Yngwie Malmsteen

You can tell an artist has become an icon when their name is used as a byword for an entire genre or style of music. You think of sensitive singer songwriter confessionals? Elliott Smith comes to mind. Poetic descriptions of loneliness and alienation set? Morrissey is your guy. The fastest guitar playing in popular music? In terms of sheer technical skill, no-one epitomises it more than Yngwie Malmsteen.

The Swedish sensation is the very model of the guitar virtuoso and everything that comes with it. All the way down to the sheer ostentatiousness of everything he does on and off stage, not to mention the inflated ego that’s associated with that kind of musician as well. The kind that would be insufferable if he couldn’t back it up and needless to say, he backs it up with the kind of guitar playing that either leaves you either desperate to replicate it or swearing off ever playing the guitar for life.

For every guitarist who owes their career to Malmsteen, there are at least 40 whose own careers were cut short by hearing him play. It gets even more infuriating when ones considers that he’s almost entirely self-taught, and the only lessons he ever got were formal lessons in music theory and composition. However, the surreal thing is that for a player known almost exclusively for playing and composing highly technical pieces, influenced by classical composers like Bach and Vivaldi, the first player who made him want to play as a child wasn’t strictly speaking playing the guitar. In fact, he was destroying it.

It was a Jimi Hendrix TV special that the young Malmsteen watched when he was seven years old that made him interested in the instrument. Specifically the site of him smashing and burning his guitar on stage. Very soon afterwards he acquired a guitar of his own and started studying the instrument himself. By the time he was 10 he’d already formed his first band, and he hadn’t even discovered his most formative early influence yet. It wasn’t until his early teens that he discovered the solo work of Deep Purple’s Ritchie Blackmore, whose blend of heavy metal riffage along with classical training, structure and influences would go on to shape Malmsteen’s solo career.

Malmsteen would continue to play and compose throughout his teens with an unyielding passion, and by the age of 18, a demo tape of his found its way to Mike Varney of Shrapnel Records. Varney was so impressed that he invited Malmsteen over to the States to play in an assortment of metal bands like Steeler and Alcatrazz. However, Malmsteen was also putting together his first solo record, and when that was released it went top 20 in his native Sweden, charted on the Billboard 200 and was eventually nominated for a Grammy. Malmsteen’s solo work understandably became his main focus.

Since then, Malmsteen has almost singlehandedly made Shrapnel Records the home for the modern guitar hero and influenced a generation of guitarists including Jason Becker, Paul Gilbert and Marty Friedman to incorporate neo-classical techniques into their playing. By the time he was 25, he was already such a respected name that he was one of the first two artists to have a signature Stratocaster sold by Fender Guitars. The other artist? Eric Clapton himself. High company to keep I’m sure you’ll agree, and he’s kept up that level of prestige, collaborating with everyone from Saxon to Zakk Wylde to the Czech Philharmonic Orchestra. He’s still going strong to this day and with the live performances he’s still putting in, he shows no signs of slowing down any time soon. Highly recommended.