Yngwie Malmsteen on guitars, Eric Clapton and what he said when Kiss came calling for him in 1982
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Fresh off celebrating the 40th anniversary of his groundbreaking debut Rising Force, Yngwie Malmsteen is once again unleashing the fury with a brand-new live album, Tokyo Live, that captures the neoclassical icon doing what he does best.
'I don't plan anything,' he tells Guitar Player. 'Not the solos, not the intros, not even the setlist. It's like jumping onto a battlefield.'
And while his lifelong devotion to the compositions of Johann Sebastian Bach has shaped the intricate harmonic language he's famous for, Malmsteen reveals that his first guitar hero was actually Eric Clapton.
'I didn't even know it was him at the time,' he says of hearing John Mayall and the Bluesbreakers as a child. 'I just knew the guitar playing was amazing.'
From reel-to-reel recording experiments at age nine to turning down offers from some of rock's biggest bands, the Swedish virtuoso opens up about his career, his new live album, the art of improvisation, and why he says the term sweep picking 'certainly doesn't explain' what he does with a six-string.
You've released a few live records over the years. What, for you, is the secret to a great live album — aside from a great performance, of course?
I learned through many years of doing this that the most important thing is to forget it's being filmed or recorded. You have to be completely at ease with it.
We filmed two nights — Tokyo and Osaka. I said, 'We need both.' That way, because everything I play is improvised — solos, intros, even the set list — if something doesn't go right, there's another take. Psychologically, that's very good.
I don't plan anything. Everything is completely spontaneous. So, yeah — you take a risk.
Tokyo Live is packed with classics from across four decades of your music career. What's the most challenging song in your set to perform right now?
The thing is, with the songs, I'm funny like that. If I know a piece, even if it's difficult to play, I'm not worried. I can play it. That's not the issue.
It's the improvisation. The spur-of-the-moment stuff — I can't always control that. It depends on the audience, the sound in the hall, the lighting, the smoke bombs — all of it. Everything has to fall into place or you can knock yourself out of the right headspace. And then… you might not feel as inspired.
There's something called 'tennis memory.' In tennis, you have to forget whether you won or lost the last point and just focus on the point you're playing — not the one before, not the one coming up. That's what I try to do.
So it's not a piece, per se, that is challenging, it's the entire thing. It's like jumping onto a battlefield, you know?
This album is a great representation of your current live show, but do you remember the first time you actually heard yourself recorded, playing?
Oh my god, yeah. We're talking way back. My grandmother had this old two-track reel-to-reel. It wasn't stereo — just two mono tracks, but what I realized was, I could record my guitar on one track, play it back, and record another guitar over it. I thought I invented double-tracking!
I was like, 'Yeah, that's cool!' I remember hearing more than one guitar on a Deep Purple album and thinking Ian Gillan played the second part, because there was a picture of him holding a guitar on the sleeve.
So I did it. I was nine, maybe 10. There was no internet back then. You had to figure this stuff out on your own.
How important do you think recording yourself and listening back was in your development as a player?
Extremely important. What I realized early on was that the only way to really judge where you're at — how good or bad you are — is to record yourself. When you're playing, your brain's focused on so many things — picking, bending, everything — so you don't hear it objectively.
I quickly saw that recording was the only way to tell, 'That's good. That's bad. That needs work.' And I was extremely picky — even at nine years old. Maybe younger — seven or eight.
As I progressed, I understood more and more that whether it's writing, improvisation or execution, it all has to be recorded. I still have some of those early tapes. You can hear me playing arpeggios back in '77 or '78. I was already there, you know.
I quickly saw that recording was the only way to tell, 'That's good. That's bad. That needs work.'"
— Yngwie Malmsteen
You mentioned before that at nine years old, hearing Deep Purple's Fireball had a massive impact on you. How quickly after that were you learning these Blackmore riffs?
Well, the story goes a little different. Without me actually knowing, my first favorite guitar player was Eric Clapton — and I didn't know it was him. My mum had a record called John Mayall and the Bluesbreakers, and that's all I knew. I didn't really look at the record. I just heard it and thought the guitar playing was — this was when I was like seven years old — I was going, 'Oh my god, this is so amazing.' It still is.
Then when I was eight, I got Deep Purple's Fireball. And back then in Sweden, there wasn't any real radio or anything like that. The only way you'd hear records was through your mates at school or whatever. So I put this record on, and the first thing I hear is double bass. And I was like… wow!
And you were just learning these guitar parts by ear, I'm guessing?
Yeah, by ear. Everything started with the blues box kind of thing. Then, around age 10, I heard Genesis — Selling England by the Pound — and they were using pedal tones and intervals, and I was like, 'Wow, what is going on?' Because it wasn't just the five-note thing anymore.
