The Guitar Solo that Took Marty Friedman Nearly 200 Takes to Nail Down

Guitar maestro Marty Friedman is certainly known for his shredding six-string skills and melodic tastefulness, but there are times like with any musician when he comes up against a wall. There was one song he had a difficult time finishing up, and it wasn’t one of his originals. It was his cover of the Sarah Brightman and Andrea Bocelli’s duet version of the song “Time to Say Goodbye.”

That famed duet was a cover of a tune by Francesco Sartori and Lucio Quarantotto called “Con te partirò” – Bocelli sung it as the Italian original on his 1995 album Bocelli, then the twosome put out their duet in 1996. Featuring a chorus with some English, it was released as a single, then appeared on his breakthrough greatest hits album Romanza in 1997. Brightman also put out a solo version on her reissued Fly album in 1996, and she released an English-language version on her 2018 album Hymn. According to Brightman’s site, the famous duet version sold 5 million copies worldwide and is the biggest selling single in German history.

A Solo to Live and Die by

The duet version that Friedman was inspired by is beautifully sung, elegantly performed, accompanied by an orchestra—and very different than many of the larger-than-life anthems Friedman crafts on his solo albums. He has said his friend and fellow six-stringer Jason Becker is a Brightman fan, so he rearranged the song with him in mind. Friedman took on the challenge of injecting the tune with a majestic heavy rock flavor and included it as the final track on his 2010 album Bad DNA.

“There’s one main solo in that song, and I felt that this song lived or died on this one main solo,” Friedman tells American Songwriter during an interview about his new album Drama. “Because [my version] is instrumental and Sarah Brightman and Bocelli are fantastic vocalists with wonderful ranges and wonderful expression, for me to humbly do a cover of that song takes a lot of balls, and maybe a little bit of stupidity added into it.”

An Epic Number of Takes

Covering the track as a whole was not the issue. But there was an ad-libbed solo between 2:40 and 3:02 that veered from the melodic ideas of the original tune into his own world, and this took Friedman a long time to work out. He said he usually nails a solo in the first few takes. On rare occasions he does 10, 15, or even 20 takes.

Not so with “Time to Say Goodbye.” The guitarist recalls, “I remember asking the engineer, ‘How many takes was that?’ He says, ‘Like, 149.’ And I was still not done. I was like, ‘Well, let’s keep going, however much it takes.’” Friedman estimated it took him close to 200 takes to lay down the solo he desired. It wasn’t that it was technically tricky to play—it was about how he wanted to play it.

“The main guitar solo was at the peak of the song, or the ‘good part’ so to speak, so I had high expectations about how I was going to feel when I played it,” Friedman explains. “I don’t care about anything but the final result, and I want to be excited and satisfied about it when it’s done, so I have no problem trying many, many ideas. This time it took around 150-200 takes, which was admittedly very frustrating, but a good climax of a song is worth the effort. I am sure the engineers and techs could not tell the difference between take 25 and take 175, but I was waiting for that magic to happen in the nuances. I finally got it. At the time it was a drag, but the second it was done, I completely forgot how hard it was.”

The Secret of Shred

Friedman was part of that horde of ‘80s shredders who could play with ferociousness and speed. But while many of his peers often overdid the guitar histrionics, he liked to balance his technical skills with musical artistry. He brings a blend of passion and precision to his music.

“People talk about reading [music],” Friedman tells American Songwriter. “Even a monkey can practice something and play.” He noted how some people think shredding is the “be all end all.” “I want to dispel any myths right now,” he continues. “Playing fast and playing even difficult lines is not nearly as challenging as playing something that is magical. Because shredding, as that term [is used], is just a matter of practicing and anyone can do that. To transcend that and do something that actually makes you feel magic when you listen to it is something, that’s a kind of intersection between luck, preparation, and just the unexplained.”

It took Friedman a long time to be satisfied with his solo on “Time to Say Goodbye,” and by that point he had lost count of the number of takes. “A lot of guys would just say, ‘F–k it, this is good. No one can tell the difference,’” he said. “But you can tell what I want. Like I said before, I wanted to sign off on it. So I signed off on it, it was fine. And still nobody cared about the record anyway. But it had to be done.”

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