For more than two decades, guitar virtuoso Marty Friedman has been a staple of the Japanese music scene, a far cry from his days touring the world as a member of American thrash legends Megadeth. In a new appearance on Kylie Olsson‘s YouTube series “Life In Six Strings,” the musician opened up about the pivotal moment he decided to walk away from a platinum-selling metal band to start over in a foreign country.
While exploring Tokyo with the host, Friedman was candid about his exit from Megadeth in 2000. He explained that the split was not just necessary, but inevitable for both parties involved.
“When I left Megadeth, I knew it was time to leave the band,” Friedman told Olsson. “I had nothing left to give the band, they had nothing left for me, and it was a good time for that to happen.”
The catalyst for this drastic career change was a growing dissatisfaction with his life in the United States and an obsession with Japanese pop music. Living in Arizona at the time, Friedman found himself disconnected from his surroundings and drawn toward a different sonic landscape.
“I lived in Arizona, which was just the total normal middle of America — relaxed, [where you] kick back [and] nothing ever changes,” Friedman recalled. “But when you’re not off tour and you’re just living there, it’s like living in a desert. So, then you start to think: what kind of music do I really wanna make? And I really was listening to J-Pop, Japanese music 24-7. And I just knew that I had to be here in Japan if I wanted to actually be in the world of Japanese domestic music. So that was the reason I came.”
Upon arriving in Japan in 2003, Friedman faced a stark reality. Despite his global success and platinum records with Megadeth, he found that his western credentials carried little weight in the insular world of Japanese domestic music.
“I started from zero and I really had nothing,” he admitted. “Even though I had platinum albums with Megadeth for 10 years beforehand, [Japanese] domestic music fans, for the most part, they don’t really even know the biggest American groups. So I wanted to get into that world, and it was really one person at a time, one connection at a time.”
Friedman eventually broke through, landing a gig with singer Aikawa Nanase, an artist he had admired from afar while living in the States. Since then, he has released 15 solo albums, including his most recent effort, Drama, which dropped earlier in 2024. During the episode, he also taught Olsson how to play his track “Miracle” from the 2017 album Wall Of Sound.
