Legendary guitarist Marty Friedman has openly expressed his admiration for fellow guitarists Dave Davidson of Revocation and the late Alexi Laiho of Children of Bodom. Friedman, formerly of Megadeth, admitted that the styles of Davidson and Laiho represented musical avenues he wished his former band had explored.
In an interview with Bradley Hall, Friedman discussed his collaboration with Dave Davidson, praising his innovative approach to guitar playing.
“He is just sick. He just comes up with really, really neat… I like to think of it as the way I like to see metal progressing. We grew up learning regular metal, and it started to get more fancy, and he just took it to a new level. So I said, ‘Dude, start the ball rolling.’ And he came up with a bunch of cool stuff. And I came in more like an arranger, and I arranged his stuff”, he said (as transcribed by Ultimate Guitar).
Friedman continued, highlighting the ideal collaborative dynamic: “And I said, ‘How do you like this arrangement?’ He’s like, ‘Yeah, that’s cool. So let’s put vocals on that.’ And so he did the vocals, and it’s basically his riffs, but I really arranged it a lot, in a way that allowed me to play my guitar the way I liked it. It was kind of like the ideal band situation. Like, here’s this guy who has these great riffs, and then I took them and I just put them to my fancy. It worked out that way. And really, man, his playing is just brutal.”
It was Davidson‘s rhythm playing, in particular, that sparked a thought in Friedman‘s mind about Megadeth’s potential evolution.
“His rhythm playing is like… I remember hearing his playing [thinking] this is what I kind of wished Megadeth was going to go into this realm, when I heard his band.”
Friedman held similar high regard for Alexi Laiho, who also contributed to Friedman’s 2014 solo album, Inferno. Friedman was equally impressed by the Finnish virtuoso’s musicianship, envisioning a similar stylistic trajectory for Megadeth.
“I said the exact same thing about Alexi when I heard his playing, and his band’s playing. I could see Megadeth going heavy into this direction, but they were already doing it.”
Regarding their collaboration on the track “Lycanthrope,” Friedman noted: “I think Children of Bodom were fantastic. That song with Alexi [‘Lycanthrope‘] was done the same way. Most of it was Alexi‘s stuff that I arranged, and then I added a couple of my own riffs and the rhythms, but most of the rhythms were his. And all of the bar stuff, that’s definitely him playing. You can tell our styles are very, very different. I love the way he plays with so much reckless abandon in his guitar playing. You can just feel the aggression.”
