Yngwie Johann Malmsteen (; born June 30, 1963) is a Swedish guitarist,composer, multi-instrumentalist and bandleader. Malmsteen became known for his neo-classical playing approach in heavy metal musicwhich became a new musical style in the early 1980s. He is considered by many to be one of the most technically gifted rock guitarists of all time and is considered to be a pioneer of shred guitar.
Early life
Malmsteen was born Lars Johan Yngve Lannerbäck in
Stockholm,
Sweden, as the third child of a musically-inclined family.
[6] At age seven, he saw a television news report on the death of
Jimi Hendrix, an event which had a profound impact on his musical path. To quote his official website, "The day Jimi Hendrix died, the guitar-playing Yngwie was born.".
[7] At the age of 10 he took his mother's
maiden name Malmsten as his surname, slightly changed it to Malmsteen, and
Anglicised his given name Yngve to "Yngwie". Yngwie also created his first band "Track On Earth" at the age of 10, consisting of himself and a friend from school on drums (Armin). Malmsteen was a teenager when he first encountered the music of the 19th century
violin virtuoso
Niccolò Paganini, whom he cites as his biggest classical music influence.
Ritchie Blackmore and
Uli Jon Roth are also cited as being significant influences. He played featuring
Denim And Leather song with
Saxon during
The Eagle Has Landed part II tour.
Recording career
In late 1982,
Mike Varney of
Shrapnel Records, who had heard a demo tape of Malmsteen's playing, brought Malmsteen to the U.S. He had brief engagements with
Steeler, for their self-titled album of 1983, then
Graham Bonnet's
Alcatrazz, for their 1983 debut
No Parole from Rock 'n' Roll, and the 1984 live album
Live Sentence. Malmsteen released his first solo album
Rising Force in 1984, which featured
Barrie Barlowof
Jethro Tull on drums. His album was really meant to be an instrumental side-project of Alcatrazz, but it contained vocals, and Malmsteen left Alcatrazz soon after the release of
Rising Force.
Rising Force won the
Guitar Player Magazine's award for Best Rock Album and was also nominated for a
Grammy for 'Best Rock Instrumental', achieving #60 on the
Billboard album chart. Yngwie J. Malmsteen's Rising Force (as his band was thereafter known) next released
Marching Out (1985).
Jeff Scott Soto filled vocal duties on these initial albums. His third album,
Trilogy, featuring the vocals of
Mark Boals, was released in 1986. In 1987, another singer, former
Rainbow vocalist
Joe Lynn Turner joined his band. That year, Malmsteen was in a serious car accident, smashing his
Jaguar E-Type into a tree and putting him in a coma for a week. Nerve damage to his right hand was reported. During his time in the hospital, Malmsteen's mother died from cancer. In the summer of 1988 he released his fourth album,
Odyssey. Odyssey would be his biggest hit album, mainly because of its first single "Heaven Tonight". Shows in Russia during the Odyssey tour were recorded, and released in 1989 as his fifth album
Trial By Fire: Live in Leningrad.
1990s
In the early 1990s, Malmsteen released the albums
Eclipse (1990),
The Yngwie Malmsteen Collection (1991),
Fire and Ice (1992) and
The Seventh Sign (1994). Despite his early success, and continuous success in Europe and Asia, by the early 1990s 1980s heavy metal styles such as neoclassical metal and lengthy, virtuoso shred guitar solos had become unfashionable in the US. On the recording of the song
Makin' Love Malmsteen used an Eko ST-YM, the signature guitar that he designed for that song.
In 1993, Malmsteen's future mother-in-law, opposed to his engagement to her daughter, had him falsely arrested for holding the woman hostage with a gun. The charges were quickly dropped.
[8] Malmsteen continued to record and release albums under the Japanese record label
Pony Canyon, and maintained a devoted following from some fans in Europe and Japan, and to a lesser extent in the USA. In 2000, he once again acquired a contract with a US record label, Spitfire, and released his 1990s catalog into the US market for the first time, including what he regards as his masterpiece,
Concerto Suite for Electric Guitar and Orchestra, recorded with the
Czech Philharmonic Orchestra in
Prague.
2000s
Malmsteen released
Unleash the Fury in 2005. (This title may be a reference to an audio recording that supposedly captured Malmsteen's immoderate response to a flight attendant who spilled a beverage on him. The recording found popularity in filesharing networks as an example of the absurd behavior of celebrities.) He is married to April (Ebru Solmaz, born in
Istanbul,
Turkey)
[9][10] and has a son named Antonio after
Antonio Vivaldi, and they live in
Miami, Florida. A noted Ferrari enthusiast, Malmsteen owned a black 1985
308 GTS[11] for 18 years before selling it on eBay, and a red 1962
250 GTO.
[12] In 2007, Malmsteen was honored in the
Xbox 360 version of
Guitar Hero II. Players can receive the "Yngwie Malmsteen" award by hitting 1000 or more notes in succession.
[13] February 2008 saw the replacement of singer Doogie White with former
Iced Earth and
Judas Priest and current
Beyond Fear singer
Tim "Ripper" Owens, with whom Malmsteen had once recorded a cover of
Ozzy Osbourne's song "
Mr. Crowley", for the 2000 Osbourne
tribute album Bat Head Soup: A Tribute to Ozzy. The first Malmsteen album to feature Owens is titled
Perpetual Flame and was released on October 14. On November 25, 2008, Malmsteen had three of his songs ("Caprici Di Diablo", "Damnation Game", and "Red Devil") released as downloadable content for the video games
Rock Band and
Rock Band 2. In 2008 Malmsteen was a special guest on the VH1 Classic show "That Metal Show". In the 10th of March 2009, Malmsteen's label Rising Force has launched his new release
Angels of Love, an instrumental album which features acoustic arrangements of some of his best-known ballads.
In August 2009,
Time magazine named Malmsteen #9 on its list of the 10 best electric guitar players of all-time.
[14] Malmsteen recently released another album compilation entitled
High Impact on December 8, 2009.
2010s
Technique and style
Malmsteen is known for his technical fluency and
neo-classical metal compositions, often incorporating high speed picking with harmonic minor scales, diminished scales and using
sweep picked arpeggios. He is often considered one of the most talented rock guitarists of all time and is considered to be a pioneer of
shred guitar.
[1][2][3][4][5][edit]Musical equipment
Malmsteen has been a longtime user of
Fender Stratocasters. His most famous Stratocaster is his 1972 blonde Strat, nicknamed "The Duck" because of its yellow finish and the Donald Duck stickers on the body. He also has a signature Stratocaster. It comes in a Vintage White finish with a maple neck, either a maple or rosewood fretboard with scalloped frets and, from 2010, Seymour Duncan STK-S10 YJM "Fury" Model pickups. There is also a signature YJM100 Marshall amplifier, based on the '1959' amplifier range
Steven Siro "Steve" Vai (born June 6, 1960) is a three time Grammy Award-winning American rock guitarist, composer and producer who has sold over 15 million albums. After starting his professional career as a music transcriptionist for Frank Zappa, Vai recorded and toured in Zappa's band for two years, from 1980 to 1982. The guitarist began a solo career in 1983 and has released 8 of his own solo albums since. Apart from his work with Frank Zappa, Vai has also recorded and toured with Public Image Ltd., Alcatrazz, David Lee Roth, and Whitesnake. Vai has been a regular touring member of the G3 Concert Tour which began in 1996. In 1999 Vai started his own record label, Favored Nations, intending to showcase, as Vai describes, "...artists that have attained the highest performance level on their chosen 
