Marty Friedman: Lucky Number 13

The guitar virtuoso on his latest solo record ‘Wall of Sound,’ being a cultural ambassador for Japan and his “X-rated” biography.

- Anurag Tagat

You know that lead guitarist attitude when they hear a solo and are immediately judging it and sneaking in a humblebrag about how they can do it better? Turns out it’s not entirely a bad thing. That’s a close description to how 54-year-old guitarist Marty Friedman worked on songs for his 13th solo album Wall of Sound, due August 4th.

Still known for his work on some of the most seminal albums by thrash veterans Megadeth in the Nineties, Friedman turns to instrumental prog, shredding and string-bending his way through a fairly balanced mix of incendiary and epic in 11 tracks. Over the phone from Tokyo, Friedman says he spent over 16 to 18 months working on “hundreds of demos,” a process that he followed with his previous album Inferno as well.

He describes the process as being “very mean to myself, as though I was criticizing someone else’s playing all the time.” He adds, “Like, ‘Oh, I wouldn’t do it that way.’ Typical guitar players, you know? Every time they hear another guitar player, they subliminally criticize it. I listen to myself that way and I subliminally criticized everything to the point where I was just throwing away 90 percent of what I was writing. It worked out good for me."

When you released your first single “White worm,” you mentioned in interviews how you were aiming for that memorable, epic rock intro. What kind of direction are you going in with Wall of Sound?