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American guitarist
the guitarist

Martin Adam Friedman (マーティン・アダム・フリードマン
) (born December 8, 1962) is an American guitarist, best known for his tenure as the lead guitarist of thrash metal band Megadeth from 1990 to 2000. He is also known for playing alongside Jason Becker in Cacophony from 1986 until 1989, as well as his 13 solo albums and tours. Friedman has resided in Tokyo since 2003, where he has appeared on over 700 Japanese television programs such as Rock Fujiyama, Hebimeta san, Kōhaku Uta Gassen and Jukebox English. He has released albums with several record labels, including Avex Trax, Universal, EMI, Prosthetic, and Shrapnel Records.

At the age of 14, after attending a KISS concert, Friedman took up the guitar, and is largely self taught. He rushed to form a band and started playing original songs, the reason being that originals are easier to play than covers. "Because," he says, "even if you screw up, you just claim that the song is written like that and no one can challenge you." The mother of one of Friedman's friends ran an event center with a two level stage, and Friedman and his friends used it as a rehearsal space. Word quickly spread about their band, and, since they were in a rural area, people would come from miles around to socialize and listen to music. Rehearsals soon became live shows. Friedman formed and played lead guitar in several other bands, including Deuce, Hawaii (which had previously been called Vixen), and notably Cacophony. Cacophony featured neoclassical metal elements and synchronized twin guitar harmonies and counterpoints shared with guitarist Jason Becker. He played guitar on the 1989 album In Your Face by Christian rock band Shout. In 1988, he recorded demos for Jet Red that eventually were released as bonus tracks on the 2009 Jet Red release "Flight Plan". In August 1988, he released his first solo album, Dragon's Kiss.

When Cacophony disbanded in 1989, Friedman auditioned for the thrash metal band Megadeth after a tip from his friend Bob Nalbandian. Friedman officially joined Megadeth in February 1990. Friedman's audition can be seen on the Megadeth DVD Arsenal of Megadeth. The first album he recorded with them was Rust in Peace, which was released on September 24, 1990. Rust in Peace was certified platinum by the RIAA in 1994 and was nominated for the Best Metal Performance Grammy at the 33rd Grammy Awards. Friedman further developed his style of playing exotic scale solos from the Cacophony era, and integrated it into the music of Megadeth. In July 1992, Megadeth released Countdown to Extinction, which was a more commercial album, aimed at a wider audience, and sold double platinum. Friedman later stated that he got tired of "holding the flag" for traditional metal and felt that he could not evolve as a musician. In an interview with Ultimate Guitar. com in March 2007, Friedman claimed that he wanted Megadeth to move towards a more aggressive sound and that he'd rather have been playing straight pop music than the pop influenced metal Megadeth was playing at the time. During Friedman's time in the band, they sold over ten million albums worldwide. During his time in Megadeth, Friedman released three solo albums between 1992 and 1996, which featured Megadeth bandmate Nick Menza on drums. Friedman reunited with Megadeth for the songs "Countdown to Extinction", "Tornado of Souls" and "Symphony of Destruction" at the Nippon Budokan in Tokyo on February 27, 2023. Friedman reunited with Megadeth again at Wacken Open Air for the songs "Trust", "Tornado of Souls", "Symphony of Destruction" and "Holy Wars The Punishment Due" on August 4, 2023.

Friedman appears on Japanese television and is also a contributing columnist to Japanese music magazines and national newspapers. Speaking Japanese, he became a regular member of the cast of TXN's musical TV program Hebimeta san (ヘビメタさん) (anglicized as "Mr. Heavy Metal") with Japanese idol Yoko Kumada until the show came to an end in 2005. Friedman had his own heavy metal TV program called Rock Fujiyama alongside Shelly, Ken Ayugai (Kenny Guy), Yorimasa Hisatake (Rock Ninja Yorimasa) and ex Scanch member Rolly Teranishi from April 2006 until March 2007. From November till December 2005, he toured with singer Ami Suzuki on her "Suzuki Ami Around the World" live house tour, which took place in Tokyo, Osaka and Nagoya. Friedman was featured on Jukebox, a television program in which Friedman and two Japanese people translate the lyrics of various English songs into understandable Japanese. He has also made guest appearances on the television programs Eigo de Shabera Night and Tamori Club. In 2008, Friedman played the role of Paul Weinberg, an English language teacher, in Isshin Inudou's Gou Gou Datte Neko de Aru. Friedman was a guest star in the Adult Swim original Metalocalypse by playing driving teacher Mr. Gojira. He has appeared on Cool Japan several times as a music expert. In 2009, Friedman appeared on The Quiz Show, a Japanese TV drama starring Sho Sakurai as a guest professor. In January 2014, Friedman took part in New Japan Pro Wrestling's Wrestle Kingdom 8 in Tokyo Dome event, playing Hiroshi Tanahashi to the arena.

Friedman is of Jewish descent. He lives in the Shinjuku area of Tokyo. Shortly after the 2011 Tōhoku earthquake and tsunami, Friedman began auctioning off a great variety of his musical equipment and paraphernalia that he used as a member of Megadeth and Cacophony, including some of the earliest productions of Jackson Kelly guitars and his signature Carvin V220. In December 2012, Friedman married Japanese cellist Hiyori Okuda in Yokohama. In 2018, Friedman confirmed that his hair is genuinely curly but hates it; he prefers to have it straight.

Friedman is known for his improvisation and for fusing Eastern music with Western music and other styles, such as neoclassical, thrash metal and later progressive rock. When playing, he often uses arpeggiated chords and various customized scales and arpeggios, some of which relate to Asian (Chinese and Japanese), Middle Eastern and other exotic scales, which are different from the typical minor/major pentatonic and seven modes based on the Major scale. As a right handed guitarist, Friedman has an unorthodox picking technique; the angle in which his hand is clenched goes against the conventional palm mute frequently used by right handed players in metal music. He also frequently utilizes upstrokes as opposed to downstrokes, especially on the B and high E strings. Rather than strictly picking from his elbow or wrist, Friedman will also pick moving his fingers—a technique known as "circle picking". Friedman is critical of being called a shredder. He opined that the term is "a guy who plays fast meaningless shit all the time. Shredders are the guys in your friend's basement who play insanely fast, and it just looks so mind blowing and amazingly cool with their fingers flying all around the neck, but if you close your eyes and actually listen, what you hear is a pile of shit. You all know what I'm talking about."

Date of releaseTitleLabel1988Dragon's KissShrapnel Records1992ScenesShrapnel Records1994IntroductionShrapnel Records1996True ObsessionsShrapnel Records2003Music for SpeedingFavored Nations2006LoudspeakerAvex Trax2007Live in EuropeAvex Trax2008Future AddictAvex Trax2009Tokyo JukeboxAvex Trax2010Bad D. N. A. Avex Trax2011Tokyo Jukebox 2Avex Trax2012Metal Clone X (with Freddy Lim)Avex Trax2014Metal Clone X vol.2: Louder Than Your MotherAyreonGuitar solo on "Message from Beyond"2020Open SourceKiko LoureiroGuest solo on "Imminent Threat"2023Vox Popurrí, Vol. IDario ImazGuest solo on "Mil Destinos"