Former MEGADETH guitarist Marty Friedman spoke to Guitar World about his guest appearance on "Imminent Threat", the second single from the latest solo album of current MEGADETH axeman Kiko Loureiro, "Open Source".
"Kiko and I are bros," Marty said. "He's a good, good friend of mine. Whenever he comes to Japan, we hang out. I don't think we've ever sat in a room together playing guitars, but I would certainly love to. He's a super, super, super guitar player, and a super guy. So when he asked me to play on his thing, I jumped to it. I had no idea what he was going to come up with, but the song was really cool. So I did my thing with it and a good time was had by all."
Asked if he and Kiko ever trade MEGADETH war stories, Marty said: "I don't remember talking too much MEGADETH with him. But he's a real intelligent fellow. So I have to keep up with him. I remember one thing he said that was really interesting — we were talking about Allan Holdsworth for some reason, and he said something about how when you hear any guitarist or any artist, you're kind of hearing their life in their music. And he used Allan as an example, and he used me as an example.
"I'd never really heard it put in those words before," Friedman continued. "Normally that kind of New Age-y talk makes me want to vomit. But it actually made sense the way he was saying it. I just thought it was a brilliant thing to say."
Earlier in the year, Kiko stated about Marty's guest appearance on his album: "For the last five years, I've always been compared to Marty Friedman, and Marty Friedman is a great musician — not only a great guitar player but an amazing musician. And I'm a big fan of his solo work and CACOPHONY and, of course, other MEGADETH years, and I had a chance to meet him two times and have great conversations about music and about life with him.
"I have some guest musicians, guest guitarists on my new album, and guess what? Marty Friedman is one of them.
"I'm so happy to have Marty Friedman. He did, of course, an amazing solo on one of my songs. So, thank you, Marty."
