All manner of strange things lure foreigners to Japan: jobs, monster movies, anime, nightlife and women, to name a few. But for Friedman, the siren's call came in the form of J-pop and J-rock music. He says, "Toward the middle of my time in Megadeth, like around the mid- to late-'90s, I started really getting into Japanese music. At first it was B'z, Zard, Hitomi, Glay and Ayumi Hamasaki. Every time we'd come to Japan for a tour, I'd go back home with a suitcase full of CDs and listen to them constantly."
You wouldn't normally expect a heavy metal riffmaster to fall for the slick, commercialized sound of J-pop. But for Friedman, Japan offered a picture of musical diversity that he wasn't finding back in the United States.
"I found that you can listen to a J-pop artist in Japan and they might have one really heartfelt ballad and then a death-metal track and then a disco track or a ska sound, but it's all the same artist on the same album, and with good songwriting all the way through. This made me think, 'I wish I had that kind of freedom in the States,' because if you're a metal musician in the U.S., you can't really step outside of that image very much. I love metal, but there are a lot of other things that I like, too, and I found that Japanese artists have way more freedom in that sense."
After Friedman left Megadeth in 2000, he set his eyes on relocating to Japan, which he did four years ago. But making do in the country without the support of a touring machine presented new problems.
"I was worried at first, because when you come to Japan on tour, the record company staff and promoter's staff are always around, treating you like a god, but the second you leave they completely forget about you so they can prepare for their next international artist. So when I started living here four years ago, I knew it would be very different to not have every whim catered to like I was used to."
The worries proved unfounded, as Friedman soon found himself embraced by the Japanese entertainment industry. "Almost as soon as I got here, I met (pop/rock singer) Aikawa Nanase, of whom I had been a fan for years, and we just hit it off right away. She asked me to join her band and it was like a dream come true. . . . Now every day I'm either shooting a TV show, doing radio, recording, doing interviews, preparing for a concert or doing a concert."
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