the album because there is a song with a rhythm similar to Megadeth. I didn't want Nick Menza to play it because that way it would be 50% of Megadeth and I don't want to sound like 50% of anything. I knew Carmine was a really heavy drummer but he doesn't sound like Megadeth, and that helped the song.”
Luis Lecumberry
On your solo albums you can hear influences from Japanese music. Are you a fan of that type of music? Where does that influence come from?
Marty Friedman
“I am a big fan. I really like Japanese, Chinese, and Indian music, I spent many years studying them and I am very influenced in my way of composing and playing the guitar.”
Luis Lecumberry
Ten years ago there were many guitarists making instrumental albums. Do you think they gave something new to heavy music or were they a bunch of guys playing fast things and showing off their technique?
Marty Friedman
“I don't listen to that kind of stuff. I don't like guitar albums. They are very difficult to listen to, maybe for five minutes, but not a whole fifty-minute album, it's too much. My solo albums have more to do with soundtracks. They are not based on the guitar as an instrument, they have more to do with the melody. I don't like being in that place of a virtuoso guitarist, but sometimes people put you in places where you don't want to be.”
Luis Lecumberry
Do you enjoy teaching or doing guitar clinics?
Marty Friedman
“Yes, it's good because it gives me the opportunity to see what the fans are interested in, what kind of questions they ask, what they enjoy about my music and my playing. I've been doing it around the world for a long time and it always turns out to be fun. I hope to be able to do it in Buenos Aires.”