Yngwie Malmsteen’s existence on this planet reminds us that we might all be unique but some are more unique than others. There is no-one like Yngwie.

He is our shred maestro, the purveyor of the neoclassical before neoclassical was a thing, faithful keeper of the Stratocaster flame and the man whose live rig “could be seen from space”. And he’s also great conversation.

Some time in Malmsteen’s company is always time well spent (he was oversharing before oversharing was a thing). On occasion, he has been a conversational Icarus, flying a little too close to the sun when shooting from the hip, and that got him a reputation. He had an ego. He was this. He was that. But all musicians have an ego. They just present themselves differently.

Malmsteen? He’s 100 per cent certified WYSIWYG. He appreciates the finer things in life, driving a Ferrari, thicker guitar picks, Paganini, Bach, Mozart, breaking new ground in studio techniques… This, ladies and gentlemen, is the man who triggered a snare by discharging a firearm in the studio, a long-held ambition that was finally realized when making 2021 studio album Parabellum.

With Malmsteen sharing a new single, Now or Never, and announcing an epic new album, Hell or High Water, out November 13 via Music Theory Recordings/Artone Label Group, we would like to take this opportunity to revisit some of his bons mots, the wit and wisdom of one of electric guitar’s most colorful characters.

On the sound in his head

I realised that that violin sound, the wee-eee-eee-eee, like, this linear, completely concise sound, that’s what I heard in my head, that’s what I wanted to do! And so it was like a fucking revelation, y’know.

Obviously, you just don’t say, ‘Yeah, I want to play Paganini, Tchaikovsky, Vivaldi violin technique on guitar.’ You don’t say that. That’s literally impossible to be honest with you. But I decided, even if it was literally impossible, I was gonna fucking try.

MusicRadar, 2021

Playing philosophy, part 1

I don’t want to just play it safe. Two-string, maybe three-string, four-string, five, six-string arpeggios… But people kept on telling me to slow down, you know? “Hey, slow down! Remember, less is more.” And I always said, “How can that be? How could less be more?” It’s impossible. More is more.

Playing philosophy, part 2

I don't consider myself to be a very fast player. I'm sure there are other guitarists who can play faster: what I do that a lot of other guitarists don't do is I don't play things that are rubbish.

If you would slow down the fast licks that a Iot of other guitarists do, people would puke. I play classical runs, arpeggios and broken chords that if played at a slower speed would sound very nice as well.

Guitar World, 1986

On tone

I remember, when I first came on the scene, people used to come up to me and say, ‘I can’t believe you don’t have any gain on your amp. You don’t have any distortion!’ You know what the truth of the matter is? I have more fucking gain than a nuclear power plant! I have so much fucking gain, I don’t know what to do with it!

MusicRadar, 2021

On his live sound

I said to my tech, ‘Before I go out, I want to line check my shit to make sure it works. Make sure you get the elephant.’ The elephant means that when you just stand there in front of the amps and you turn up the volume, and do nothing, it should sound like an elephant. Waaaaaaaaaaaaaarghhhh! Uncontrollable fucking elephant. But you have to be really fast with the volume knob, you know what I mean?

MusicRadar, 2021

On heavy metal

I don’t care if people call our music heavy shit or heavy metal. Onstage we’re definitely metal because we’re just as heavy as the headbangers could ever want it. But what we play is a lot more sophisticated than what those run-of-the-mill metal bands are doing.

Guitar World, 1986

On gunplay

I have always been collecting guns. I always have lots of guns. So, I go into the studio. This was 1986, for Trilogy. [Laughs] Crazy days... I go in and I say, ‘Hey, bring me a big old fucking tree stump, y’know?’ And they said, ‘Okay.’ They put a big old tree stump in there and mic it up, and I bring out a .357 Smith & Wesson Magnum pistol and I blow this fuckin’ thing off in the studio. And the people were like, ‘No! It’s too loud.’ They’re freaking out!

MusicRadar, 2021

On space

If you went up into space and you looked down on Earth, there are only two man-made objects that you’re gonna see: the Great Wall Of China and my wall of Marshalls. My road crew hates me. Seriously.

Guitarist, 2021

On jazz

I went to the bookstore and they were playing free-form jazz in there, and it was a little bit out of tune, some horns and stuff, and I felt like I needed to flush my brain out like a fucking toilet! So I listened to Bach’s Brandenburg Concerto on the way home.

MusicRadar, 2025

On writing

Even without a guitar in my hands, the music just comes to me. It’s like that movie Amadeus. Mozart was getting music given to him in complete form. I understand the building blocks and can therefore build you anything you like.

If you asked me to write you a death metal song, call me back in five minutes, and I’d have it ready for you. You want country and western or reggae? No problem. I can give you whatever you want.

PR for Hell or High Water, 2026

Yngwie Malmsteen has announced his new studio album, Hell or High Water, set to be released on November 13 via Music Theories Recordings/Artone Label Group. It will mark his 23rd solo album, following 2021's Parabellum.

Speaking about Hell or High Water, Malmsteen says, “When I started making records, I would just take the songs I had lying around.

“Later on, I fell into a schedule – make a record, tour the record, and then write the next record. Over the pandemic, I realized it was better to focus completely uninterrupted, so I stayed at home to write this album over the course of eight months. I had around 80 or 90 tracks finished, and then I had to decide which ones were the strongest.”

Malmsteen went on to detail the meticulous songwriting process that led to this album. “Even without a guitar in my hands, the music just comes to me,” he reasons. “It’s like that movie Amadeus. Mozart was getting music given to him in complete form.

“I understand the building blocks and can therefore build you anything you like. If you asked me to write you a death metal song, call me back in five minutes, and I’d have it ready for you. You want country and western or reggae? No problem. I can give you whatever you want.”

The guitar maestro likens the songs he chooses for his records to “gifts” that he “captures” because “they amaze” him, as exemplified by the palm-muted riffing and baroque inflections of Now Or Never – or the instrumental piece Am Caprice/Hell Or High Water.

Virtuosic capabilities aside, closing track Father takes a more personal turn, as it pays homage to his late dad, who passed away last year.

“He was an amazing man,” says Malmsteen. “I was proud to have him as a father, and I loved him. I wanted to dedicate all of this to him, and that one particular track is for him. I wanted others to feel what I felt when they hear it.”

Ahead of his album release, Malmsteen is set to embark on a tour of China and Japan, kicking off in Beijing on September 4.

For more information about his album and tour, head to Yngwie Malmsteen’s official website.

Seven decades since it rolled off the production line in Fullerton, California – and whatever your personal tastes – you’d have to agree that Leo Fender’s deathless doublecut is the quintessential electric guitar.

It’s the shape a kid would draw if you handed them a crayon. It’s the model you’d show to a visiting glow-fingered alien curious about humanoid rock ‘n’ roll.

To sling a Strat is to experience the ultimate collision of tone and ergonomics.

Respect to the Telecaster (born three years earlier, in 1951), but it’s a caveman’s club next to Leo’s next great lightbulb moment.

Sleek as a surfboard, contoured to the body like a well-cut suit, with stellar access and the first bulletproof tremolo system. Sonically unique, with an unmistakable singlecoil ‘cluck’ that could be fattened, starved, or stacked via a cluster of idiot-proof dials and a five-way selector (from the mid-’70s on).

Back then, in 1954, the Strat seemed to come from the future, and even now, if you pause and consider it afresh, it still does.

But the Fender Stratocaster would just be a glorified carpentry project without the players who danced across its neck and gave it life. Here we celebrate 25 of the very best Strat-o-masters, from the worlds of blues, rock, funk, disco, prog, shred, grunge, metal, and beyond.

Buddy Holly

It’s December 1, 1957. Buddy Holly is performing That’ll Be The Day on his Ed Sullivan Show debut, and the great American public is seeing the Fender Stratocaster in action for the first time.

He might look like a librarian on uppers, but the Texan bandleader’s piston-pump rhythm work is not to be sniffed at, and to a generation that has known nothing but horn bands, that hard, biting jangle is a clarion call announcing that things will be different from now on.

Jimi Hendrix

Admittedly, the defining image of the Strat’s greatest Sixties ambassador sees him torching the damn thing onstage at 1967’s Monterey Pop Festival. But the instrument’s real pyrotechnics happened before Jimi lit the match.

Exploring the outer limits of its mischief-ready sonic scope and easily abused tremolo, he couldn’t have conjured the same black-magic cacophony – or the beauty of Little Wing – from any other model. Jimi’s trademark flip ‘n’ restring, meanwhile, was an audio-visual WTF that only cemented the impression he’d just stepped off a spaceship into Swinging London.

Hank Marvin

You Americans don’t know how lucky you are. It wasn’t until 1959 – a full five years after US production began – that Shadows bandleader Cliff Richard bought and gifted to his guitarist what is believed to be the first Strat on British shores (a Fiesta Red stunner with gold hardware). Those gorgeous, glassy, plaintive melodies on Apache and Wonderful Land wouldn’t have shimmered the same on anything else.

Jeff Beck

Sure, a Telecaster (in the Yardbirds) and Les Paul (on Blow By Blow) were fine for the punch-your-lights-out early stuff. But when Beck really found his voice and fell into his signature techniques – the volume swells and whale-song whammy tickles, exemplified by Where Were You – only the Fender doublecut could get the job done.

“What is it about the Strat that I love so much?” he mused in an interview with Malcolm Gerrie of Sky Arts. “Its endless color…”

Eric Clapton

Like Beck, EC played ’em all, from his Yardbirds Tele, through the revved-up Les Paul of the Bluesbreakers, to the SG-fueled ‘woman’ tone showcased on Cream’s Disraeli Gears. But like so many Sixties galacticos, as the decade turned, he was drawn to the Strat, retooling a clutch of second-hand models bought from a Nashville music store into the fabled Blackie mongrel that drove everything from Cocaine to Wonderful Tonight.

“I felt like Blackie had become part of me,” Clapton once told Guitar Player. “A guitar like that comes along maybe once in a lifetime.”

David Gilmour

Compared to his ’70s-gunslinger peers, the Pink Floyd man didn’t play too many notes. But the sweetness of his phrasing, twinned with the haunting, bell-like quality of his ’69 Black Strat, meant each one was a symphony (revisit the shivering four-note starburst of Shine On You Crazy Diamond Part II).

That Black Strat was just recently auctioned from the private collection of late Indianapolis Colts boss Jim Irsay for $14.5 million, making it officially the world’s most valuable guitar.

Stevie Ray Vaughan

The Texas bluesman picked up his early-’60s Strat – known as both Number One and First Wife – from an Austin music store in 1974. As a man who played so hard he had to perform DIY on his own tattered fingers, the instrument probably deserved its retirement in 1990 – while SRV’s tragic death that August meant he never saw Fender’s signature replica launch two years later at NAMM.

Ritchie Blackmore

Deep Purple’s dark wizard got his wings on a Gibson ES-335, but a fateful 1969 encounter with Eric Clapton’s roadie changed everything (“He brought a Strat, so I said to him, ‘Do you want to sell that guitar?’”).

In a 2024 GW interview, Blackmore told us he tracked Smoke On The Water on a mongrel, before summing up the Strat’s pragmatic magic: “It’s a way of paying the bills. It also happens to be an incredible guitar.”

Nile Rodgers

Just for a moment, consider how many unfathomable millions of dollars must have flowed through the Chic legend’s ‘Hitmaker’ Strat.

Seeing action with everyone from David Bowie to Madonna, the sonic character of its unusually light alder body is perfect for Rodgers’ muted hits and zingy chord fragments. But he might never have picked it up from a Miami pawn shop in ’73 were it not for the curt advice of wingman/bassist Bernard Edwards (“Get a Strat, motherf***er!”)

Yngwie Malmsteen

Before the Scandi shredder broke out with 1984’s Rising Force, ‘scallops’ were something you gagged on at posh dinner parties.

Inspired by a 16th century lute with carved-out frets, Malmsteen recalled that “people thought I was crazy” when they saw his teenage handiwork. But there was no arguing with the added velocity of scalloping, which made this already-lightning-fast player even speedier, like strapping rockets on Usain Bolt’s sneakers. Only Clapton was offered a Fender signature Strat before him (but Malmsteen’s ’88 model was the first to feature his signature on the headstock).

Dave Murray and Janick Gers

Given all that demon iconography, you’d expect Iron Maiden’s three-guitar frontline to reach for something macabre from the B.C. Rich brochure. In fact, the British metallers’ gallop is largely underpinned by a pair of workhorse Strats, with Janick Gers favoring a Seymour Duncan JB JR-bolstered model and Dave Murray driving a pair of Hot Rails (Adrian Smith is more of a dabbler, mostly wedded to his Jackson San Dimas).

Tom DeLonge

The Blink-182 man has bounced between Fender and Gibson his whole career, and lately seems sworn to his signature Starcaster. But after retiring the iconic early “Sticker Strat”, the Enema Of The State period saw DeLonge punch out parts like All The Small Things on a pastel-hued Custom Shop Strat with a lonely Seymour Duncan Invader bridge ’bucker (it was released in 2001 as a production guitar).

Albert Hammond Jr

Beset by bowel-tuned nu-metal, it felt like we hadn’t seen a Strat in years when The Strokes broke out with 2001’s Is This It.

While Nick Valensi was all studied cool on an Epiphone Riviera, his corkscrew-curled wingman hammered thrillingly at a high-strapped 1985 reissue of a ’72 Strat (that instrument was also behind the feral, Freddie King-inspired solo on Last Nite).

Billy Corgan

Alt-rock will forever be associated with a sticker-coated Jazzmaster, but look closer and the Strat appeared in the hands of everyone from Kurt Cobain (at the ’92 Reading Festival) to Mike McCready (the out-of-phase shimmer on Yellow Ledbetter). Amongst these, Corgan was arguably the greatest virtuoso and most committed Strat-o-phile.

In his words, the Smashing Pumpkins leader “walked into a Guitar Center one day and, off the wall, bought an Eric Clapton ’57 reissue. That became the main guitar for Siamese and Mellon Collie, and launched a thousand ships of people chasing that sound.”

Mark Knopfler

Before he settled back into the molten Les Paul solos of Brothers In Arms, the Dire Straits leader was the fastest gun on London’s post-punk scene, revered for the quicksilver bob ‘n’ weave outro to 1978’s Sultans Of Swing.

Tellingly, the red ’61 he played it on (supposedly something of a partscaster) was one of the few models that Knopfler chose to ring-fence from his 2024 guitar auction.

Bonnie Raitt

The Californian slide goddess and 13-time Grammy winner picked up her first Strat on the street following a 1969 gig – immediately falling for the often-neglected third position. “It’s all about that middle pickup,” says Raitt. “You just can’t beat it.”

Eric Johnson

The Cliffs Of Dover virtuoso could easily have followed his G3 brethren into an Ibanez endorsement. But Johnson is a Strat diehard with a very specific wishlist, insisting that models from ’54, ’57, and ’58 are best (“I think Fender had a shipment of wood that was real special”) and adding an offbeat f-hole to his 2018 signature thinline.

Cory Wong

Funk belongs on a Strat – don’t argue – and Wong’s kinetic grooves with Vulfpeck have moved more feet than anyone on the modern scene. He’s proved price isn’t everything with his dedication to his teenage Highway One model – also the inspiration for his 2021 signature model – and should really be taking a salary as Fender brand ambassador.

Wong was led to the aforementioned Highway One Strat by his father, who – Wong said in a 2023 Guitar World interview – told him, “‘Listen! You love the Chili Peppers, you love Stevie Ray Vaughan. Look at Jeff Beck, look at Jimi Hendrix, look at Stevie Ray and Eric Johnson.’ He gave me this lineage of the Stratocaster and basically said: Look at all the things this guitar is capable of.’”

H.E.R.

The Strat’s generation-leaping appeal is underlined by Gabriella Sarmiento Wilson, whose breakout 2021 album, Back Of My Mind, bends the backbone of vintage R&B into bold new shapes.

“The Strat is an iconic guitar, just because of the look and shape,” says the 28-year-old Californian (who got her own signature model in 2020). “But the tone, the heaviness… to me, it’s the unicorn. It’s classic, but it’s new at the same time.”

Rory Gallagher

Bought on credit in 1963, and beaten like a dog through the ’70s and ’80s, the Irishman’s ’61 looked set for a quiet retirement. Instead, it now enjoys an afterlife as a blues-rock Excalibur, loaned out to wide-eyed fanboys like Joe Bonamassa.

