MEGADETH mainman Dave Mustaine has confirmed that the band’s former guitarist, Marty Friedman, will join the group at their first-ever gig at Tokyo’s Budokan later this month
Mustaine revealed the news to Rolling Stone saying that Friedman will come up on stage for three songs during the show’s encore.
“When Marty said, ‘Hey, I can play at this gig,’ I thought, ‘This is so magnificent,'” Mustaine said. “It’s gonna be so much fun to get Kiko [Loureiro, current MEGADETH guitarist] and Marty together, because they’re both geniuses on guitar. So this is like a gigantic birthday and Christmas present for me.”
“It has been a long time — 23 years to be exact since I’ve been on the same stage with Dave Mustaine making music,” Friedman said in a statement. “We’ve both taken drastically different paths since then. That doesn’t change the fact that I’m extremely proud of the part that I played in MEGADETH‘s history and legacy. I’m also very, very proud of the band’s many great achievements and continued success in my absence. For right now, I just feel immense joy and some serious adrenaline. I am looking forward to playing with MEGADETH at this very cool place, the Budokan.”
“We haven’t been to Japan in a long time,” Mustaine added. “I thought that inviting Marty was just a very thoughtful thing to do. MEGADETH has not been a band has had a lot of guest appearances from other players. We are not a jam band. I asked Kiko how he felt about this, and Kiko is completely confident in his guitar playing.
“This is not like when THE POLICE handed their instruments to U2 to pass the torch,” he continued. “This is doing something really grateful to the Japanese audience. We want it to be a gift. So everybody who bought that ticket before today, you’re welcome. … I’m really looking forward to this moment. It’s gonna be great.”
The upcoming Budokan concert, which will be livestreamed on February 27 and available on demand for a couple of days afterwards, marks the first time since 1999 that Friedman has performed live with MEGADETH.
