About a week before Marty Friedman took the stage at The Loft at City Winery on February 4, he sat down with one of our very own for an interview discussing all of the exciting happenings in his career – which not only includes this tour, but also an album, a book, and, yes, this exhilarating tour. On the topic of the shows he was bringing to his home country from his home-away-from-home country of the last two decades, he said this: “What I like to bring to my American friends is a presentation that only could be done with these four Japanese members – myself included. It’s just something different from what you normally see in a concert, especially in a guitar-centric presentation. You expect to see some virtuoso playing really, really wonderful guitar, but that’s not really the way I present my music. You’ll walk away feeling uplifted. You’ll feel like you got something. You’ll feel like you have some new energy that you didn’t have before, and you’re ready to face another week of whatever it is you’re doing with more enthusiasm and power and fun because of it. That’s the kind of stuff that I’m trying to bring to everybody. Of course, there’s gonna be a ton of guitar played – don’t mistake that, but I don’t want people walking away saying, ‘Wow, he’s a good guitar player.’ That would mean my mission is not complete.”
As you go through this gallery, you will see that Marty Friedman meant every word that he said – and he brought it all.
Photos by Ehud Lazin