“I’m thinking, ‘I’m gonna take so much shit for this’,” recalled the US bluesman of test-driving Rory’s doublecut at London’s Hammersmith Apollo in 2011. “Because everyone on the Internet will go, ‘Who do you think you are?’ But anybody would have done it…”

The Edge

U2’s sonic maverick has built up quite a rack since 1980’s Boy (you could argue he’s equally associated with the Explorer). But hands-down the most neck-tingling moment of any show is the delay-drenched jewelry box tinkle of Where The Streets Have No Name, and for that, a Strat on the middle pickup is non-negotiable.

Mdou Moctar

If your first guitar had been built from driftwood, bicycle cables, and the keys used to open sardine tins, you’d be glad to get on a Strat too. The desert-blues figurehead’s only stipulation is that the strings on his American Professional left-hander are at least two years old.

Steve Lacy

Every time you think you’ve got the Strat all figured out, a twenty-something gunslinger comes along and flips it on its head.

Take the Californian alt-R&B phenom, who splits his licks between solo work, The Internet, and a billion guest-spots with everyone from Vampire Weekend to Tyler, The Creator. Then there’s Lacy’s rulebook-shredding People Pleaser signature Strat – complete with an onboard fuzz circuit.

Ry Cooder

There’s a case that the Californian slide man barely qualifies as a Strat player. His trademark ‘Coodercasters’, after all, are so heavily modded that Leo Fender would barely recognize them as his children. But Cooder demands inclusion for his beyond-spellbinding, desert-baked, and dust-blown tone.

Buddy Guy

When the great Louisiana bluesman headed north in ’57, he assured his ailing mother he’d return from Chicago at the wheel of a polka-dot Cadillac. Guy couldn’t keep that promise, but made amends by commissioning his spotted Fender signature model.

He’s never strayed from the Strat, and even on the brink of his nineties, used it to dig out a gorgeous fingerstyle blues in the credits scene of last year’s Oscar-winning Sinners.

Nuno Bettencourt is continuing to use his social media to champion the best guitar players in the business, and this time, he’s waxed lyrical about Yngwie Malmsteen, because he wants to clear up a misconception about the virtuoso.

The Extreme guitarist, who recently launched his own brand of guitars, has called the arpeggio machine “one of the greatest players of all time” and he has the receipts to back up his claim.

“When he burst onto the scene, he sent guitar playing into the fucking stratosphere,” Bettencourt writes on Instagram.

A young Malmsteen famously arrived in the US with nothing but a guitar and a toothbrush – hygiene matters – and went on to play with Steeler and Alcatrazz. He was eventually replaced in the latter band by Steve Vai as he went solo. A Guitar Player column helped shine a spotlight on his talents, and his 1984 solo debut, Rising Force, did the rest.

“Those who came after him in his genre of classically driven guitar tried for his speed, his technique, his insane vibrato,” Bettencourt continues, “and while they were all trying to do it faster, playing it perfectly, they misunderstood that Yngwie’s technical prowess was not his super power.

In Bettencourt's eyes, Malmsteen's speed wasn't his most important attribute. Yes, he could shred like hell, but there was more to it than that. Bettencourt says too many people have put too much focus on speed alone. The heart of Malmsteen's playing was what really mattered – and deserves more credit.

“It was the fire you could feel with every phrase, the passion and emotion with every bend, as if the string was always gonna burst.

“It was dangerous,” he notes, “not precise. Dirty, not clean. The same lick that violently ripped your face off could also send chills.

Bettencourt, who once turned down a spot in Ozzy’s band, first heard Malmsteen during his Alcatrazz days, with his guitar solo on Jet to Jet a clear standout.

“I must have rewound that solo on cassette 300 times, trying to understand what I had just heard,” he recalls. “Much like Edward [Van Halen] before him, but in a completely different way.

“Rising Force is his bible,” Bettencourt then adds. “Some will say it’s just shredding. But for me, it was when I realized you can shred whilst having emotion.”

The post comes shortly after Bettencourt named the up-and-coming player who has blown his mind. He’s also formed an unexpected guitar tandem with Rick Beato, playing a Thin Lizzy Classic together in Las Vegas.

In related news, Bettencourt also dismissed the solo of the century claims bandied his way, and discussed how Extreme are finally getting their dues, in a new interview with Guitar World.

Some bassists lie back, but not Gary Shea – as he tells Bass Player, “Always remember: no bass, no party!” And it’s been quite the party for Shea, who’s played in New England, Warrior and Alcatrazz with John Fannon, Vinnie Vincent, Yngwie Malmsteen and Joe Stump.

“I always wanted to be the bass player on the jukebox original track as opposed to the bass player playing the song in a bar,” he says. At 74, he continues to do just that with New England and Alcatrazz. “I’m very fortunate to have played with some of the best of the best over the years.”

He admits that involved dealing with some tough customers: “I set out to find the music that inspired me and met some incredible musicians along the way. Not bad for a left-handed guy living in a right-handed world! All talented musicians can be difficult. That’s what makes them special – they stick to their guns and follow their vision.”

What sounds were you going for when you formed New England?

New England was a progressive rock band that played short songs. With Jimmy Waldo’s Mellotrons and an array of other keyboards, we had a huge palette of color that could take us from heavy orchestral rock to quiet ballads. It was a great opportunity to play some very creative basslines. New England is a great fit for my style.

What was your rig like then?

I used three Ampeg SVT heads with four 8x10 cabs and two Cerwin-Vega B48 MF 18'' reflex horns, each with a front-loaded 12'' speaker. I also had Moog Taurus bass pedals. I used my 1965 L Series Jazz Bass with a P neck and Tele pickguard.

I played with my fingers, using my fingernails for more clarity and attack. I also had a 10-string Explorer bass, a Hamer Blitz bass with a Kahler bar, and an 8-string Cruise bass, custom-built by Paul Hamer.

The 10 strings had a high B string and could be tuned to fifths for more chordal work. I had one of the last ’76 Bicentennial Gibson Thunderbird basses from the factory. I had the top painted white by a young Mike Pedulla, who lived nearby.

What was it like having Paul Stanley produce New England’s debut? Was he miscast in that role?

On the contrary – working with Paul was very comfortable. We were all the same age and had the same influences like Free, Terry Reid and The Move. Our goal was to re-record our 16-track demos to 24-track, and Paul was an excellent fifth voice in making it sparkle.

We also had ace engineer Mike Stone from the Queen camp, who got massive sounds for us with his expertise at the recording desk. Being part of The Kiss Army was nothing to sniff at; it got us on their 1979 Dynasty tour.

Despite strong material, New England fell short. What happened?

Our big problem was that our record company, Infinity/MCA, folded during its first year of business, just as we’d started tracking our second album. We had six major-label offers for our first album, and chose to go with Elektra for our second and third albums.

The transition took precious time. Although we were doing great musically, working with Todd Rundgren and touring, Elektra let us down on the promotion side of things. You can hear what would have been our fourth album on our Cherry Red boxset.

Is it true that New England’s management was focused on Kiss and neglected your band?

I have what I call the David-and-Goliath theory of management. You can have your cousin manage your band, who’ll lay his life down for you, but has no major contacts. Or you can go with Mr. Big, but he has big-name clients that you must compete with for attention.

We chose Bill Aucoin for his vision, experience and direction. It was up to us to be great and earn attention. We’re all still friends with Kiss. I recently played at a convention in Finland with Bruce Kulick.

How did you meet Vinnie Vincent and form Warrior?

As New England went into pre-production for its fourth album, guitarist John Fannon left the band for family reasons. We put the word out to replace him and got some great inquiries. The best one was from Gene Simmons, who told us of a guitarist named Vinnie Cusano who was writing with them for their new album in L.A. [Creatures of the Night].

They were looking for a replacement for Ace Frehley, but there was a concern that Vinnie was too short to be in their band. Gene suggested we contact each other. Vinnie sent us a demo tape that we really liked. It was in the Foreigner vein but a little heavier.

He flew to Boston to audition for us, and, unbeknownst to him, we learned his demo tape. He played our music very well, but we blew his mind when we played his music. He smiled and said he couldn't find anyone who sounded like us in LA. We decided to pool our resources and start a whole new band in Los Angeles.

Tell us about the recordings you did with Vinnie.

At the time, Vinnie was very together musically. As well as working with Kiss, he was working on the television show Happy Days. Prior to that he’d played with Dan Hartman and Edgar Winter.

His style was more like Jeff Beck, and the music was straight-ahead, radio-friendly rock. Vinnie has a cool voice, but didn't want to sing and play guitar. We auditioned Fergie Frederiksen, who would later join Toto.

I taped rehearsals on my Sony TCS 350 cassette deck for my own benefit. A few years ago, a CD was released of these sessions under the name Warrior that we were floating at the time. The tapes are bass-heavy because I wasn’t taping the whole band.

I had a great roaring midrange sound at the time, using my 1980 G&L 1000 bass, played with a pick. I was playing through a very beat-up Acoustic 360 bass amp rental at SIR Sunset. I offered to buy it on the spot, but they declined!

Is it true that Vinnie took some of Warrior’s material and used it for Kiss and The Vinnie Vincent Invasion?

Warrior only lasted two months when Vinnie was asked to join Kiss full-time. Great for him; not so great for us, but a deal hard to refuse. We kept in touch a bit as time went by. Vinnie had many songs, and we’d touched on some that showed up later down the line on his solo albums. His only shortcoming at the time was stressing over making final decisions on arrangements and mixes.

How did Alcatrazz form?

Jimmy Waldo and I decided to stay in LA rather than go back to Boston. I got a call one night from manager Andy Truman, who was a neighbor of Graham Bonnet.

Graham had just left the Michael Schenker Group and Rainbow. They were looking to start a new band as opposed to a solo artist band. Barrymore Barlow from Jethro Tull was to be on drums and Zal Cleminson on guitar. Andy asked if I knew a keyboard player, and I mentioned Jimmy.

Jimmy, Andy, Graham and I met at the Hyatt Hotel bar on Sunset and discussed forming a band with a European rock feel. We were offered a record deal with no demo on Rocshire/MCA through our freind Bob Sifkin, A&R for MCA.

How did the young Yngwie Malmsteen come into the picture?

Barry was asked to play on Robert Plant’s solo album so he stayed in England. Zal was not in the picture. We auditioned two guitarists that weekend – Laurence Juber from Wings and a young Yngwie.

Laurence is a great player; but obviously, Yngwie was what we were looking for to complement Graham's background with Ritchie Blackmore. I came up with the idea of using Alcatrazz as the band name. Later on, we added an extra Z like in “jazz” or “nazz.”

What was your rig like by then?

I had my three Ampeg SVTs and four 8x10 cabs that I’d brought out from Boston. Later on I switched to a Randall endorsement, using their RB 500 solid-state heads and eight 2x15 cabs.

I continued to play my G&L 1000 and later switched to Aria Pro SB Elites with EMG pickups and Badass bridges. Yngwie got me in with Aria basses, and I got him in with my D’Angelico endorsement for strings and picks. I later sold all of my Ampeg gear and cases to Yngwie’s band – I didn’t want to deal with tubes any longer.

Yngwie takes a lot of credit for the music he made with you. How accurate is that?

Yngwie actually has a great sense of humor in private. Of course, he didn’t write all the songs, vocals, keyboard parts and basslines. Island in the Sun was a New England song that Jimmy had written. Graham wrote new lyrics for it, and he wrote General Hospital.

We were a band, not a solo project. I put in a B minor ascending arpeggio at the intro of Hiroshima. Yngwie told me I was stepping on his solo, but the lick stayed. He did write a major part of the music but it was no-one’s solo album. Because of the band’s structure, he played some of his most memorable solos on No Parole.

What led to Yngwie leaving, and how did Steve Vai enter the picture?

Yngwie was replaced for becoming difficult to work with. We’d auditioned Chris Impelliteri and Steve Vai in secret. We chose Steve, but both are brilliant guitarists. This was prior to going a major tour with Ted Nugent in the summer of ’84. Our label agreed to the swap, but asked that we do it going into our next record. We all agreed to that.

Steve seems much easier to work with.

Yngwie is great, and Steve is awesome. They’re bookends. Steve was a joy to work with musically and brought a whole new bag of tricks from the Zappa camp. I’m very proud of the level of musicianship on Disturbing the Peace. Along with producer Eddie Kramer, I felt we’d come into our own sound and looked forward to more down the road.

What led to losing Steve, and Graham torpedoing the band?

Once again, a guitarist of ours was offered a deal you can’t refuse! This time it was from David Lee Roth. Of all the guys David could get to play with after Eddie Van Halen, he chose Steve Vai. We split amicably and are still good friends.

Graham refused to record some outside material Capitol Records A&R suggested to us, and they didn’t renew our contract for a third album. That’s life in the big city.

What led to New England and Alcatrazz both reforming?

New England got back together in 2003. We realized we had great chemistry and we’d been away for too long. Our first rehearsal produced two great songs, which led to some spot live appearances.

Eventually we took things further by playing over a dozen shows on the East and West Coasts as well as Tokyo. We’ve recorded an EP and a live album over the last 10 years on a part-time basis.

Alcatrazz reuniting morphed out of The Graham Bonnet Band. Jimmy was asked to play some keyboard tracks on an album, then joined as a touring member. Joe Stump was added as lead guitarist.

I went along on a Graham Bonnet Band tour doing an Alcatrazz set, testing the waters on a few gigs in the Southwest and Japan. It went very well and led to reforming Alcatrazz properly, signing a record deal with Silver Lining Records. We took drummer Mark Benquechea and guitarist Joe Stump with us.

Would you work with Yngwie or Graham again?

Over the years I’ve learned to never say never. Music is a very liquid gift. It ebbs and flows in sometimes strange ways. All of us have worked extremely hard making music together, and that strength shows when we get back together as if nothing happened. Life is mysterious, and I rule nothing out. Keep an open mind and a warm heart.

And you finally put out those long-lost Warrior recordings.

Yes – a combination of live rehearsal tapes and demos done at the Record Plant in LA. It’s a showcase for what might have been.

What are your thoughts on Vinnie charging hundreds of dollars per song?

I don’t know any more than everyone else knows! He’s welcome to sell his music however he wants. He seems to be in a rough spot, and I wish him well.

Out of John Fannon, Vinnie, Vai and Yngwie, who’s the best guitarist you ever worked with?

That’s the old question – which flavor of ice cream is best! Ther’s no definite answer. I love them all, each for a special reason. I must also add Joe Stump to the group. He’s a master shredder. He has also been an associate professor at Berklee for the last 20 years.

What’s next?

Most of our shows are fly dates. I recently played on Hirsh Gardner’s new solo album, Three Times the Charm. My latest endeavor is my new book, No Bass No Party – it’s about walking into a department store, buying an inexpensive guitar, and eventually playing Madison Square Garden. It’s a story of patience and persistence, navigating through the music business with its pitfalls of contracts, lawyers and record deals.

Alcatrazz has begun work on the band’s seventh studio album, due for release later this year. Touring will resume at that time.

• Warrior Featuring Vinnie Vincent: The Complete Sessions is out now via Cherry Red. Shea’s book No Bass No Party is available via BWL Publishing.

Jethro Tull are one of prog’s most uncompromising acts, one of its trailblazers, the band who give blues-rock an evolutionary push and shove into more adventurous terrain, seeking out the wide-open sonic pastures of English folk, applying classical flourishes, following their musical curiosity to see where it might take them.

But for co-founder and vocalist/flautist/acoustic guitar player Ian Anderson, that musical curiosity has to be reined in a little when it comes to lead guitar.

When recording Jethro Tull’s latest studio LP, Curious Ruminant – an album that finds Jack Clark officially making his debut on electric guitar – Anderson admits he gave Clark some advice on what to do and, just as importantly, what not to do when taking a solo in the studio.

In a recent interview with Louder, Anderson said Clark knew the value of restraint when it came to guitar solos.

“Turns out Jack’s a really good lead player, too,” says Anderson. “On this record he impressed me with intelligent, measured guitar solos, which have lots of semi-quavers in the right places, but Jack’s not afraid to hang on a note, either.”

For Anderson, restraint in lead guitar goes a long way. Or, in other words, he isn’t looking for technical audacity.

“That was something I impressed upon him when he first joined,” he says. “‘If you have a 16-bar guitar solo, please don’t turn into Yngwie Malmsteen or Joe Satriani.’”

Clark would no doubt have been aware of his brief already. He has been involved with Jethro Tull for some time now, filling in on keys and guitar.