Then I got into Johann Sebastian Bach. My mom had hundreds of records — Bach, Vivaldi, Beethoven, Mozart — and a lot of jazz, too. But for some reason, jazz never clicked with me.
I had already fallen in love with distorted guitars and double bass drums, and I didn't want to change that, but when I heard those tonalities and chord progressions from Bach — the counterpoint and all that — I was hooked.
I'd never heard anyone take the actual thought process of Baroque classical and apply it to hard rock. Sure, some bands did little bits here and there, but it was always rooted in the blues, and maybe they'd toss in one idea — but that's where it stopped.
As a prodigy yourself, where do you stand on the whole 'natural talent vs hard work' debate?
That's a really good question. My mum always would say to me, 'You have a gift from God,' and I'd say, 'Yeah, sure — but I'm working my ass off,' you know?
But I guess I must have had some sort of pitch, or playing gift, because I remember very clearly being very, very young — I mean right off the bat — that I realized when you bend and vibrate and stuff like that, there's a pitch there that has to be correct. I realized that from day one.
You're a master of many guitar techniques, but in the past you've rejected the claim that you incorporate sweep picking in your playing. Do you kind of feel as if the term sweep picking is almost a little bit of a derogatory term toward the way you play?
If sweep picking just means two downstrokes in a row, then one up, then down-up, like alternate picking — you can't really call that sweep picking."
— Yngwie Malmsteen
Well, it certainly doesn't explain it, you know. Because if sweep picking just means, like, two downstrokes in a row, then one up, then down-up like alternate picking — or two down and two up or whatever — you can't really call that sweep picking. You could call it string skipping or something else.
I was never really taught, per se. I more or less invented my technique, because I never heard anyone play what I was hearing in my head. And it's not always the same either. So I didn't think about it in terms of mechanics as much as I thought about how it sounded.
In terms of visualization of the fretboard, was there a breakthrough moment for you — or was it just piecemeal, bit by bit?
Kind of. I talk about this in my book Relentless — the only book worth buying. The first two notes I played — I'm talking about the first day I started playing — I noticed a pattern and thought, Okay, you can do the exact same things on different strings.
I learned that really quick. I don't remember exactly how it happened. I just figured it out myself. Well, it was hearing it and then kind of seeing it too, you know.
I always thought in linear modes, but very early on realized that there was much more going on than just a box.
When you first arrived in the U.S., you quickly joined the band Steeler, but I understand there were a few other big offers you had to turn down over the years?
Yeah. The first show with Steeler was at the Reseda Country Club in Reseda — 30 people there. I remember it like it was yesterday.
The second show we did was at the Troubadour in Hollywood. And it's a classic moment, you know, because I'm in the dressing room upstairs — you can see the street from the window, and it's lines around the block.
I'm standing there tuning my guitar, and I go like, 'Hmm,' and I ask somebody that worked there, 'Hey, who's playing tonight?' And he goes, 'You are!'
It was the talk of the town, you know, this crazy kid from Sweden playing. It was a funny moment in time.
In the early days with Steeler, I was offered to join UFO. And on the same day, I got contacted by what became Alcatrazz. It wasn't called Alcatrazz yet. They didn't have any songs. I wrote all of them.
I chose Alcatrazz because I wanted to write songs. As much as I liked UFO, I didn't want to step into someone else's thing.
I was also asked to join David Lee Roth's band. He was leaving — or had just left — Van Halen. At the time, I was on a big U.S. tour with AC/DC, and then I did my own American tour with Talas opening — Billy Sheehan's band.
Dave would come to the shows all the time. We'd hang out, too, at the Troubadour and places like that — back in the party days, you know? He obviously asked Billy too, and Billy took it. It would've been a great thing, I think.
I was offered to join Kiss. They called me up in 1982, saying, 'You're hot, you're hot.''
— Yngwie Malmsteen
It wasn't officially on paper or anything, but it was clear what he was thinking. I was thinking, Oh no, I'm doing great, so I didn't do anything.
Before all of that, I was offered to join Kiss. They called me up in 1982, when I was still in Sweden, because a tape of me had been circulating. They called me saying, 'You're hot, you're hot.' I'm like, 'Huh?'
They wanted someone over six feet tall. I'm six-foot-three, but I didn't know that at the time because I used metric. I said, 'I'm 192.' They didn't know what that meant, so that was the end of it.
Through all the lineup changes and different personnel over the years, your 1972 Fender Stratocaster — the Duck — has been the one constant throughout your career. Is there a chance we'd ever see it on the road again?
No, but here's the thing — Fender made me a copy to use onstage that's just like the real one. It's got the same cracks, everything — even down to the screws a tech put on wrong and a rusty tremolo bar.
Fender's been amazing. They just released a 30th anniversary model, and yesterday, I was talking to them about doing a 40th. So keep an eye out for that.
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