Marty Friedman: “When I was a kid, ‘shredding’ just meant playing incredibly fast, but if you didn’t look it sounded like s**t”
Marty Friedman may not be a fan of the term “shredder”, but the guitarist admits that over time, he’s started to appreciate the positive side of the label.
Appearing on a new episode of Masters of Shred’s Pages In Time, the guitarist – who previously proclaimed that shredding “looks cool on the fingers” but “doesn’t sound cool” – jokes about his distaste for the term after being called “the shred icon” by host Derek Thomas.
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“Here’s the thing. I hate that term,” Friedman says. “But I realise the term has had a very complimentary meaning for the last five or ten years. But when I was a kid ‘shredding’ just meant that guy in the basement who plays so incredibly fast but if you turn around and don’t look at it, it sounds like shit,” he explains.
For Friedman, the word “shred” carried a certain stigma – speed for speed’s sake, lacking depth and musicality. So when people refer to him as a “shredder,” Friedman’s first instinct is to cringe.
“That’s what I always associated the word ‘shred’ with, so when people say, ‘Marty Friedman, he’s a shredder,’ I’m like, ‘Please don’t, please don’t!’”
Elsewhere in the chat, Friedman also reflects on the early days of his career where necessity often dictated his gear choices.
“If some company is giving you something, you’re taking it,” he says. Looking back on his time in Cacophony with fellow guitarist Jason Becker, Friedman explains: “Jason and I – well, Jason lived with his parents and I was borderline homeless. So if a company’s like, ‘Hey, we’re going to give you some guitars,’ we’re like, ‘Pile it up, pile it up, anything.’”
“Gradually the companies got better and better, but when you’re working your way into the music industry and you’re slowly cultivating then when some company is willing to support you, it’s very appreciated. Because I think a lot of people who actually buy guitars and stuff are not the people who are out there playing – they’re the people practicing at home.”
“But the guys who are touring and making indie records and doing that – they don’t have money to buy guitars and gear. So when a company is so nice to seek you out and say ‘we like what you do enough that we’re going to give you two guitars or four guitars a year. We’re going to do ads on you’, it’s really not that much about the quality control,” he says. “It’s all about ‘if I get this guitar I can eat for a couple months.’ So that was the reality.”
Elsewhere, Marty Friedman recently recounted how a terrifying acid trip in his teens set him on a path to guitar greatness, noting: “I thought I was going to wind up being a mental patient.”
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Source: www.guitar-bass.net