“This is Jack’s first LP with us, but he had already played with Jethro Tull a number of times,” says Anderson. “He stood in for David Goodier when David was having surgery, and then for John O’Hara, covering some of his keyboard ground, but on second guitar.”

In other words. Clark knew what he was getting into. But Anderson – whether wild-eyed and hopping on one leg with a flute in his mouth, or in the control room overseeing a take – nonetheless knows what he wants from a guitarist, and he is a man who believes in speaking plainly.

Does he think about the idea of Curious Ruminent, an album that is freighted with his introspections, as a career milestone? “Not really,” he tells Louder. “It’s just a collection of songs, in the same way that Aqualung was a collection of songs.”

Anderson might have vetoed the technical ecstasies of Satriani and Malmsteen’s lead styles, but some of Jethro Tull’s greatest lead guitar moments have come under the influence of the hottest players in guitar at the time.

Take 1971’s Aqualung, which features one of the greatest – if not the greatest – solos in Jethro Tull history from Martin Barre. Speaking to Guitarist in 2025, Barre explained how Leslie West of Mountain inspired his tone.

“I’d met Leslie West, and like a lot of guitar players, you couldn’t meet Leslie West and come out unscathed,” he said. “I loved him to bits. I loved his playing, I loved his presence. And I loved Mountain.

“Everything about them was a learning curve. Not just the guitar playing but everything about their arrangements. So, like a lot of people, I bought a Gibson Les Paul Junior because Leslie had one.”

Barre used his Junior and a Fender Stratocaster, both from 1958, plugged them into a Hiwatt and let the amp do the heavy lifting.

“It was simple – no pedals, nothing,” said Barre. “Just a guitar into the amp – and off you go.”

Publishing rights are a complex subject in the music industry, and it seems that no one is immune to ownership and rights disputes.

Guitar virtuoso Yngwie Malmsteen is currently navigating through these murky waters first-hand. Just yesterday (December 18), he claimed that certain singers who featured on his records are now claiming ownership over his songs.

“So it has come to my attention that these hired and paid singers that I hired for my solo records are all trying to capitalize from my brand!” Malmsteen wrote on an Instagram story.

“Let’s be clear: performing on MY SOLO records does not equal ownership, authorship, or legacy. Writing a line here and there doesn’t make someone a songwriter, and singing my material doesn’t make it theirs.

“They were merely given a salary (work for hire) to put down MY written parts, just like the keyboard player, bassist, drummer, etc,” he continues.

“If the only way you can tour or get attention is by leaning on my brand and using my name and album titles and my SOLO catalogue, then you’ve already answered the question of who actually built something. And - what have they recorded/created the last 30,40 years?”

Malmsteen doesn't clarify who he's referring to. However, several singers have worked with him throughout his decades-long career, including Jeff Scott Soto, Joe Lynn Turner, Mark Boals, Doogie White, Tim “Ripper” Owens, Michael Vescera, Göran Edman, and Mats Levén.

Since 2012, however, Malmsteen has increasingly handled vocal duties – kicking off with 2012’s Spellbound, which not only sees him play all instruments but also lay down the vocals on all tracks.

Earlier this year, Malmsteen gave his hot take on social media guitarists and reminisced on writing and recording his second album, Marching Out, which this year celebrated its 40th anniversary.

Steve Vai has locked fretboards with a long line of elite electric guitar players over the years, be that through the various guest collaborations he’s participated in, the numerous G3 tours he’s helped head up, or the Generation Axe supergroup.

But one of the most challenging six-string adversaries he’s come across in all his years was Yngwie Malmsteen, with whom he formed Generation Axe back in 2016 – and ended up going toe-to-toe with him each night on tour for an epic guitar duel on Black Star.

Vai's epic guitar-off with Malmsteen was put to him by Corgan, who remembers seeing the pair share the stage in Dallas.

“I don’t remember the song you guys were playing, but you were out there with Yngwie and you guys were trading back and forth,” Corgan says. “And he played this one run… I can’t even describe it; it was probably the greatest 10 seconds of guitar playing I’ve ever seen in my life.

“He does his thing, and you’re supposed to go, and you literally went… ‘Okay, I’m done.’”

The exact moment that Corgan mentions can be found at the 4:10 mark in the video above, in which Vai can be seen laughing in disbelief at Yngwie’s guitar run.

When asked about ‘Vai versus Yngwie’, Vai recalls, “Yngwie is a special, special case. I loved the idea of being able to shred, as they say, and I honed that skill. But Yngwie, when he hit the scene, it was a different kind of a shred.

“He had a different kind of approach from the germination of his interest, and that was violin playing. His inner ear was hearing that kind of thing, which is, in a sense, not as guitaristic as somebody listening to Jimmy Page or that kind of thing.

“And when we get up on the stage together and we're trading like that, it's a great moment. Standing with another musician and actually trading licks like I do with all the G3, Generation Axe, all this kind of thing, it requires listening very intently and then responding in a way that you know is appropriate.

“With guys like Yngwie, you can't compete. If I'm with Joe Satriani or any of these guys, you can't compete with the best of them. They force you, if you're smart, to compete with the best of you.

“Like, I have to be more Steve Vai – that weird, quirky guy – than I have been before when you know somebody does something, that's the top of their game. So it's a wonderful opportunity.

“So when Yngwie does his monstrous thing, it's part of the show because it's fun. I can't, I don't do that.”

Elsewhere in his interview with Corgan, Vai recalled joining David Lee Roth’s band and spoke about what it was like to go up against Van Halen.

In one of 2025’s strangest product drops, Swedish sweep-picking speed demon Yngwie Malmsteen has launched a line of, erm, protein powder.

Probiotic capsules, electrolyte supplements, watermelon-flavored pre-workout supplements, and even yoga mats also make up his new health-conscious range of products, swerving typical rockstar clichés of signature beer, rum, and Les Paul-inspired coffee lines.

“When I’m on stage, there’s no compromise, only precision, power, and passion,” he says in a new Instagram post. “I take these supplements to stay razor-sharp, night after night. This isn’t hype. It’s fuel!”

The guitarist isn’t exactly known for his bulky stature – he’s no Kane Roberts – but his demanding tour schedule certainly requires the occasional pick-me-up.

He released signature multivitamin gummies last year, saying at the time, “I am a very busy man that travels the world while playing six shows in a row, up on stage every single night. This works for me, so I wanted to make it available for my followers.”

A signature protein powder is the next logical step, and it builds on some crucial playing health advice he once got from Ritchie Blackmore. He previously told Classic Rock that the former Deep Purple musicians waxed lyrical about the benefits of “eating bananas and drinking Gatorade” to counter their struggles with tendonitis.

Discussing his health kick with Eddie Trunk on SiriusXM last year (via Blabbermouth), Malmsteen explained why players should avoid the rock 'n' roll lifestyle if they want to perform to high standards night after night.

“I don’t drink. I don’t do drugs. I don’t believe in it,” he says. “Listen, if you wanna do that, go ahead. Be my guest. But I prefer not to do it. And also, I think it’s great to let people know – take your vitamins.”

Interested? Head to Malmsteen merchandise for more.

In related news, the Swede has spoken about recording music videos with fire-breathing dragons, and has claimed that Eddie Van Halen was “threatened” by his talents.

When you think about it, Yngwie Malmsteen is a lot more than just one of the world’s fastest guitar players – he’s up there with some of the greatest performers and entertainers of all time.

He’s the kind of musician who can roam the stage and wow the crowd with a thrilling display of plectrum kicks, round-the-neck guitar swings and two-handed acrobatics. Then there’s all the smoke machines and walls of Marshall amps behind him, making his performances look as unbelievable as they are to hear.

All of this energy is captured in high definition on his latest release, Tokyo Live, recorded at Zepp DiverCity in the Japanese capital in May last year as part of his ongoing 40th anniversary world tour.

Newer tracks like Top Down Foot Down and Wolves At The Door sit well next to fan-favorites such as Far Beyond The Sun, Black Star and I’ll See The Light Tonight, each and every note executed with flawless accuracy – though, to be more specific, it’s an accuracy to a moment in time rather than the studio recordings.

Some might say the most impressive thing about the Swedish trailblazer is his ability to deviate off-course and improvise at the drop of a hat – which, as he explains to GW, has been his philosophy all along.

“As a fan, I like to hear a real live record,” he tells us, pulling up a chair next to the large mixing desk inside his home studio.

“As an artist or producer, I’m trying to capture a live feel from the studio. I don’t want my live performances to sound like a studio record. It’s the other way round; everything live, warts and all.

“On stage the songs are really just skeletons. There’ll be an introduction and ending, but the solos and breakdowns in between could happen or not happen. I direct the band with my hands, because they don’t know what I’m going to do next. The danger keeps it exciting. If I played everything note for note, which I could, I’d pack it all in.

“Some bands have made a career doing that; I’m not knocking them, but it’s not for me. I’d get bored without the danger – plus people would know what to expect. All my recorded solos are improvised anyway. I get why they sound calculated, because I stay in the realms of mathematically accurate scales, but they’re all made up.”

What are your favorite live albums by other artists?

“The earliest live one I remember hearing is Deep Purple’s Made In Japan when I was nine. Back then I didn’t understand the difference between live and studio records. When I heard their Machine Head album I remember thinking that the versions of Lazy and Smoke On The Water were better on the live album. Which probably says a lot about how I think!

“After that I got into prog rock bands like Genesis because Tony Banks used a lot of classical pedal note ideas. Then I got into Bach. I have this big statue of him next to the console. Paganini and Mozart are over there too. That became my thing.”

From guitars and amps to overdrive, you tend to stick with your signature gear. But which Strats are we hearing on the recording?

“I was using four different signature models that night. The one I’m holding right now is about 20 years old. I call this one Number 7. I also like Number 2 and Number 5.

“In this studio I have a forest of trees. What I do is set them up identically and then have them numbered so I can tell my tech which one I want to play. But a lot of the time, I don’t actually know which guitar I’m playing. And I don’t want to – getting attached to one guitar will psychologically make you think you don’t sound as good on something else.

“I also had my Ovation acoustic and MXR overdrive. I plugged into whatever amp they had at the venue. If it says Marshall on it, I can make it work. I’m good.”

There are some heavily symphonic moments in the set, where you go from Badinerie into Paganini’s 4th and then Adagio. It’s interesting how metallic some of these classical pieces can sound.

“It all comes down to the notes. If you listen to some of Beethoven’s stuff, it can be extremely heavy. Then there’s Gustav Holst and Carl Orff – those guys went all the way! Some classical ideas sound like riffs to me. You can almost hear a drum part going along with it.”

The music industry is a very different landscape to the one you grew up with. What do you think of the Instagram generation of players?

“A lot of people think the scene is looking good right now. But there are others who think the late ‘80s or early ‘90s were the golden age of guitar. I’m usually like, ‘Okay, whatever you guys say!’

“From the beginning, if everyone was going one way like lemmings, I would do the opposite. I never followed anyone or anything. I got bored of five-note rock and decided to incorporate classical ideas, without leaving behind the distorted guitars, double bass drums and smoke bombs.”

There were rock guitarists who dabbled in classical beforehand, but essentially you invented the genre.

“Technically speaking, I started playing what is now known as neoclassical in the ‘70s. I’d even tune to C# and use a bass string to play some heavy shit way before that became a thing. My friends playing AC/DC covers would say, ‘What are you doing? You’ll never make it like that!’

“But I do what I always do: I won’t conform or follow. It’s not like I’m some sort of rebel or anything. I just didn’t look in any other direction but straight ahead. I’m sure there are millions of incredible players, but I don’t seek them out. After learning Made In Japan note-for-note when I was 10, I stopped paying attention to players completely.”

Some might say you’re one of the most misunderstood musicians alive. But there’s nothing wrong with sticking to your guns.

“Honestly, it’s nothing to do with arrogance. When everybody was buying new Marshalls, I was buying old Marshalls. When everybody was using humbuckers and Floyd Roses, I was using Strats with single-coils. I don’t follow anything. I never did... maybe that’s why I’m still here!

“I always seek the divine. I want to channel something that isn’t completely from me; it’s coming from somewhere else. If that gets interfered with, I don’t like it. I guess it’s kind of a deep thing. That said, when I take the top down, I do like to listen to the sound of the V8 engines and flat-plane cranks of my Ferraris.”

Have you ever been starstruck when meeting another musician?

“I wouldn’t say starstruck, but it was a surreal experience leaving Sweden for America in 1982. Within a couple of hours, I bumped into some guys who took me to The Rainbow. That’s where I found Ronnie James Dio. I couldn’t fuckin’ believe it. I’d seen him live in concert when I was 12 years old and there he was, this little guy. At first I was a little speechless, but we hit it off right away.”

How would you like to be remembered?

“I’d like to be remembered – that’s it – but I don’t really think like that. When I was growing up I was constantly told I was shit and useless. I became oblivious to it all. I didn’t cry about it; I just didn’t care. Then I came to America and everyone was telling me I’m the greatest thing. Neither affected me: I know if I’m doing good or bad. I don’t have to be told.

“It’s nice if people think you’re good, but you shouldn’t do things just to hear them say that. I’m not thinking about an epitaph with, ‘Look, it’s Yngwie, the man who conceived classical metal through guitar!’ I don’t care.

“There’s one magazine cover I kept from early on which had a big picture of me next to photos of Jimi Hendrix and Edward Van Halen. I like that one because I’m with the greatest guys ever. But what excites me most is when I complete something great and then I move onto the next one.”

This year is the 40th anniversary of your second album Marching Out. It features one of your most famous tracks, I’ll See The Light Tonight – renowned for its Ab minor palm-muted riffing and that infamous diminished coda on the two lowest strings.

“I had this shitty little house somewhere in California back in 1984. My Marshall stacks and a reel-to-reel were set up in the living room. I remember getting my drummer to have a jam at 3am. How long is that song – around three minutes? Well, that’s how long it took to write. I just started riffing that Ab power chord against the open string and put it all together. I knew it was good straight away.”

The video contains wizards, skulls, sword-wielding demons and dragons. It really doesn’t get more metal than that!

“It was the Conan The Barbarian set in Universal Studios – they closed at 9pm, so we rented the whole thing with dragons and actors. We carried on filming until five in the morning. The dragon that came up was spitting real fuckin’ fire at me while I was doing the solo. I could feel the heat.

“Then the director told me to throw my guitar, but I ended up breaking the dragon, which had to be on show the next morning with people queuing to see it. I think I took its ear off. There was a big palaver about that!

“I was also on fire at one point. They put this stuff on my guitar and on my arm to help it burn, like they do in the movies, so my arm was actually on fuckin’ fire. I just went along with it.”

You played an upside down Lake Placid Blue Strat in the video, which is unusual for you.

“I thought it looked cool. Early on, there was a clip of me playing a black guitar and I was annoyed it didn’t show the beautiful shape of the Stratocaster. I took the guitar apart and painted it cream. From then on, I played guitars with a bright outline.

“I remember headlining the Hammersmith Odeon and there was a review which said, ‘We went to see Yngwie, he played the white guitar, he played the red guitar, he played the blue guitar and then we all went home!’ That was the actual review.

“So I did go through a period of playing vintage guitars in different colors like Lake Placid Blue or Fiesta Red, but the lighter finishes always look best to my eyes.”

• Tokyo Live is on sale now via Mascot Label Group.

It's been over four decades since Yngwie Malmsteen burst onto the scene with his signature neoclassical approach to the electric guitar. In fact, this year marks the 40th anniversary of his second album, Marching Out – which features one of his most beloved tracks, I’ll See the Light Tonight (who can forget the iconic diminished coda on the two lowest strings?). That longevity and milestone is no mean feat considering the transient nature of the industry.

However, despite celebrating his illustrious career with last year's 40th Anniversary World Tour and Tokyo Live, Malmsteen insists he doesn't think about his legacy too much.

“I’d like to be remembered, that’s it, but I don’t really think like that,” he tells Guitar World in a new interview. “When I was growing up, I was constantly told I was shit and useless. I became oblivious to it all. I didn’t cry about it, I just didn’t care. Then I came to America and everyone was telling me I’m the greatest thing. Neither affected me. I know if I’m doing good or bad. I don’t have to be told.

“It’s nice if people think you’re good, but you shouldn’t do things just to hear them say that. I’m not thinking about an epitaph with ‘Look, it’s Yngwie, the man who conceived classical metal through guitar!’ I don’t care.”

