BLABBERMOUTH.NET
MEGADETH's
Dave Mustaine has once again praised the band's current guitarist
Kiko Loureiro, saying it him a "long" time to find someone who plays like
Marty Friedman.
Mustaine touched upon
Friedman and
Loureiro's playing skills while filming a new video message on
Cameo, which lets users hire celebrities to record brief, personalized video messages about virtually any topic.
Addressing a fan named
John who had a question about
Friedman's guitar solo in the
MEGADETH song
"Tornado Of Souls" from the band's classic 1990 album
"Rust In Peace",
Mustaine said (as transcribed by
BLABBERMOUTH.NET): "Hey,
John, it's
Dave Mustaine from
MEGADETH. Hey, I got your question about
Marty's solo in
'Tornado Of Souls'. And… What did I think about it when I first heard it? I loved it.
But — you've gotta remember these songs were played before, and [former
MEGADETH guitarist]
Chris Poland had played on those. I'd have to listen back to
Chris's solo to see how much of his performance had influenced
Marty's solo.
"I guess I should say a little bit about
Marty, too, and his performance, when you said that you thought it was like
Picasso," he continued. "There's a lot of players out in the world that play like
Marty. They're hard to find. If you're in a band and you're looking for someone like Marty Friedman, you'll see how hard it is by how long it took me to find
Kiko. The other players I've had were great in between
Marty, and I say that with all respect, but there's very few guys out there like
Marty and
Kiko."
Shortly after
Loureiro's addition to
MEGADETH in 2015,
Mustaine called him "definitely the best guitarist we've ever had." His comments echoed those he made about the band's previous guitarist,
Chris Broderick, during the latter's tenure in the band. Back in 2013, during the making of
MEGADETH's
"Super Collider" album,
Mustaine wrote in a tweet that
Chris was "without a doubt the best guitarist I've ever played with."
Mustaine told
Revolver magazine that finding
Loureiro "was really a mind-blower. It was the first time since
Marty Friedman joined the band that I was really intimidated as a player," he said. "He's such an amazing talent, and he's been coming in with all of these fresh ideas."
Mustaine added that
Kiko was a good fit personality wise. "
Chris [
Broderick] and I had a good chemistry, but we weren't really as close as I would have wanted us to be,"
Mustaine explained. "
Kiko, I feel like I've known him for years."
In 2009,
Mustaine praised
Broderick, saying in an online post: "I am going on record and I am saying unequivocally that
Chris is THE BEST GUITARIST MEGADETH has ever had. And the real talented musicians in
MEGADETH's alumni will agree, he is an absolute monster. I mean, he plays the catalog better than anyone did.
Jeff Young never wanted to do
Chris Poland's stuff, and so on, and so on, until the last guitarist we had before we disbanded over my arm injury."
Mustaine added: "It's funny, because just when I think [
Broderick] can get no more outrageous, or any more thrilling with the guitar solos, he comes up with something really beautiful like
Marty Friedman would do (he has
Marty pretty well down pat), and then goes into the GIT styles that
Jeff Young did, yet, there is still such a freshness to his playing and he is so raw, it's like having a new prize bull. And even though he ain't a such a young bull, he's definitely an old bull like me."
In the March 2008 issue of
Revolver magazine,
Mustaine stated about the musical chemistry of the band's
"Rust In Peace" lineup: "I sang almost every single note of
Marty Friedman's guitar solos, and I wrote the majority of
Nick's [
Menza] drum parts, and I wrote almost every bass note that [
David]
Ellefson played." He doubled down on those claims in a
2009 interview with
Guitar World, where he said: "You know, people have heard me say that I 'sang' solos to
Marty in the studio, and I did. I did it to [former guitarists]
Jeff [
Young],
Chris [
Poland] and
Al [
Pitrelli], too. But [then-
MEGADETH guitarist]
Chris Broderick? I only did it two times [on
MEGADETH's 2009 album
'Endgame'], and there are literally hundreds of thousands of notes on
'Endgame'. Now that is a testimony to a guy who has studied his partner."