“He plays a lot like Marty Friedman – it’s really exciting”: Dave Mustaine on Megadeth’s current touring guitarist Teemu Mäntysaari
Per Mustaine, the new addition has been fitting in “really great” with the band.
![[L-R] Teemu Mäntysaari and Marty Friedman](https://guitar.com/wp-content/uploads/2023/09/Teemu-Freidman@2000x1500.jpg)
Credit: Getty Images
Megadeth’s current touring guitarist Teemu Mäntysaari shares quite a few guitar tricks in common with the band’s former axeman Marty Friedman, according to Dave Mustaine.
In a new interview with Wes Styles, the Megadeth leader shares what it’s like having Mäntysaari fill in for the band’s longtime guitarist Kiko Loureiro, who announced earlier this month that he will be sitting out the next leg of Megadeth’s ‘Crush The World’ tour in order to spend more time with his family in Finland.
“I have to leave the tour for now, to be home with my children, and to help them face the difficult challenges that arise from us being ‘dads that work away from home’,” Loureiro said in a statement the day before the tour began.
Asked how Teemu’s fitting in with the band so far, Mustaine says [via Blabbermouth]: “He’s really great. And I’m super excited with what Teemu has brought. And It’s uncanny because he plays a lot like Marty. And it’s really exciting.”
He adds, “At certain times I just close my eyes during the set and I just hear these songs played, whether like Kiko in the past or Teemu now, it just sounds really magic because these guys have learned these songs and they’re not just going out there and just banging their guitar around; they actually learned the solos from some of the virtuosos that I’ve played with over my career.”
Mäntysaari played his first concert with Megadeth on 6 September, the start of the band’s first run of dates for autumn.
In related news, Dave Mustaine has looked back on Megadeth‘s early gigs, noting how completely chaotic they were as “concert etiquette” wasn’t fully established in the thrash scene.
“The shows were out of control because hardly anyone knew what moshing was,” he said. “They weren’t familiar with crowd surfing. Kids would just jump up on the stage and there was no stage diving protocol.”
“Some of them would run over to you and grab your mic stand to get some picks off. They’d bang into your guitar or try to scream into the mic. Then someone would shove them off the stage. It was pure balls-to-the-wall metal insanity.”