He continues, “There’s one magazine cover I kept from early on which had a big picture of me next to photos of Jimi Hendrix and Edward Van Halen. I like that one because I’m with the greatest guys ever. But what excites me most is when I complete something great and then I move onto the next one.”

Elsewhere in the interview, Malmsteen reflects on the jamming session that led to I’ll See The Light Tonight – and the incredulously short time it took to actually write it.

“I had this shitty little house somewhere in California back in 1984,” he relays. “My Marshall stacks and a reel-to-reel were set up in the living room. I remember getting my drummer to have a jam at 3 am. How long is that song? Around three minutes? Well, that’s how long it took to write.

“I just started riffing that Ab power chord against the open string and put it all together. I knew it was good straight away.”

The trailblazer recently spoke about putting together the music video for the single – describing how he pulled out all the stops by filming at the Conan The Barbarian set in Universal Studios.

Reflecting on the release of his career-defining album Marching Out 40 years on, Yngwie Malmsteen has looked back on one of his strangest music video experiences, which saw him shredding with a fire-breathing dragon… sort of.

As the Stratocaster-loving Swedish speed demon – who recently claimed Eddie Van Halen was ”threatened” by him – recalls in a new interview with Guitar World, he had written I’ll See The Light Tonight in his “shitty little house somewhere in California.”

Widely considered one of his most iconic tracks, it saw Malmsteen conjure up some tasty Ab minor riffage in a heartbeat in the dead of night.

“My Marshall stacks and a reel-to-reel were set up in the living room,” he recalls. “I remember getting my drummer to have a jam at 3am. How long is that song? Around three minutes? Well, that’s how long it took to write. I just started riffing that Ab power chord against the open string and put it all together. I knew it was good straight away.”

Following the midnight oil-burning jam, Malmsteen then turned his attentions to the music video. In 1984, when the album was being put together, the MTV generation had taken hold. Music videos were a vital marketing tool, and Malmsteen wanted to pull out all the stops.

Wizards, skulls, sword-wielding demons, and dragons were just the ticket. It was as metal as it gets – and they used the perfect set.

“It was [filmed at] the Conan The Barbarian set in Universal Studios,” Malmsteen says. “They closed at 9pm, so we went in and rented the whole thing with dragons and actors.

“We carried on filming until five in the morning. The dragon that came up was spitting real fuckin’ fire at me while I was doing the solo. I could feel the heat.”

Naturally, a humble human should be no match against a fire-breathing dragon, but Malmsteen and the left-handed Strat, strung to be right-handed, that he used for the shoot turned out to be a suitable weapon to wield.

“The director told me to throw my guitar, but I ended up breaking the dragon, which had to be on show the next morning with people queuing to see it,” he reveals. “Oh god, there was a big palaver about that. I think I took the dragon’s ear off.”

One would assume that a shoot at Universal Studios – a family-friendly theme park – would be a relatively safe affair. The dragon, however, wasn’t the only cast member caught in the very literal firing line.

“I was also on fire at one point,” Malmsteen says as if it was nothing. “They put this stuff on my guitar and on my arm to help it burn, like they do in the movies, so my arm was actually on fuckin’ fire. I just went along with it.”

Malmsteen made headlines last year as he sold off his #4 Stratocaster with a free Ferrari, while Joe Satriani has recently spoken about the unique challenges of having the Swede on the G3 tour.

Malmsteen’s full interview with Guitar World is set to be published online in the coming weeks.

Yngwie Malmsteen will be the first to tell you that 1984’s Rising Force wasn’t supposed to be a hit. But it definitely was – and the young Swedish virtuoso’s unexpected success led directly to the recording of a second album, 1985’s Marching Out, and a world tour.

Malmsteen describes Marching Out as “quickly thrown together,” which didn’t seem to matter, as it climbed to Number 52 on the Billboard charts. According to the shredder, the lightning-rod success of his two first albums came via his laser focus.

“I did my thing,” he says. “Not because people told me to, but because that was what I thought I had to do. I never had other people write my songs. The bottom line is that it’s been a straight line. I always had a very clear idea of what I wanted. As a writer, guitar player – everything – I always ruled with an iron hand.

“At every corner I’ve turned in my life, I’ve had people telling me what they think I should do. But the reason I’m here now is that I didn’t follow people’s advice. To win the game, you gotta play the game. That’s still my thing, but not because people told me to do that. I did it because that is what I had to do, and I thought it was different.” On that note…

What are the origins of Marching Out?

“In January 1984, I signed a solo deal with Polygram in America. It was totally solo. I was touring in Japan with Alcatrazz, and they said, 'We must have a solo album,' so in July 1984, I left Alcatrazz. Marching Out was supposed to be my first solo record for Polygram.”

Of course, you’d already released Rising Force in 1984.

“Rising Force was supposed to be Japan-only, and Marching Out was supposed to be the first solo album. But, through word of mouth, people would go into Tower Records or whatever and spend $50 and wait two weeks for an imported version of Rising Force from Japan. It sold so many records without promotion – and it was, like, five times the price of a regular record – that it hit the Billboard charts.”

So Rising Force ended up making an unintended impact in America as an import, leading to Marching Out being your second record?

“Yeah. Polygram was like, ‘Oh, shit, we’ve got to put this record out…’ Basically, what was meant to be the first solo album in America, Marching Out, became the second one. Rising Force was a sensation nobody expected. We all know that if you don’t promote a record, it won’t sell. But it sold without promotion.”

In essence, Marching Out is a sister album – or spiritual successor – to Rising Force. It’s also worth noting that you made two solo guitar albums before such a practice was commonplace.

“In the Eighties, you didn’t release an instrumental rock guitar album. They didn’t exist. You had jazz instrumental albums, but not rock. I can’t think of anyone of significance before Rising Force and Marching Out [ed., both of which include a mix of instrumental and vocal tracks featuring Jeff Scott Soto]. When they told me to do a solo album when I was in Alcatrazz, they said, ‘No, we only want you to play guitar.’ It’s really weird. People now take it for granted because it’s normalized.”

In one fell swoop, you kicked off the shred and instrumental guitar era.

“Look at Van Halen, Jimmy Page or whoever; they didn’t do instrumental records. Think about this now for a second… by accident, it turned out to be like a blueprint for guitar albums.”

When did you start to understand the impact you were having?

“When I was inadvertently touring for two albums after the extreme success they created without any promotion. Rising Force went into the Billboard Top 100 without even being fucking released [in the U.S.]! Have you ever heard of that? It wasn’t even in stores. You had to go into a store and say, ‘Can you order this album for me?’ That’s how many fucking freaks went out and bought it. [Laughs]”

Did you feel the same wave of success with Marching Out?

“Yeah, but there’s an important thing; with that album – and people misunderstand this – it was never a band. In January 1984, I signed a solo-artist deal. Every single album I’ve made since then has been a solo record. I hired singers and musicians, but they were solo albums. However, some of the people who were hired to take part in these recordings have gotten this strange illusion that they were part of a band, which they never were.”

That aside, we can’t forget that you had a hand in shining a light on the Strat at a time when shred sticks were favored.

“The Strat was about as ‘out’ as you could get! That’s another thing that people forget. In the Eighties, the fucking Fender Strat, oh, man, like, dude, it’s like having an old car and someone saying, ‘Why are you driving that old piece of shit, man?’ If you didn’t have a fucking Floyd Rose, it was like, ‘What the fuck are you doing?’ Literally, unless you were, like, a blues player, no one was playing Strats.”

Would you change anything about Marching Out, given the chance?

“I gotta be honest… that album was thrown together really quickly. There are some highlights on there and some really good songs. There are a couple of kinds of filler tracks… almost – but I don’t regret anything because it’s all a learning curve.”

What does Marching Out mean to you?

“You know me. At the time, in 1985, I had a very clear idea of what I wanted to do. I wanted to do, like, heavy metal, you know… lean more toward heavy metal and have an instrumental record. That’s what I wanted to do – and I did it.”

• This article first appeared in Guitar World. Subscribe and save.

In a new interview with Classic Rock, Yngwie Malmsteen has looked back on his near-meetings with Eddie Van Halen – and claimed the late electric guitar legend felt threatened by him.

Van Halen had burst onto the scene in the late 1970s, with the likes of Eruption rapidly setting the guitar world alight. Malmsteen, who got his big break thanks to Guitar Player, was hot on his tail, with the pair of six-string speed merchants flipping the industry on its head across a flurry of releases in the ensuring decades.

While taking an in-depth look at his career in the new issue of Classic Rock, Malmsteen says his attempts to meet his fellow shredder were foiled on multiple occasions, as Eddie allegedly did everything he could to avoid him.

“I never said a bad word about him. I never will. Because I think he was amazing,” he says. “But I used to know a guy that worked in the grocery store where Eddie would shop, and the guy would ask him: ‘Hey, what do you think about Yngwie Malmsteen, the new Swedish kid?’ And Eddie would say: ‘I don't know who that is.’

“Meanwhile,” he continues, “Dave Roth told me that Eddie would have his ghetto blaster, playing my shit on it all day long!”

Of course, Roth has a track record of making questionable claims about the Van Halen camp, so it might be wise to take that particular anecdote with a pinch of salt. The same goes for the second-hand tale from the grocery store worker. But Malmsteen's recollection doesn't stop there.

“There's one time I remember when I was nominated for a Grammy [in 1986], and I go to the show – I had my tux on and everything – and I see Eddie there,” he goes on. “I’m waving at him, trying to get his attention, and he sees me... and he runs away. He literally ran away!”

Malmsteen just wanted to chat with another guitarist with a reputation as hot as his.

“I have an even more incredible story,” he then says. “I was doing a concert festival in Holland, and Van Halen was headlining. I'm like: ‘Great, I finally get to meet Eddie and give him my concerto’. Because I'm proud of my concerto, you know?

“But I find out they canceled the show. They said Alex Van Halen had broken his little finger or something. And then I hear that the promoter got a phone call from Eddie himself, who said: ‘Just to let you know, if Yngwie Malmsteen is playing, I'm not playing. And I will never fucking play the same stage as Yngwie Malmsteen.’

“I'm like: ‘What?’ He obviously felt threatened. Which is crazy to me. You're fucking Eddie Van Halen! Nobody could threaten you!”

The guitarist was asked about comparisons between him and Van Halen early on in their careers when speaking to Aftershocks TV in 2021 but was quick to dismiss the value in drawing parallels.

“I don't believe in comparing anybody with anybody, because it's supposed to be an artform,” he said. “However, in art, in any art, there will be trendsetters – people who come around and turn everything upside down, and Edward was definitely one of them. And I brought something different to the table also.

“I personally loved Eddie Van Halen – I thought he was amazing. I loved everything he did since the first time I heard him. But I don't think it's a logical thing to compare artists. It's like Picasso and Da Vinci, which are completely different styles, but they're very well-regarded artists in their own right. It's a crazy thing to do.”

Grab a copy of Classic Rock from Magazines Direct to read Yngwie Malmsteen’s interview in full. The issue also features stories on Mike Campbell, Pearl Jam, and Fleetwood Mac.

Yngwie Malmsteen arrived in America in the early 1980s and, thanks to his white-hot neoclassical shredding, he soon found himself in fine demand. According to the Swede, Kiss and David Lee Roth both tried to sign him up to their bands, while he was apparently in the running to join Ozzy Osbourne and Ronnie James Dio at different times.

In addition, he says he received two offers in the space of 24 hours from UFO and Alcatrazz, both of whom looked to bolster their ranks with his abilities right at the start of his career.

A Guitar Player Spotlight column had helped shine a light on the upstart virtuoso, and he first traveled across the Atlantic to feature on Steeler’s only album. When that project fizzled out, he wasn’t short on offers from potential suitors.

“I played around with Steeler; we were all over the Sunset Strip,” he tells the Eddie Trunk Podcast. “I remember one night we played in Orange County, and Phil Mogg of UFO came there. I love that band, it was great.

“So, he was all like, 'Hey, I'm putting UFO back together. I've gotta get a great guitar player, so come to my house tomorrow.' I said, 'Yeah, I'll be there.'”

UFO had briefly disbanded following the dismal response to 1982 album Mechanix. They'd go on to employ their former roadie Tommy McClendon for the gig, but if Malmsteen's story is to be believed, the Swede was his preferred pick.

“The next morning, I get a phone call from somebody,” Malmsteen continues. “I don't know who it was. Some manager or something, from what became Alcatrazz. And that was the same day I was gonna see Phil.

“So, they [Alcatrazz] come and pick me up, and they bring me to this rehearsal room. And I started asking these guys, like, 'What are your songs like', and all that stuff. 'Well, we don't have any songs yet.' I said, 'What's your direction?' 'We don't have a direction yet... But you got the gig!' I said, 'Well, let me think about it. I gotta go see somebody.'”

Playing out like something of a heavy metal love triangle, Malmsteen then went to see Mogg and heard UFO’s pitch. Though the band had his heart, the opportunity wasn’t what he was hoping it to be.

“I went to Phil Mogg's house, and he was super cool, but he didn't really have his stuff together as the other camp did,” he explains. “So, I called them [Alcatrazz] from Phil's house and said, 'Okay, I'll do your thing, but a couple of conditions: I write the songs, and we get a new drummer.'”

The Alcatrazz camp, clearly knowing what Malmsteen would bring to the table, heeded his commands. The fact the arpeggio fanatic has writing credits on every track of No Parole from Rock 'n' Roll, which was released in October 1983, is proof of that.

"It would have been awesome to be in UFO too,” the Swede ruminates. “But that would mean I would have to do a lot of their classics and stuff like that – I was more into the fresh start thing.”

Malmsteen would forge a solo career off his one album with Alcatrazz, and his spot in the group was eventually taken by Steve Vai for 1985's Disturbing the Peace.

Speaking to Trunk back in 2021, Malmsteen revealed they weren’t the only two offers that came his way.

“I was offered a gig with David Lee Roth,” he said. “There was some murmur about the Ozzy thing. Ronnie James Dio talked about it all the time.

“When I actually lived in Sweden, I was offered a gig in Kiss. They wanted to talk to me. They called me up, and the guy said; ‘Are you hot?’, and then he asked me, ‘Are you six feet tall?’, and I’m metric, so I said, 'No, I’m 192,' and he goes, 'What the fuck’s that?!' So, they never called back!”

He adds that there were also “murmurs” of joining Deep Purple, but an offer never materialized. But, since that one album with Graham Bonnet and company, Malmsteen never joined another band, forging a path as a solo artist instead.

When he did work with other guitarists, as he did on the G3 tour, Joe Satriani said he presented unique challenges.

Swedish arpeggio obsessive Yngwie Malmsteen is rarely spotted without a Fender Stratocaster by his side – and he has a vast collection of them – but he says the guitars were not in vogue when he first started earning his stripes. His rise, though, helped give the guitar a second life.

With the one-two of 1984’s Rising Force, which introduced the world to his high octane neoclassical shredding, and Marching Out one year later, Malmsteen proved a force to be reckoned with. In the age of Kramers, Jacksons, and Ibanez speed machines, championed by the likes of Eddie Van Halen and Steve Vai, he proved an outlier by doing it all on a humble Strat.

“The Strat was about as ‘out’ as you could get,” he says in the latest issue of Gutiar World, during a chat that centers on his jaw-dropping sophomore release. “In the Eighties, the fucking Fender Strat, oh, man, like, dude, it’s like having an old car and someone saying, ‘Why are you driving that old piece of shit, man?’

“If you didn’t have a fucking Floyd Rose, it was like, ‘What the fuck are you doing?’ Literally, unless you were, like, a blues player, no one was playing Strats.”

Jimi Hendrix’s Stratocaster exploits were a big factor in Malmsteen shunning Floyd Rose-loaded axes, having been inspired to start playing by the legend's fiery ways.

“When I was seven, Jimi Hendrix died and they were showing footage of him on the TV,” he previously told Gutiar World. “I saw Jimi smashing and burning his guitar and thought, ‘Wow, this is pretty cool!’, so I picked my guitar up off the wall.

“I literally just picked up the guitar and started playing from that moment. I remember it so clearly.”

Another head-turning facet of Malmsteen’s beloved Strats is his preference of scalloped fretboards, where the fretboard wood is filed down between the frets. It was a discovery born out of wanting to fix a big issue with '70s Strats.

“In the early '70s, there was a lacquer on the fretboard that was really thick,” he told Fender last year. “I used to sand it off, and eventually started carving it out so I got a better grip of the strings.”

