For months it seemed I had been trying to
find a new guitarist for Megadeth, Jeff Young
and Chuck Behler were long gone and I had
hired on Chuck's drum roadje, Nick Menza,
to fill the drum throne position, much in the
same way that Chuck had replaced Gary
"Gar" Samuelson. But there still was that
vacancy on stage left.

I called around and had heard of some
hotshot guitarists, but I was pretty turned
off by the time things were over with the
SFSGSW lineup to have another "hotshot"
anything. I had looked at a Canadian guy,
and a few local L.A. guys, and even talked to
some Texas gunslingers. Most of the guys
had worked for Ozzy or were signed to
independent labels; some were actually
really good, but needed "Rock School 101" bad!
I was miserable and had tried everything;
everything except that one "Varney" dude.
You see, there was this one picture of a
dude with half-orange/half-black hair and a
CD named "Dragon Kiss" attached to it. After
hoping against hope, he was one of the last
guys I had to listen to, or more likely wanted
to listen to; in fact, I only put in the CD to
see what kind of music a guy with that hair
color would sound like.

Megadeth changed forever that day.
Marty had a unique and beautiful style that
was a breath of fresh air.
When the audition for Friedman was over
I called my manager and said that Marty was
in, but that we should see about changing
his last name, or see about using a stage
name, since "Friedman wasn't very metal-
sounding," Oy vey!

Anyway, this record was tracked in
Rumbo Studios, which belonged to Daryl
Dragon and Toni Tennille aka "The Captain
and Tennille," of Muskrat Love fame. Mike
Clink was the co-producer and I wanted to
use him because he had done some recording
with one of my guitar influences as a kid,
RIP was named from a trip I made on my
way home from skydiving one day, I was
obliviously speeding (it's kind of hard not
towhen you just jumped out of an airplane)
and I saw a bumpersticker that said, "May all
of your nuclear weapons rust in peace."
That was it.

There were many great things that hap-
pened surrounding this record, and most
noteworthy was the infamous World Tour of
THE CLASH OF THE TITANS, RIP was certified
Gold almost immediately and Platinum not
too much thereafter, and has been acclaimed
as one of the most influential metal records
of all time. Hell, I had no idea that it would
be such a success or I would have paid more
attention as we went along.

This record also features many songs that
were worthy of high-dollar videos, namely
Holy Wars and Hangar 18. These two videos
were instrumental in setting the stage for all
future metal videos and also had a hand in
my becoming one of MTV's darlings at the
time. They were also in the neighborhood of
2-400,000 dollars each. Go figure!
Long hair, tight jeans, tons of chicks and
speed metal at its finest. "Rust In Peace," baby!