People are Really Excited that Marty Friedman Doesn’t Know if He’d Return to Megadeth or Not

Well, here we are. 2015. Happy new year. Yay.

So: as predicted, someone finally got around to asking Marty Friedman if he’d ever re-join Megadeth (who, in case you somehow missed the news, are currently down a lead guitarist and drummer). Not as predicted, he didn’t say “no” outright. Which actually makes sense — Friedman is basically Japanese now, and if my memory of reading Michael Crichton’s Rising Sun twenty-five years ago is accurate, the Japanese put a premium on being polite. So what Friedman said was:

“I don’t really have an answer for you, I know that people would want to know. Honestly I don’t have an answer. I have never said never to anything in my life, so who knows? I really don’t know.”

Upon reading this quote, Das Internet lost its collective shit, because a) everyone wants Friedman back in Megadeth and b) so many other former members of the band have implied that they’d rather have their dicks nailed to the back of a race car than work with Mustaine again. Suddenly there’s all these headlines that are some variation of “FRIEDMAN WON’T RULE OUT MEGADETH RETURN,” when the headline ought to be “FRIEDMAN DOESN’T HAVE AN ANSWER ABOUT MEGADETH FOR YOU” or “FRIEDMAN DOESN’T KNOW IF HE’D EVER RETURN TO MEGADETH.” All he really did in that quote is decline to turn down a job he hasn’t even been offered, which, again, is polite, not to mention smart.

But getting Friedman back in Megadeth would require the jumping through of many a hoop, not least of which is that he now happily resides on a completely different continent than Dave Mustaine.

Traditionally, Mustaine’s hires have been musicians of some note, but not dudes who are already super-famous. I’m guessing that will be the case this time, too. It’s gonna end up being Nick Cordle or Jake Dreyer or someone at that level. I could be wrong, but I’m probably not. Sorry to pee on your parade.

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