By '86, his Stratocaster pyrotechnics saw him team up with Fender for his first signature guitar, with the instrument's popularity on the upturn. But it took some convincing to have the company scallop the frets. Eventually Fender buckled, and the guitar was everything he'd wanted.

“They were very excited about the fact the Stratocaster got a revived interest,” he says. “I'll never forget it. Dan [Smith, Fender’s then-Director of Marketing] came to the studio, I was recording an album called Odyssey. He gave me the first model they ever made and said, ‘Tune it up.’

“I recorded the solo for Heaven Tonight on that guitar without changing strings – nothing. To this day I’m still so honored.”

To read Malmsteen’s interview in full, alongside chats with Kiki Wong and Third Man Hardware's Dan Mancini, grab a copy of Guitar World from Magazines Direct.

When it comes to shred, few guitarists can match the speed and ferocity with which Yngwie Malmsteen plays – and now the Swedish virtuoso has lifted the lid on one of his biggest secrets to nimble shredding: thick guitar picks.

In a new interview, MusicRadar draws parallels between Bach’s piece, Badinerie – which translates to “quick, light movements” – and the way Malmsteen approaches technique. But he is quick to quash such thoughts.

“That’s funny you should say that,” he says. “All of those things, economic picking, economic fretting, neoclassical this or whatever, all these phrases – all these titles of technique! – people said that after they saw me play. I never thought about those things.

“All I cared about from day one since I started, was what I heard. I didn’t think so much how to do it.”

But there is one caveat – he quickly learned how the right guitar pick could aid his super-fast shredding, while the wrong pick got in the way of his need for speed. That, he says, was a game-changer.

“I realized that if you had a pick that was bending, you couldn’t really play accurately,” he continues. “Your brain orders your hand to make a movement and coordinate it with the left hand but if there’s a bend [in the pick] there’s a slight latency in there. You can’t be super accurate with your left and right hand if you don’t have a totally hard pick. It doesn’t work.”

Thick picks aren't always going to guarantee fast playing, though, and Malmsteen's comments will no doubt clash with the beliefs of Paul Gilbert, who surprised guitarists back in 2021 when he revealed his newfound affinity for ultra-thin 0.50mm picks.

The importance the humble guitar pick plays in a guitarist’s overall sound and ability to nail certain techniques is often overlooked. There have been several attempts to revolutionize our relationship with the unsuspecting string hitters in recent years, including the 3D PickTwist, which has been designed to bolster a player's abilities and never fall out of their hand in the process.

Meanwhile, Fender has launched Offset Guitar Picks, which Guitar World's Michael Astley-Brown found served a host of benefits.

“I felt more emboldened to throw in swept and alternate-picked runs. It genuinely felt like I was playing better than ever,” he declared after some thorough testing.

Meanwhile, some players prefer to go pick-free. Jeff Beck famously never played with one, and Matteo Mancuso has labeled playing with a pick his “weak point”, while Jared James Nichols found finger-picking to be a far more expressive way of playing.

Yngwie Malmsteen is a certified member of the electric guitar elite, but his spot on the prestigious G3 tour in 2003 came with a few unique challenges for co-shredder and show leader, Joe Satriani.

Malmsteen was brought to the masses by a 1983 spotlight column by Guitar Player, which sought to unearth the world’s next hot shot guitar hero. The game-changing fireworks of his neo-classical debut, Rising Force, then saw his stock skyrocket.

By 2003, Malmsteen had rightfully earned a spot on the coveted G3 tour – an event masterminded by Joe Satriani, which has seen its founder lock fretboards with a who's-who of players, including Steve Vai, Paul Gilbert, Steve Morse, and John Petrucci.

Naturally, organizing mega-money tours with such big names will come with complications – Robert Fripp had a strange rule for his 2004 appearance, for instance – and Malmsteen’s involvement proved to be no exception.

“Some guys are really straight-ahead. Like Eric [Johnson], Steve [Vai], and myself, we’re not demanding when it comes to what we need before we head out on stage,” Satriani says in the new issue of Classic Rock.

“And then other performers need a little more stuff. You have two extremes. Robert Fripp said: ‘No lights on me, I want to sit down and I want to be behind everybody.’ So it was sort of an ‘un-demand’. And of course Yngwie [Malmsteen]... I mean, if you invite him, you have to just say: ‘I know what I’m inviting.’

“To Yngwie’s credit, he always plays so great and always puts on the Yngwie Malmsteen show,” Satch adds, before turning his attention to the more problematic side of having him a star of the show.

“The only problem that I would have is that sometimes he wouldn’t pay attention to other things happening on stage when his bit was done. He’s not used to not being the focus of the show.

“So as show leader, I’d just take a deep breath and say: ‘I have to understand that Yngwie’s not used to this kind of thing.’ So we’d be as gentle as possible. Like, I’d say, ‘When Steve’s soloing, don’t throw your guitar up in the air right next to him, because he’s got his eyes closed. I don't want him to get hit in the head!’”

Satriani reformed the original G3 line-up of Satriani, Johnson, and Vai last year, with notable guest spots across the tour courtesy of Plini, Nita Strauss, and a special one-off appearance, Satch’s son, ZZ Satriani.

Meanwhile, Malmsteen was busy listing his #4 Stratocaster for sale on Reverb, and it came with a free Ferrari. He's also released a new signature MXR overdrive pedal.

Visit Magazines Direct to pick up the new issue of Classic Rock.

This month’s guest on Bought & Sold needs no introduction but we’re gonna give him one anyway, because his name is Yngwie Malmsteen and there is no-one quite like him.

In his own way, he is a renaissance man who loves Ritchie Blackmore and Niccolò Paganini alike. But ultimately the neoclassical shred icon is a man of simple tastes. Fender Stratocasters. Marshall amps. Seymour Duncan electric guitar pickups. Ferraris. He finally realised a long-held ambition to fire a gun in the studio as a drum trigger when he recorded 2021 studio album Parabellum.

Little wonder he makes for such a great conversation…

What’s the first serious guitar that you bought with your own money?

“Well, if you want to be serious but it involves no money, the first guitar that I actually got was on my fifth birthday. When I turned five years old, I got a guitar and that guitar was the one [on which] to learn how to play. And this was a piece of shit, you know? And then my older brother, he also plays guitar, too.

“I started getting better, and he said, ‘The kid’s getting better. I’ve got to show him up.’ Anyway, my brother’s electric guitar was around, and I would play it all the time because he was never there. He was running around with girls and stuff.”

“After seeing him playing the guitar, I got an exact copy Strat. I was nine or around that age, and it really wasn’t very good; it was bad. And then, I got my first real Fender when I was around 12 years old.”

What was the last guitar you bought and why?

“You know, that’s a funny thing because I actually haven’t bought a guitar for years. I used to all the time, though. There was a place in Sweden that I’d go to when I went home to visit; I’d always walk away with some expensive guitars. I used to go into some really good vintage stores here in Miami, too. But I really can’t remember the last time I did.”

What’s the most incredible find or bargain you’ve ever had when buying guitars?

“Quite a few, actually. When I was on tour in 1985, I got a Strat from a kid who basically had this ’56 Strat and he didn’t like it; he thought it was shit. So I bought it from him for, like, nothing. And then I guess the ’54 Strat is one I can’t put a price tag on – the guy I bought it from is the biggest dealer in Sweden and he was kind of crying when I walked away with the guitar. He really didn’t want to sell it.”

“But I collect other things. I collect watches, cars, guns, you know? I have a lot of shit that I’m collecting. I still have some amazing guitars… I mean, I’m looking at this ’68, I wish you could see it, it’s so fucking nice. It’s blonde with a maple neck. It’s incredible. That was my main guitar for a long time.

“Oh, and then there was the guitar I came to America with when I was 18. I came to America with a guitar and a toothbrush. That guitar is on the cover of my Rising Force album. But now it’s all beat up. It’s called the ‘Duck’ or the ‘Play Loud’ guitar. Fender made hundreds of exact replicas of it.”

What’s the strongest case of buyer’s remorse you’ve ever had after buying gear?

“Well, if that happened way back when I’d just go back and get rid of it. So it was never like I was stuck with it or something. And I’ve had some really interesting guitars: I’ve got a guitar that Brian May gave me, one of [Ritchie] Blackmore’s guitars, Steve Vai gave me one of his guitars, so did Neal Schon, and Uli Jon Roth gave me one, too. I’ve got a lot of cool ones.”

Have you ever sold a guitar that you now intensely regret letting go?

“No, not really. If I let it go, it was probably meant to be let go. It probably would have gone to a better home. I mean, if it’s just sitting in a big pile, there’s no point.”

What’s your best guitar-buying tip?

“My best tip is to go straight to the store and get a white YJM Fender Stratocaster – you want a Fender Stratocaster Yngwie Malmsteen signature model. That would be the end-all-be-all guitar you can go to war with and always win.”

If forced to make a choice, would you rather buy a really good guitar and a cheap amp, or a cheap guitar and a top-notch amp?

“You know, I really wouldn’t want to have any of these combinations [laughs]. But you can make a shitty guitar work, actually; you can do that. Because you can always overcome the physical crappiness of a guitar.

“But if the guitar is good, a bad amp is not gonna make it worthwhile because it’s not going to produce anything; it won’t work. It’s kind of a strange hypothetical, though, because I would never allow that to happen. But there you go.”

When was the last time you stopped and looked in a guitar shop window or browsed online and what were you looking at?

“It’s funny because I have my own studio now and I buy studio gear. I have some pretty sick stuff – all the tube compressors, Neve [console], recording stuff, some very expensive microphones.

“That’s kind of cool because the best converters for the Pro Tools and all this stuff… that’s really what I’ve been looking at. But the amps and guitars are a no-brainer for me. I’ve got the best; that’s it. They never make bad ones. That’s it. They don’t get better for me.”

If you could only use humbuckers or single coils for the rest of your career, which would it be and why?

“See, when I came to America it was different. There’s 60-cycle electric here in America, but in Sweden and Europe, it was 50-cycle, so it hums less with a single coil. I was using these single-coil pickups that were kind of a little hotter, but I came to America and they sounded like shit.

“So I spoke to somebody DiMarzio and they said, ‘Oh, no worries. We’ll send you a PAF now.’ And I said, ‘I’m not using a PAF.’ Everybody and their grandmother would put a PAF in their Strat, right? Not me. So, I said, ‘Hey, why don’t you take the coils and put them on top of each other instead of side by side? You can stack the humbuckers and make them look like a single coil.’”

“So that’s what they did. And now, of course, the best pickup money can buy is the Seymour Duncan Yngwie J Malmsteen [YJM] Fury pickup. It’s perfection, really – because when I first did the stacked single-coil-looking humbucker back in the ’80s, it was only to kill the noise.

“They never really got the tone right. They didn’t have the capacity or something. But Seymour Duncan did it for me about 15 years ago and it’s unbelievable.

“I think that those Gibson [PAF] pickups sound great, are really cool, and people like Van Halen did amazing stuff with them. But, for me, it’s not preferable because it’s less of an attack sound. It’s mellower, softer and tends not to be as cutting. That’s not what I want.

“Having said that, I actually have a 1968 [Gibson] Flying V here with Strat pickups in it. It’s kind of crazy… Anyway, for me, the Stratocaster pickup layout is the way to go. But the original pickups are not what I want. I have the Seymour Duncan ones that look exactly the same, but the sound is perfect.”

• Malmsteen plays Yokohama, Japan, on December 20. See Yngwie Malmsteen for more details.

Hailed by countless fans and critics as the dawn of the shred guitar revolution, Yngwie Malmsteen’s Grammy-nominated solo debut Rising Force built on earlier flashes of genius (in Steeler and Alcatrazz), with a jaw-dropping display of mechanical mastery, classically influenced themes, and reckless, extended soloing.

In a time when two-handed tapping was the technique of choice among the big-hair population, Yngwie put Harmonic Minor, baroque-fused themes, ferocious picking, and sweeping arpeggios on the rock agenda.

Mechanically, Malmsteen has a very systemised way of getting around, and almost never plays himself into a corner with a musical idea that isn’t perfectly matched with a technical approach.

In the scalar picking realm, Malmsteen moves freely between shifting single-string sequences (Example 1), ascending economy picking runs (Example 2, bar 1), and alternate picking lines that take advantage of even numbers to line up the start of each new string with a downstroke (Example 3).

Whenever shredding through lines that seem to veer from the aforementioned picking strategies, a legato approach provides the get-out-of-jail card to finish playing one string and get to the next with
a downstroke (Example 2, bar 4).

Arpeggios (Examples 5-8) are another trademark of the Swede, and they have their own rules. Descending arpeggios almost always begin with an upstroke and pull-off, with ascending parts prioritised with as many consecutive downstrokes as possible.

Yngwie’s most-utilised sweep picking form links up inversions of Minor triads across the first three strings, pitting them against the darker counterpart of Diminished 7th arpeggios.

A signature of his baroque melodic vocabulary, pedal-tone licks feature heavily in Malmsteen’s interludes. Calling on single (Example 9) and two-note (Examples 10-12) pedal points to pivot off, his pedal-tone lickbag uses consistent alternate picking.

As you put all of these devices to work in the final solo etude, I’d heartily recommend that you isolate each one or two-bar phrase for separate study, after which you can connect them again at a slower pace.

Pay close attention to the note groupings as Malmsteen often contrasts regimented 16th-note phrases with burst of tuplets containing more notes to cram in. While the examples are written using the A Natural and Harmonic Minor scales, Malmsteen’s E-flat tuning means they will sound a semitone lower than written.

Good luck, and enjoy!

Get the tone

Amp Settings: Gain 9, Bass 7, Middle 6, Treble 7, Reverb 4

Although he uses very light strings Malmsteen pulls a huge sound out of his scalloped-fretboard Fender Stratocaster. Naturally a Strat-style guitar with single-coil pickups makes for a good start, followed by a high-gain overdrive pedal into a plexi-style Marshall amp tone. But any guitar will recreate a great rock tone, and you might want to add ambient delay or reverb.

Examples 1-4.

Example 1.
Single-string sequences like this require not only efficient down and upstrokes, but good synchronisation with the position shifts. Take your time locking in each ‘unit’ or ‘cell’ of the lick before speeding up.

Example 2.
Malmsteen’s Minor scale usage switches between playing Minor or Major 7th degrees and often both! A single-string sequence connects up two mechanical approaches or devices to regular scale picking.

Example 3.
This trademark descending Phrygian Dominant line is mostly alternate picked, something for which Malmsteen reserves even numbers of notes per string.

Example 4.
Here ascending economy picking meets a circular lick on the second and first strings. Malmsteen will loop the top part of the lick, as in bars 2-3, as many times as he feels like when improvisation.

Examples 5-8.

Example 5.
For a controlled sound of these double-stops, roll back the volume knob a little and apply palm muting. A percussive pick attack will really help them ‘pop’.

Example 6.
This slippery, sliding series of Diminished triads works perfectly as a dark sound over a Dominant chord (here a b9) in a Minor key. Starting each one on an upstroke keeps the downward and ascending sweeps coming.

Example 7.
These Minor triad and Diminished 7th arpeggio inversions repeat Malmsteen’s mechanical habit of beginning each descent on an upstroke and each ascent with a downstroke. Once you’ve broken the code things become more logical.

Example 8.
These sextuplet Diminished 7th arpeggios pair with the equally dark Phrygian Dominant mode. Bar 2 also includes the Minor 3rd interval as a passing tone that Yngwie uses for fingering symmetry and convenience.

Examples 9-12.

Example 9.
A single pedal-point is used here, with bars 1 and 3 descending from pivoting off E notes, and the in-between bar (bar 2) from F notes.

Example 10.
This time, two pitches are used to create a three-note pedal note in each bar. Malmsteen avoids using his third and fourth fingers together, so semitone pedal-pairs are fretted using the second and third digits instead.

Example 11.
This turns the two-note pedal form into a single-string sequence for a very JS Bach-inspired motif. Each beat offers a new iteration of the basic theme.

Example 12.
Moving from string to string in this diagonal Harmonic Minor pattern puts wider intervals between each example of the pedal-tone lick.

Example 13. Full solo

Malmsteen often deliberately ‘rushes’ to include more notes per phrase, so you’ll see several tuplets of less conventional groups beamed across two beats.

Approach these runs in free time as steady 16th notes, then accelerate to the point where each group will occupy two beats of the bar.

Guitar Player magazine, the world's oldest continuously published magazine devoted to guitarists, guitar gear, and instruction, will cease print publication after 57 years, its Editor-in-Chief, Chris Scapelliti, announced today.

