Three months ago, former MEGADETH guitarist Marty Friedman reunited with his former band for the first-ever concert at Tokyo’s famed Budokan Hall. Marty took the stage to perform three songs at the end of the main set on February 27: “Countdown To Extinction,” “Tornado Of Souls” and “Symphony Of Destruction.”
When asked during an appearance on the latest episode of The Jasta Show podcast how these three songs were chosen to be performed during the MEGADETH set, Marty replied:
“It was so natural. It was like two high school buddies deciding, ‘Let’s go jam.’ It was incredibly casual. And I think that’s really how it should be. We just talked about a couple of songs. I wanted to do two songs, and then Dave [Mustaine, leader of MEGADETH] said: “Why don’t we play one more song?” And I said something like, “Okay. That’s great.” So we played those songs, and there was no particular reason to play those particular songs. But it turned out just fine, and we had a lot of fun with it.”
Friedman also refuted speculation that there was animosity between him and Mustaine after he left:
“The funny thing is that there really wasn’t anything like that between us when we weren’t playing together. And if there was, it was kind of what the media loves… You know what they do: they take something that might look negative from a two-hour interview and it becomes a headline. There was never anything like that between us at all. If either of us emailed each other, it was completely mundane. So it wasn’t unusual to get a message from Dave, “Dude, we’re playing in Budokan. Would you like to play with us?” It was totally mundane. So there was never really anything between us that I know of that would cause any kind of press-worthy controversy. It’s boring. But that’s the way it is.”