The magazine's final issue will go on sale next week, October 15, and will feature a conversation with Jimmy Page about the gear he used in Led Zeppelin's catalog, and his newly re-kindled relationship with Gibson.

Founded by Bud Eastman, Guitar Player was a pioneering publication, capturing the excitement and innovation driven by the electric guitar's post-Beatles explosion into a regular print publication for the first time.

Even decades after the Summer of Love, GP continued to drive the guitar conversation.

To name but one example, the February 1983 issue alone introduced to the world two guitarists you might have heard of: Paul Gilbert and Yngwie Malmsteen.

Talking to Guitar World earlier this year about his legendary guitar-slinging performance in the 1986 movie, Crossroads, Steve Vai explained that it was none other than Guitar Player that landed him the role.

“The guitar duel scene with Ry Cooder wasn’t working,” Vai said. “Ry Cooder [the film’s composer] called up Guitar Player and asked who the new hotshot on the block was.”

“You have witnessed a revolution,” Chris Scapelliti writes in his final GP magazine editorial.

“When Guitar Player made its debut in 1967, it marked a new era for guitar. For the first time, the instrument was celebrated in a regularly published magazine devoted to furthering guitarists, guitar gear and its makers, and guitar virtuosity. What founder Bud Eastman began laid the first stone of an empire that would go on to launch many other magazines – including Bass Player, Frets, and Keyboard – publish books, release records and videos, and much more.

“Guitar Player’s success also opened the door for numerous other titles, including our sister magazine Guitar World, further enriching the lives of guitarists everywhere. And now our print run has come to an end.

“With this [December 2024] issue, Guitar Player will move fully online to guitarplayer.com, where we’ll continue to bring you the same great content you’ve come to expect, as well as video interviews and lessons, and more.”

The December 2024 issue of Guitar Player will be available for purchase starting next week, October 15, on Magazines Direct.

Yngwie Malmsteen's #4 Fender Stratocaster, one of his main guitars throughout his illustrious career, has just been put up for sale for a whopping $175,000. However, what makes this listing truly unique is its unusual pairing: whoever buys the guitar also gets Malmsteen's personal 1983 Ferrari 308 GTS Quattrovalvole.

“This guitar is a significant piece of rock history, directly connected to one of the greatest guitarists of all time,” comments a representative of Walt Grace Vintage, the company responsible for the sale.

“It's known for shaping his unmistakable neoclassical sound, has seen stages around the world and holds the magic of Malmsteen’s fast-paced, virtuosic playing.”

Construction-wise, the vintage white Strat features an alder body and, as typical of Malmsteen's guitars, a scalloped maple fretboard with 21 super jumbo frets.

Furthermore, it comes fully equipped with a 6-Saddle American Vintage synchronized tremolo bridge and Seymour Duncan YJM Fury STK-S10B pickups – Malmsteen's very own signature pickups.

The bonus Ferrari is a recently serviced Rosso Corsa European model, which has been featured in movies such as Magnum P.I., National Lampoon's Vacation, and Beverly Hills Cop.

In a 2024 Guitar World interview, Malmsteen talked about the reasoning behind the scalloped fretboard and why the Strat remains his go-to model.

“Leo Fender was the Thomas Edison of guitars. He didn’t even know how to play an E chord; he wasn’t a guitar player, but the contoured body and the horn that goes higher on one side than the other – it’s all about weight distribution. You put it on your knee, and it won’t fall back or fall forward; it’s perfect. It just feels perfect,” he said.

“The thing that I always considered, which is very important, is that it really, truly is a thing of beauty. It’s such a beautiful instrument. I did some things, like put bigger frets and scallops on the guitars, but other than that, I kept them stock.

“The principle [and] the concept of scalloping, it’s just a different way of getting to that point. I’m a ‘more is more’ kind of person, so I scalloped the neck really deeply and put high frets on it, so I’m just a freak all around.”

The listing is still open, but the guitar is predicted to sell soon. For more information, visit Reverb.

MXR has continued its signature stompbox hot streak by releasing a Yngwie Malmsteen overdrive pedal.

The effects firm’s latest drive pedal is the result of a close collaboration with the Swedish guitar maestro, and has been “perfectly tailored” to enhance the full throttle neoclassical shred skills that Malmsteen is known for.

Given the sheer volume of notes that the Fender Stratocaster loyalist barrels his way through every time he plays the electric guitar, top-tier clarity and dynamics – especially at high gain – are imperative to prevent a slurry of indistinguishable notes.

To that end, the MXR Yngwie Malmsteen Overdrive utilizes a circuit that promises clarity, expressive dynamics and rich harmonics, which are optimized for fast arpeggios and dense vibratos.

It’s a fairly simple pedal, with just Level and Gain parameters, a single bypass footswitch and a red finish. If anything, at first glance, it looks awfully similar to his old Fender signature overdrive pedal, which, until as recently as 2022, has been the only overdrive that featured on the neoclassical shredder’s pedalboard.

As such, it seems this MXR variant will usurp the Fender pedal as Malmsteen’s overdrive of choice and, as someone who’s not known for his enthusiastic and comprehensive usage of drive pedals, will use the MXR as the foundation of his tone.

All in all, it looks like a pedal that will cater to not just Ynwgie fans, but also those who are hunting for an especially dynamic drive. For Malmsteen, the broader appeal of his newest signature product is clear.

“This pedal is the culmination of 45-plus years developing a sound that’s perfect in every possible way,” he says. “I present to you: the MXR Yngwie Malmsteen Overdrive. Prepare to be amazed.”

The Yngwie Malmsteen overdrive pedal is available now for $129, and is available in an exclusive yellow finish from Sweetwater.

Head over to MXR to find out more.

In other MXR news, the company recently launched its long-delayed Randy Rhoads Distortion+ and unveiled its wild Layers soundscaping pedal.

Marty Friedman recently revealed he was turned away from a KISS audition for being “too short”. At 5’7, the former Megadeth guitarist didn't meet the band's visual and height requirements.

In a recent interview with Sam Ash [via NME], Friedman was asked which KISS song he would have liked to play guitar on. He replied, “I would’ve wanted to be on any KISS song. I’ll give you a quick story about that. When they were changing guitar players a long time ago, I got a call from KISS’ people.

“They say, ‘Do you think you’d be interested in auditioning for KISS?’ I’m like ‘Tell me when and where.’ They came back and were like, ‘We’ve got a couple of questions for you. You don’t have any facial hair, do you?’ No.

“‘You got long hair right?’ Right. ‘You’re skinny right?’ Right. ‘And you’re over 6 feet tall?’ and I’m like, ‘What? I’m 5’7 but I’ll have an operation, I’ll do something.’ And they were like “‘I’m sorry, it’s not going to work out.’ I was so bummed.”

Almost all of the original KISS members, bar Peter Criss, are taller than six feet. Gene Simmons, Ace Frehley, and Paul Stanley were typically outfitted in platform boots for their live shows, which made them appear even taller.

This isn’t the first time KISS turned away a promising member due to their strict aesthetic demands. Yngwie Malmsteen missed out on a spot because he mistakenly gave his height in centimeters, the metric system used in Europe, rather than in the U.S.-preferred feet and inches.

Conversely, White Lion's Vito Bratta was rejected because his name was deemed “too ethnic” by the KISS team, who also suggested that he change his name.

In other Marty Friedman news, last year, the ex-Megadeth lead guitarist revealed he also took part in an ill-fated Ozzy Osbourne audition.

If we think of Yngwie Malmsteen as this sort of Arthurian knight figure of guitar, a neoclassical bolt from the heavens made flesh and bone, then he of course would need an Excalibur to execute his daily business – and for the Swedish virtuoso, that has always been and forever will be the Fender Stratocaster.

All kinds of players have picked up a Strat. It is so versatile. Its ergonomics are so amendable to human physiology. It is a miracle of design. None have taken the Strat to the places Malmsteen has taken it, right out there past the great beyond, rendering arpeggios through the ether of time and space, Niccolò Paganini’s influence echoing an eternity through a massed wall of Marshall amps.

With the Strat celebrating 70 trips around the sun, we checked in with Guitar World cover stars of yore to talk about the Stratocasters they were pictured with on their various cover shoots, and inevitably we come to Mr Yngwie J. Malmsteen, shred god, far beyond driven, and, as it turns out, a connoisseur of the traditional Stratocaster aesthetic…

Where and when did you get these Strats?

“I probably got the ’70s Strat [1986 cover] somewhere in L.A. the day before the shoot. The Candy Apple Red Strat [1987 cover] wasn’t even mine! It was just something that was probably lying around in the studio. [Editor’s note: While editing this feature, we noticed that on page 6 of the January 1987 issue, it says, ‘1964 Candy Apple Red Fender Strat graciously provided by Mr. Danny Shea of New York City for this shoot.’ We would have shared this info with Yngwie, but our interview took place about a month before we made this Sherlock Holmesian discovery. – Damian Fanelli]”

Why did you choose these Strats for your GW photo shoots?

“The Sunburst was just a guitar I had because I got it the day before, so I said, ‘Well, I’ll just use this.’ But it’s funny because I didn’t really use guitars with rosewood necks, and I think I changed the neck out for a maple one later. The red one, like I said, wasn’t mine; it was just there. If you look at it, the neck isn’t even scalloped; it’s not like a guitar I’d play.”

Did you use the ’70s Strat on any notable recordings?

“No, I don’t think I did. Back then, I started getting really into the ’60s Strats. It was weird because the trend was to use Charvels, which were really good guitars, and stuff like that. I was really into the way things looked. I was on the road, and I found this 1956 Strat, and I got it for, like, nothing. Nobody wanted it, and I used it for a long time. I also bought a ’60 or ’61 Strat in L.A. not long before a magazine photoshoot, and I started using that a lot, too.”

Do you still own the ’70s Strat?

“I probably still own it, but I think I swapped the neck.”

Did it feel odd using older Strats in an era when hot-rod guitars were so popular?

“Yes and no; the funny thing is I was never too concerned with what other people did. As far as what kind of equipment I gravitated toward, I probably was the only person on the planet who didn’t use the Floyd Rose or humbucking pickups. Even with scalloped frets – I did it because it felt natural. I didn’t want to cheat. It ain’t broke, don’t fix it. That was my philosophy.”

Aside from the scalloped frets, why didn’t you modify your Strats much?

“The thing that I always considered, which is very important, is that it really, truly is a thing of beauty. It’s such a beautiful instrument. It’s amazing. I think when people started hacking them up and putting humbuckers in them and stuff, it ruined the look.

“I did some things, like put bigger frets and scallops on the guitars, but other than that, I kept them stock. And I never understood what the problem was with the tremolos. It never goes out of tune for me!”

Why did you start scalloping the frets?

“The principle [and] the concept of scalloping, it’s just a different way of getting to that point. I’m a ‘more is more’ kind of person, so I scalloped the neck really deeply and put high frets on it, so I’m just a freak all around.

“When I was a little kid, I didn’t really spend much time in school because I had to play guitar; that was more important to me than going to school. Funnily enough, I had straight A’s anyway!

“Since I didn’t really go to school, they said, ‘You go to this luthier shop; they need somebody to teach,’ so I said, ‘Why not?’ They were wearing lab coats and working on 17th-century violins and stuff like that. It was very high-tech and high-level. And this old instrument came in, and it had this scalloped look to it.

“As a kid, I was interested in model planes and things like this; I didn’t mind cutting stuff up and changing my [guitar’s] neck. So I just scalloped between the frets and said, ‘Wow, this is kind of cool,’ because the wood didn’t get in your way.

“I started doing that little by little on my better guitars, and the funny thing is, I didn’t know that other people actually did that too. I had no idea because there was no way I’d find that information in the 1970s in Sweden.”

You mentioned you didn’t use rosewood-necked Strats much. Why did you prefer maple? Is it because maple has a snappier sound?

“You’re gonna laugh at this. I think it looked better. [Laughs] I think the big headstock looks better, too. It’s a better-looking guitar! I actually like rosewood necks; I like a white cream Strat with a roasted neck; it looks superb. I don’t dislike them by any stretch. I have many of them. I love them, but I guess I also prefer the snappier sound [of maple]. Yeah, you’re right; maple seems to be a little snappier.”

I get the feeling you’re almost one with the Strat. Why is that the case?

“Leo Fender was the Thomas Edison of guitars. He didn’t even know how to play an E chord; he wasn’t a guitar player, but the contoured body and the horn that goes higher on one side than the other – it’s all about weight distribution. You put it on your knee, and it won’t fall back or fall forward; it’s perfect. It just feels perfect.

“The limitation, I would say, would be in the pickups. If you turn it up, it’s going to start humming a lot. But I was so in favor of the way the guitar looked that I refused to put humbuckers in. I wasn’t really a big fan of that; I was more of a fan of the more direct tone of the Strat. It’s very unforgiving, and the instrument is very unforgiving.

“It’s got a longer scale and a smaller radius neck. You can have the action as low as you can, but the string is going to be tougher. It’s just harder work, but it seems to me that everybody who plays them has a very personal sound, whereas a lot of people who play other instruments have a little less.”

Where would you be without the Fender Stratocaster?

“It’s an interesting question. It’s the same thing as asking where you think I would have been if I didn’t come to America. I think that one way or the other, I would have found my way to the point that I am now because I was just so relentless, and I am actually still [relentless].

“It’s really funny. I wake up every day and have this relentless drive; it’s ridiculous. I think the instrument, obviously, to me, was the pinnacle of an instrument. I worked really hard to buy my first one, and then, of course, when I had the honor of having not only a signature model and the first one but also a 30th-anniversary signature model with Custom Shop and a tribute model, and so on.

“I’m extremely honored by that. When you persevere and stay true to your vision, you will always find that at the end of the rainbow, there’s something there for you.”

Yngwie Malmsteen possesses superhuman levels of electric guitar speed that we mere mortals could only achieve if we practiced day in, day out, for a very, very long time.

As such, you’d probably expect Malmsteen to tell you that practice is indeed the key to achieving such fluid powers of fretboard navigation, and that he himself spent years chipping away at his own practice routine to reach the level he’s at today.

However, it turns out the Swedish speed demon doesn’t practice at all… and he never did.

Malmsteen made the admission in a recent interview with France’s United Rock Nations during the Hellfest Festival.

During a discussion of his practice regime as an up-and-coming shredder, Malmsteen casually says (via MusicRadar), “I didn't practice. I never practiced – never practiced ever.”

“I played as if I was performing,” he explains. “I wouldn't accept myself going [Yngwie hums what seems to be an illustration of playing a scale]. Never. I [would be] telling myself, 'Don't sound like you're fucking trying to do something. Do it.'

"[I committed to] mental focus so much that it became just every day more and better and better and better. I never practiced.”

Now, while Malmsteen was adamant that he “never practiced”, it’s important to caveat his claims with the observation that practice materializes in many different ways, and different players will have different definitions for what constitutes ‘practice’.

For some, practice on the guitar will involve going over scales, memorizing certain boxes, and learning the modes inside and out, front to back. Malmsteen, clearly, does not share this view.

Others, meanwhile, may see practice as a more fluid concept, and this is where Malmsteen’s own school of thought lies. As he admits, while he never bothered with regimented scale exercises, he did make the effort to improvise solos, licks and riffs – something that could indirectly be noted as ‘practice’.

“I mean, it's inadvertently practicing, because I played so much,” he continues. “But I improvised. And I would say, 'I wanna improvise in A harmonic minor,' for instance.

“[I was playing guitar] like crazy, improvising. Not scales. I mean, obviously scales. I'm very well aware of music theory – I know it super-well – but I would never practice. That's the wrong word.”

So, don’t let the takeaway from this story be, “You don’t need to practice.” You do, of course – you should just find a way to practice that you enjoy, and lets you develop the areas you wish to improve. A basic understanding of scales wouldn't hurt, though...

Tom Morello has had a busy few weeks. He’s dropped a surprise single with Def Leppard, announced his first solo rock album, and been gifted a guitar from While She Sleeps’ Sean Long. Now he’s opened up on the moment that changed his guitar playing forever.

In a new conversation with Guitar Interactive Magazine at Download Festival in the UK, the Whammy-loving electric guitar trailblazer discusses what proved to be a pivotal turning point in his career.

“I was playing solos that sounded like every other heavy metal guitar player. I was really great at it and it didn't matter at all,” he reflects. “So, rather than being a musician, I concentrated on being an artist. Instead of trying to be famous, I made music that was completely authentic.”

As for the moment that encouraged him to pivot away from traditional shredding in favor of the style he is now known for today, he continues: “It was really in the earliest years of Rage Against The Machine that I began to self-identify as a DJ.

“We were opening up for two cover bands in a college on a Wednesday afternoon – a throwaway gig. At soundcheck each of the other bands had a top-notch Yngwie Malmsteen-level shredding guitar player, and that’s what I was trying to be.

“If some awful gig already has two of those dudes, it doesn’t need a third hamster running on that wheel.” His solution? Practice making mistakes.

“I started practicing guitar eight hours a day. I started practicing mistakes. I started deconstructing the instrument. It was just a piece of wood with some wires and some electronics.

“And if I can make a noise, then that noise can be the centerpiece of a song or a solo. That was the moment I stopped being a musician and started being an artist.”

That 'eight hours of practice a day' mantra is something Morello has often spoke of over the years.

It’s a work ethic his son, Roman, has taken on board. Morello Sr. has already said how his son can “shred circles around him” on the guitar. Now he’s set to feature on the first single from Tom Morello’s forthcoming solo album.

“There's a shredding guitar solo on there. I wish I could say it was me,” he says of the track. “During lockdown when everyone was baking bread, he was putting in his eight hours a day.

“One day I was walking by his bedroom and he was playing these awesome drop D riffs. He said, 'Dad do you think these riffs go together?' and I was like, 'Yeah! Those riffs go together, let's do this.'

“So he wrote the riffs, and did the solo as well and it's the heaviest single I've released in some time.”

The song, called Soldier in the Army of Love, will drop on June 28, with the full album due for release later this year.

Swedish shred legend Yngwie Malmsteen has become the latest guitarist to feature on Fender’s Stratocaster Sessions series, following episodes with Buddy Guy and Tom Morello. 

During the interview, the obsessive Strat collector talked through some of his favorite Stratocasters, and spoke about the guitar-playing journey that led to the creation of his signature guitar in 1986.

He says his journey began when he saw Jimi Hendrix smashing up a guitar on TV when he was seven years old, adding that he “took the guitar I already had off the wall I started playing like crazy”.

He recalls: “An electric guitar was always what I wanted, nothing else, so when I got my first Strat I was very proud, but I wanted more than one, so I started my collection journey immediately.”

When he first fell in love with the guitar, he started making modifications long before he owned his first Strat. 

“I would do things like change the pickups and put frets in,” he details. “So, once I got a Strat, I wasn't afraid to do things. 

“In the early '70s, there was a lacquer on the fretboard that was really thick. I used to sand it off, and eventually started carving it out so I got a better grip of the strings. That was one of the main reasons that there became scalloping and railroad tracks for frets.” 

Having “come to America with one guitar and one toothbrush,” Malmsteen blazed a trail with his lightning-fast arpeggios and a playing style he describes as “fluid, like a nuclear violin”. 

By ‘86, he’d helped revive interest in the Stratocaster, and so Fender approached him for a signature model.

“I was playing The Long Beach Arena in California and Dan Smith [Fender’s then-Director of Marketing] came, took photos of my guitar, and said, 'We want to make a signature model' – I didn't even know what a signature model was, to be honest with you!” 

There was a back and forth regarding the scalloped fretboard – which removes extra wood from the 'board – with Fender eventually buckling and creating the guitar as per Malmsteen's wishes. 

“They were very excited about the fact the Stratocaster got a revived interest,” he says. “I'll never forget it. Dan came to the studio, I was recording an album called Odyssey. He gave me the first model ever they made and said, 'Tune it up.' 

“I recorded the solo for Heaven Tonight on that guitar without changing strings – nothing. To this day I’m still so honored.” 

The guitar was based on the Stratocaster that Malmsteen traveled to America with: a 1971 model with a one-piece maple neck and a maple fretboard. 

“70 years ago it was a very futuristic design, and it still is now,” Malmsteen says of the Stratocaster. “I've been playing Strats all my life. This is my favorite weapon. It's kind of a part of me.”

Despite his affection for the Stratocaster, Malmsteen recently revealed there is one particular spec he isn't too fond of. 

Dweezil Zappa may have bitten off more than he can chew with his uber-ambitious project, What the Hell Was I Thinking? But, 35 years after starting it, he’s revealed he’s just about ready to get the mammoth composition over the line. 

The track features “at least 40” A-List electric guitar heroes – Steve Vai, Brian May, Steve Morse, Angus and Malcolm Young, and even the late Eddie Van Halen have all laid down solos for it – and thanks to new tech, its release may not be too far off.  

Guesting on The Vinyl Guide podcast, Zappa discussed the track’s origins and ambitions, and why new technology is helping advance the project in a way that wouldn’t have been possible when he started it in 1989.  

“The idea was that it was a continuous piece of music that’s morphing all the time,” he says. “It changes from style to style, and the atmosphere where the music is taking place also changes – so it might go from being like an old-time record sound to a live music hall.

“This project is going to be great for [Dolby] Atmos because it is a totally immersive experience,” he continues. “So that’s what I am going to focus on when I have time to try to wrap it up. But I have been working on that thing since 1990, or even 1989. It’s a long time coming.” 

Several anecdotes regarding the work in progress have surfaced over the years, with Dweezil now revealing he forced Yngwie Malmsteen out of his comfort zone with a slow blues solo: “He sounds even faster,” Zappa tells The Vinyl Guide.

As for Eddie Van Halen's part, that sounds equally intriguing.

“Edward’s part was really cool, because it was done at 5150 and he used his original amp – the one that’s on the first few records – and he hadn’t used it in a long time at that point,” he recalls.

“The main solo – he had two solos – but the main solo is kind of like a greatest hits of all of his best guitar licks. It was kind of a joke. I said, ‘Why don’t we do this thing where we put all these licks that are from your solos… we’ll see if we can find a way to connect them.’”

However, a key issue with a recording project that spans over three decades is that some solos were tracked analog and needed to be digitized. That, he explains, isn’t a straightforward process. 

Despite the project's protracted creation, Zappa says he’s “not worried about it,” and that his “audio movie” will “be what it will be when it is time to hear it!” 

That means there’s still time for further guest stars. Dweezil’s door is still open to Eric Clapton, Jimmy Page, and David Gilmour – three players he's eager to bring on board.

Yngwie Malmsteen may have a signature Fender Stratocaster and be synonymous with his 'Duck' guitar. However, in a new interview with Guitarist, he reveals that he's not a huge fan of Strat pickups.

“When I was seven or eight years old, I bought a ‘Strat’, but it wasn’t a Fender; it was a bogus copy. But it was exact, you know?” he says.

“And the first thing I noticed was that I hated the pickups. So I went to the music store and they sold me something called a Fat Strat pickup, which was still a single coil, and it sounded way better.”

Despite moving on to Fender Strats proper, Malmsteen admits he still isn't a fan of some of their pickups: “That was the one and only thing I found with Strats that I don’t like: the pickups. I think they’re awful. But that’s just me.

“Because you’ll hear Hendrix and you hear all these other guys, and they sound great with them. I mean, my playing style is… different because it’s not only the blues, it’s more linear and I just play a very different style than most guitar players do. Other than that, man, fuck, the Strat is amazing.”

Malmsteen is partial to CBS-era Strats, however. “What people don’t understand about Strats is that Leo Fender sold the company to CBS in 1965, but it stayed at the same factory for another decade,” he said in a recent interview with Guitar World.

“So any Strat built up until 1975 will actually be really good. It started going downhill around the late '70s. People think '70s Fenders are bad, but that’s not actually correct.”

Given his preference, perhaps it comes as no surprise that Malmsteen has his own signature Strat pickups with Seymour Duncan that promise to “deliver The Fury”.

For more new interviews celebrating 70 years of the Fender Strat, pick up issue 511 of Guitarist at Magazines Direct.

Before there was an Yngwie Malmsteen, players like Ritchie Blackmore, Brian May and Uli Jon Roth had been experimenting with classical-inspired ideas in the context of hard rock, although it’s safe to say they remained very much rooted in the pentatonic blues. 

When the Swedish maverick unleashed his debut in 1984, however, it was unlike anything anyone had ever heard, and it would go on to kickstart a whole movement of guitarists dedicating their lives to neoclassical sounds. 

After brief stints in Steeler and Alcatrazz following his move to the U.S., Malmsteen wrapped up the recordings for Rising Force just before his 21st birthday. The guitar world was never the same again.

What do you remember about making your solo debut?

“I was still in Alcatrazz, but the label said we needed to do a solo album for Japan only. I called it Rising Force, which is the same name as a band I formed in 1978 – but that wasn’t a band; it was me writing everything. Every drummer and bassist from Sweden was in it at some point! I got Barrie Barlow from Jethro Tull on drums, a keyboard player [Jens Johansson] and that was it. 

“We started recording in a mobile truck studio, like bands did in the old days. It happened to be Stevie Wonder’s! It was all done quickly before a tour. Whenever I had a day off, I’d fly back and track a few solos. In July there was a big hoopla in the Alcatrazz camp and I decided to leave that shit!”

What happened next?

“I started working on Marching Out [1985], which was supposed to be the first proper release. But you could still buy import records in America and so many people went to the stores to order Rising Force that it hit the charts and took on a life of its own. There was no promotion, no radio, nothing. The label were going, ‘Fuck, we have to release this worldwide!’ I even got a Grammy nomination for it. I went on the road in 1985 with two records to promote.” 

Was the Duck your main Stratocaster on the record, presumably fed into a vintage Marshall plexi?

“Yeah, the Duck and another with a rosewood fingerboard in the same finish. There was also a natural model, too. I had a few by that point, all early Seventies models. What people don’t understand about Strats is that Leo Fender sold the company to CBS in 1965, but it stayed at the same factory for another decade, so any Strat built up until 1975 will actually be really good. 

“It started going downhill around the late Seventies. People think Seventies Fenders are bad, but that’s not actually correct. The amp was a vintage plexi, which I still use. On my last tour, I had 56 heads on stage... 56!”

What were you using to push the guitar amp? Was it the DOD Overdrive Preamp 250 that inspired your own signature DOD YJM308 pedal?

“That’s exactly it. I bought that first DOD in Sweden back in 1978 and put it in front of a Marshall. That was my sound from until 1989, which is when I toured the Soviet Union. Somebody stole my pedal, but luckily nothing else. I had some overdrives built that were based on the one I lost. I have some really exciting news coming up, but I can’t say just yet…”

And how about the nylon-string guitar you used on Black Star, Evil Eye and Farewell?

“It was just a cheap Aria Pro II thing. I think it was only worth around $120. I saw it lying around, so it ended up on a few tracks.”

Far Beyond the Sun is one of your most famous compositions. You have to play it at every show!

“And I love to play it! That one was written for the album, unlike some of the others, which were composed back in Sweden. I came up with it on tour and put the ideas on this little recorder I had. It’s not a challenge, but I find it exciting to perform because there are a lot of big moments. 

"There’s a rule in classical composition, especially for small ensembles like string quartets, where you don’t double up notes. You never let the viola player, violins and cellist play the same note – it’s a waste of harmony. So if you listen to the guitar against the bass and keyboards, it’s all extremely wide with thirds and fifths and so on.”

The intro to Evil Eye comes from Johann Krieger’s Bourree, which also inspired Paul McCartney on Blackbird and Jimmy Page on Stairway to Heaven.

“I remember hearing it as a kid. It’s something I learned on piano to understand counterpoint, like an exercise. But the way I took influence was extremely unusual. I was classically trained early on, and even though I was running through Marshall stacks and throwing my guitar around, I was playing arpeggios, linear scales, diminished and harmonic minor. 

“Everyone was going, ‘What the fuck is this?!’ Even Eddie Van Halen – god bless him, I fuckin’ love him – was mainly pentatonic. I was radically different. What’s funny about Evil Eye is that there’s a staccato part that sounds like a Rush thing, but I actually took the rhythm from White Christmas! I used to do silly stuff like that. Music is a funny little medium. You can do crazy things.”

Yngwie Malmsteen’s fiery fingers may be most synonymous with his ‘Duck’ guitar, an iconic Fender Stratocaster that nonetheless was made during what many view as the Strat's low point, the CBS era. 

Many players are quick to discredit the quality of the guitars Fender produced under the ownership of CBS, which owned the Fender marquee from 1965 to 1985. The move to a more mass-production model of guitar-making, alongside a factory change, ultimately hindered the firm’s reputation. 

However, speaking in the latest issue of Guitar World, the Swedish neoclassical shredder has highlighted a key fact that should not be overlooked.

“What people don’t understand about Strats is that Leo Fender sold the company to CBS in 1965, but it stayed at the same factory for another decade,” he says. “So any Strat built up until 1975 will actually be really good. It started going downhill around the late '70s. People think '70s Fenders are bad, but that’s not actually correct.”  

The Stratocaster’s CBS era may be remembered as some of the instrument’s darkest days but, as Malmsteen highlights, there were two definitive periods under CBS’s leadership. 

Malmsteen's CBS Strat was an early '70s model, built before the factory switch-up, and it played a key role in Rising Force.  

As the Swede tails in the latest issue of Guitar World, the record was originally intended as a Japanese-only release. However, its unexpected success necessitated a worldwide release.

“I started working on Marching Out [1985],” he details, “but you could still buy import records in America and so many people went to the stores to order Rising Force that it hit the charts and took on a life of its own.

“The label were going, ‘Fuck, we have to release this worldwide!’ I even got a Grammy nomination for it. I went on the road in 1985 with two records to promote.” 

Fender's 70th anniversary Stratocaster celebrations recently brought Buddy Guy and Christone “Kingfish” Ingram together for a stunning, stripped-back jam on (I’m Your) Hoochie Coochie Man. 

In terms of new product releases, the 70th-anniversary celebrations have included the release of a color-changing Ultra Strat HSS and souped-up versions of new Player and American Professional II models.  

To read GW's full interview with Malmsteen – which includes details on Rising Force’s tone palette and the inspiration behind several of its tracks, pick up a copy of the May 2024 issue of Guitar World.

With all the apocalyptic news headlines and inescapable feelings that the world is tearing itself apart, you can always rely on the man famous for playing a cream-colored Strat affectionately nicknamed ‘The Duck’ to be doing exactly what we imagine he’d be doing.

“I’m cruising around Miami in a convertible Ferrari... driving around the beach in the sun, like one does!” Swedish maverick Yngwie Malmsteen cackles.

The virtuoso relocated many moons ago to start a new life in America; and bearing in mind the sub-zero temperatures and lack of daylight in Stockholm, his city of birth, it’s a perfectly reasonable way for him to be spending the morning.

You only get one shot at life and Yngwie Malmsteen is not the kind of person to waste a second. If he’s not playing guitar, he’s behind the wheel thinking about playing guitar. “Driving around in a Ferrari is a very therapeutic thing for me,” he continues.

“I even write songs about it like Top Down, Foot Down from my World On Fire album. Life on the beach just happens to be one of the things I like, so that’s what I’ve been doing for the last 35 years. It’s actually still really cold in most of the States right now. There’s a freeze warning and all the planes are grounded... except down here in Miami!”

Guitar World is speaking with the maestro for our semi-regular ‘10 guitarists who shaped my sound’ feature. There’s just one problem this time round, however – no guitar players were actually responsible in the shaping of the Malmsteen sound.

He’s quick to point out he means no disrespect to any of the six-string greats who came before him. He looks up to them just like the rest of us – they simply didn’t rub enough off on him to drastically influence his world-changing music.

So just for the shredder extraordinaire and fire-breathing mastermind of neoclassical rock ’n’ roll, we’re going one louder for today’s feature, which is playfully renamed ’11 guitarists who didn’t shape my sound – but I still think are great.’

“I wanna be really careful about this – I don’t want people to think I’m being arrogant or talking bad about people,” Malmsteen says, in a way that’s far more down-to-earth, measured and astute than he’s typically portrayed.

“I love Angus Young, Brian May and a lot of those classic players. They’re all amazing. But they didn’t make me want to play like them. I just enjoyed hearing them play in their own style.

“I was always a guitar maniac, waking up with the guitar on me, playing on the train, playing on the bus, every waking hour. I explored the fretboard so much that I realized there was more to the instrument than what rock ’n’ roll guitar players had done before me.

“I still love B.B. King and Billy Gibbons. I love them all. I just didn’t want to play like them. It wasn’t necessarily a deliberate thing – but like Captain Kirk, I wanted to go where no-one’s gone before!”

The Fender signature artist’s biggest musical influence is, of course, Niccolò Paganini, the Italian violinist who died in 1840. A prodigious revolutionary who stunned with his dexterity and agility – attacking the instrument with a fiery intensity in stark contrast to the well-mannered overtures of his time – it’s easy to draw comparisons between the early Romantic composer and the man of the moment, despite the 181 years that separate their births. 

The choice of stringed instruments may differ, and so do the decibel readings, given the 56 Marshall heads seen on stage for Malmsteen’s last tour – but the intent is, for the most part, very much the same.

“All of that fast stuff I do, those five or six-string arpeggios, are from Niccolò Paganini,” Malmsteen confirms. “Listen to Caprice No. 5 and you’ll hear exactly where I got it. That was by far my biggest influence.

“I was clearly not well... you can’t be thinking straight if you’re attempting to play shit like that on a guitar, which has a longer neck and is tuned to 4ths, not 5ths! The distances are much longer compared to violin.

“My brother played violin and I could see it involved very short spaces. You can reach things really quickly... although I’m not saying it’s easy. But I was hooked on the sound of a distorted Marshall stack, double bass drums and smoke bombs. I could never get away from that shit!” 

Here, then, are the players Malmsteen would like to single out as innovators who changed the game for the guitar community as a whole, rather than himself personally.

1. Jimi Hendrix 

“Jimi was more of a visual thing than a musical influence. I’m the youngest in my family and have aunts and uncles who are opera singers and musicians. I got a violin for my fourth birthday. I got my first guitar on my fifth birthday. 

“For my sixth birthday, I got a trumpet and started having trumpet lessons, piano lessons and all this shit. I wasn’t interested at all. So I had this guitar but it was just like another toy for a kid hanging on the wall.

“Then when I was seven, Jimi Hendrix died and they were showing footage of him on the TV. I saw Jimi smashing and burning his guitar and thought, ‘Wow, this is pretty cool!’ so I picked my guitar up off the wall. 

“My brother already played guitar but I didn’t ask him for anything. I literally just picked up the guitar and started playing from that moment. I remember it so clearly.”

2. Eric Clapton

“I guess my first electric guitar hero was Eric Clapton, though I didn’t actually know it at the time. My mother had the John Mayall and the Bluesbreakers album and I had no idea who was playing guitar. I just heard it and thought, ‘I really like this!’

“So without knowing why or who, I just became really fascinated by that sound. And very quickly I realized that most rock ’n’ roll consisted of five notes, and I didn’t really feel good about that. I wanted to do something different.

“Then I discovered Genesis around the age of eight. It felt like a whole new universe of music – but I wasn’t influenced by the guitar players. I would say [founding keyboardist] Tony Banks was a bigger influence on me than anybody else in that band. No bullshit!

“He was writing all these chord inversions and passages that led me to Johann Sebastian Bach, Vivaldi, Beethoven and eventually Paganini. Classical music made me feel like the notes in rock ’n’ roll were a little limited. So I started to insert my own classical influences into the sound of a rock ’n’ roll ensemble.”

3. Ritchie Blackmore

“When I was 8 I got Deep Purple’s Fireball and that was the first time I heard any kind of heavy metal. By the time I was 10, I could play every note from Deep Purple’s Made In Japan – the whole thing front to back. 

“I liked Child In Time, Strange Kind of Woman, Demon’s Eye. It all sounded good. But I could tell it was all from this pentatonic box – not that there’s anything wrong with that. So that’s why when I first came to America, their minds were blowing up like fuckin’ firecrackers.

“It wasn’t like, ‘That’s cool guitar playing, dude!’ They were literally falling on the floor because they didn’t understand what the hell was going on. 

“I was playing something that would later become labeled neoclassical rock. I’ll be honest with you: I’d never heard another guitar player do it before me. Sure, there were some who might do a little Beethoven piece and then go back to the blues thing, but no-one was doing it to the extent I was.”

4. Jimmy Page

“I love Jimmy Page – are you kidding me? I remember seeing The Song Remains The Same movie when I was around 15 years old. There was a place nearby that showed old movies, and that one had been out for a while. I didn’t know about them early on. I only knew about Deep Purple.

“Someone said, ‘Hey, you should go and see The Song Remains The Same,’ so I went to see it and thought, ‘Wow, no fuckin’ wonder this guy’s a superstar!’ The way they came across was so cool and badass. Page, Bonham, Plant... the bass player too!

“Everything about that band was so good. And I loved the music, stuff like Immigrant Song and Since I’ve Been Loving You. How can you not be blown away by that shit?”

5. Eddie Van Halen

“I think I heard Van Halen’s second album before I heard their debut, but it’s hard to remember. Back then, I’d pick up on new things because a bass player or drummer would bring a record along with them. And I knew I fuckin’ loved Van Halen right away I still do!

“As amazing as Eddie was, it wasn’t just him that knocked me out. It was the whole band’s attitude and how they would record everything live. That’s what really made me dig them. But of course, Eddie was a genius.”

6. Steve Vai

“Steve is a dear friend and completely unique in his own right. That’s one of the most rare things about guitar players, actually – having a completely individual sound. Most guitarists sound kinda similar. 

“Again, I don’t want to come across as I’m saying anything bad, but it seems to me that most guitar players listen to other guitar players, who in turn were also listening to guitar players when they were learning. That can become a little bit of a trap that people fall into. 

“I think I know why, too. The guitar is so fuckin’ cool, man! It’s just the coolest thing. You can’t be cooler than when you’re playing a guitar, can you? Nobody wants to listen to a fuckin’ tuba.

“There’s no doubt about that allure and it will never go away. Did you know Niccolò Paganini used to pick up his guitar for romantic conquests? He literally used his guitar to pick up chicks... that’s no bullshit, man!”

7. Al Di Meola

“I live right next to him – I just drove past his house. He’s another player who I think is fuckin’ amazing. He is an unbelievable picker, there’s no doubt about it. We both clearly love the sound of a nylon classical guitar. It has such a different timbre to steel string acoustics.

“I think he moved to nylon later in his career, though. He started out playing more electric and used a steel string acoustic on Friday Night In San Francisco, and then he started playing nylon later on.

“I saw him play here in Miami a couple of years ago and it was all nylon. But on that Friday Night... record, the nylon you hear is Paco De Lucía or John McLaughlin.”

8. Uli Jon Roth

“He is one of my favorite guitar players ever. I was exposed to him by one of my drummers who brought over the album Tokyo Tapes. By whenever I heard it, I was already playing how I do now. I could show you recordings from 1978 that sound exactly like me.

“But I instantly loved his playing. When I was growing up in Sweden, it was a socialist shithole. They didn’t have radio or TV that would expose you to anything. People would buy a record and you might hear it at a party or something, but I was only 7 or 8 years old. I wasn’t going to parties!

“I never heard Black Sabbath, Led Zeppelin, Uriah Heep and all that stuff – it was just Deep Purple, and they felt like the coolest thing on earth. I guess it was a strange musical and cultural environment to come from. I was constantly told I’d never make it.

“People would say being a musician wasn’t a real job and tell me to cut my hair. I developed a big dislike for that kind of thing. Which is why I came to the States and felt, ‘Fuck man, this is my place, it’s awesome!’ and that was now 40 years ago.”

9. Brian May

“Brian May is definitely more than a pentatonic box player. He could imply all this harmony and melodic stuff that sounded really clever. I spoke to him about it once and asked him, ‘That wasn’t just a third, fifth and root... what were you playing there?’ And he said, ‘Oh gosh, I was just making it all up as I went along!’

“It made me think, ‘Fuck, man! Whatever you’re doing, it’s awesome!’ He is a super-nice guy. Though they were fairly mainstream, Queen could actually be pretty heavy when they wanted to. I love songs like Death On Two Legs (Dedicated To...).”

10. Allan Holdsworth

“That guy could play the fuckin’ phonebook and make it sound beautiful. The notes he chose to play, if anyone else tried to play them like that, it just wouldn’t have been right. But with him… oh my God!

“I remember the first time I heard the song In the Dead of Night. It was so good I had to sit down. He was fucking insane! He could play all these crazy ideas from the whole tone scale and they never sounded out. On paper, it might not work. But he would do it and make you go, ‘Wow!’

“I guess in some ways, I did a similar thing to Allan Holdsworth. He wanted to play the saxophone, so he made his guitar sound really smooth. I, on the other hand, was influenced by the violin. It was so piercing and beautiful to my ears. I loved the sound of the vibrato and arpeggios. Obviously the guitar is a very different instrument, but the violin still influenced how I approach it.”

11. Angus Young

“We might sound very different, but I love this guy with a passion. When it comes to straight-up rock ’n’ roll where you mean every note you play, Angus is the man.

“I’d even go as far as saying he’s kinda underrated as a guitar player. He’s super-tasty and always sounds good. He’s a dear friend of mine, too. And so is Brian Johnson, who doesn’t live far from me, either!”

• For current tour dates, see YngwieMalmsteen.com.

Pete Griffin’s reputation as an A-list sideman is founded on two decades of exceptional bass guitar work across a multitude of genres and musical settings. The very definition of his low-end artistry in recent times – though sadly it’s ended now – was a very special rock supergroup, Generation Axe, that saw Griffin share the stage with guitarists Zakk Wylde, Tosin Abasi, Nuno Bettencourt, Yngwie Malmsteen, and Steve Vai.

Yet in spite of his illustrious sideman career and the huge respect in which he’s held within the music world (and not just by bassists) – earning a 2008 Grammy Award with Zappa Plays Zappa – Griffin has never released a solo EP. Until now. 

“I decided to start working on some of my own music during the pandemic,” said Griffin. “I had a home studio and I knew some of the world's best musicians who were willing to work on my songs. I’ve always seen myself as a sideman because that's what pays the bills, but I realised I needed to have control over something in my life during a time when I had very little.”

Pete Griffin and His Lab Rats is not a self-indulgent bass-centred release; instead, it’s an eclectic collaboration with some of today’s unsung heroes from the L.A. session scene. “As session players we’re not always paid to make creative decisions. Sometimes our job is to just shut up and play whatever’s written! But I didn’t realise how much creative energy we’d all been saving for something like this. It became a very collaborative project.”

So after months of anticipation Griffin’s new solo EP has arrived, but how does he feel about stepping out from his traditional sideman role? 

“In the sideman world there can be various definitions of right and wrong. I might think that my idea is better than what the singer is asking me to do, but you can only work within the parameters that you’ve been given, and if that’s my job, then I'm very happy doing that. It can be an interesting dynamic, but having now produced my own music, I think I have a little more respect for the process.”

What was it like playing with Steve Vai, Yngwie Malmsteen, Zakk Wylde, Nuno Bettencourt, and Tosin Abasi, in Generation Axe?

“All of those guys have a completely different approach. Yngwie would send recordings ahead of time and he would just expect you to know everything. Zakk Wylde might want to play a bunch of Black Sabbath covers, so that requires my best Geezer Butler impersonation!” 

What about Steve Vai?

“Steve Vai is incredibly specific. There’s one tune called Gravity Storm, which sounded to me like the bassline was being played with a slide into the note. Steve stopped me in sound check one day and basically told me that I needed to bend the note up half a step before I hit it, and then let the string bend back down. I was like, ‘what are you talking about? You just don’t do that on bass!’ But he's so granular about the details, and it turns out the bassline sounded way better once I started doing that!”

Is it the same with Nuno Bettencourt?

“Both Steve and Nuno think more like a producer. They’d never just give me the recording to learn. Nuno would give me very specific instructions about what he wanted the bassline to do. Get The Funk Out by Extreme starts with a drum fill and he wanted me to play a dead note right in the middle of it, and he told me exactly where. He even sat down and showed our drummer how to play it!”

Tell us about the recent tour with Dethklok

“I was covering that gig for Bryan Beller, which meant that I had three different versions of what to play. There's the original that Brendan Small played on the record, which was pretty straight-forward. But then I’d go listen to Bryan and he's got his whole three finger thing going on. I’ve also done the gig a few times in the past, so I had to decide whether to play the bass part as it is on the record, trying to copy what Bryan’s been doing, or finding my own version.”

How much direction did you get ahead of time?

“Brendon Small knows that the album version works, and both Bryan and I have been working with him for years, so he trusts us whenever we want to add anything. Some days I'll check in with him, but otherwise I'm left to figure it out from the tracks I've been given.”

Do you have any new bass gear? 

“I've been a Fender-type guy for most of my career. There was a point where there was an expectation to always play a Fender Jazz or P-Bass, but I’ve been really enjoying a Dingwall D-Roc that I just got, which has the multi-scale setup. I'm loving that bass just as much as the tried and true Leo Fender design. With Dethklok, I’m tuning down to low C and it can be hard to find a string that responds well at that range.” 

“I have a Dunable bass that's a 35-inch scale and the E-string on the Dingwall is 36.25, so the extra scale length just makes everything more comfortable, especially when you’re playing the faster songs. I love that there are companies out there that are still open to trying something new, and I think people are a more open-minded about it nowadays.”

Tell us about the gig with Zappa Plays Zappa?

“I was the biggest Zappa fan before I got that gig, so I could already sing any song that Dweezil wanted to play. Dweezil might want to start working on Zomby Woof, which sounds like someone's switching the radio channel every four bars, but I had unknowingly been doing my homework for that gig without ever knowing that it was going to exist, so I already had it locked in. Joe Travers is in charge of the entire vault of Frank Zappa recordings, of which there are still years of tape. He’s still revisiting old recordings, so how do you ever stop?”

Did Dweezil feel under pressure from living in his Dad's shadow?

“I can't even imagine, but you know, Dweezil's such an incredible guitar player. He would struggle with certain musical concepts just because he hadn't gone to music school. He learned by having Eddie Van Halen come over to the house and show him how to play! There would be certain songs, like The Black Page or Inca Roads, where he'd play something unbelievable, but then he’d struggle with an eight bar phrase that the rest of us could play in our sleep. He was really kind of an anomaly like that, but I can't even imagine what it was like for him.”

“Towards the end of his life Frank was working almost exclusively with something called the Synclavier, which was a very early DAW. It was like a mini sequencer. He just got sick of working with human musicians and their physical limitations and their emotional baggage. That Synclavier took up the whole room, but now we have an infinitely more powerful computer in our pockets. So if Frank Zappa was alive today? It’s almost too frightening to think about.”

Do you think Frank Zappa’s legacy still resonates?

“It’s like King Crimson or some of these bands where you need someone to hold your hand and walk you through it. So I hope more people can find Frank Zappa and find that thing that they like instead of just going, ‘Oh, isn't he the Valley Girl guy?’ The first stuff that I got into was Apostrophe and Roxy & Elsewhere.

Tell us about One Shot Deal

“We’ve basically got the core band back together with the blessing of the Zappa family. We’re called One Shot Deal, and we were playing the music of Frank Zappa all around Southern California. People have been really excited to see our camaraderie. To bring that back around has been a real pleasure.”

• Pete Griffin And His Lab Rats is out now.

It is often said of shred virtuoso Yngwie Malmsteen that he is a frustrated classical violinist at heart, but in a recent interview with YouTube guitar guru Rick Beato, the neoclassical icon points out his issues with the description.

During the conversation [around 6.27], Beato compares Malmsteen’s unique approach to the instrument to that of Allan Holdsworth – the prog/fusion guitarist who said he “wanted to be a saxophonist” – noting perhaps the same is true of the Swedish maestro when it comes to classical violin. Malmsteen, however, disagrees.

“I never wanted to be a violinist,” says the virtuoso. “I never wanted to be a classical guitar player. I wanted to play electric guitar with smoke bombs and flash pots and Marshall stacks and double bass drums. I never wanted to do anything else.”

Instead, says Malmsteen, it was the desire to be a rock guitarist that got him playing in the first place.  

“I got my first guitar on my fifth birthday,” he recalls. “When I was seven, Jimi Hendrix died and they showed on the news him burning the guitar at Monterey Pop. I said, ‘Wow, that's cool!’ So I took the guitar off my wall and I started playing. But I wanted to play rock ‘n’ roll.”

The guitarist also discusses his early musical loves, including Black Sabbath and Deep Purple’s Fireball, and Clapton-era Bluesbreakers, but says the classical influence – inspired by his mother’s vast collection of J.S. Bach – came from a different place.

“As much as I loved Deep Purple and Black Sabbath and those bands,” Malmsteen tells Beato. “They're hard and heavy but the note choices were 99 precent pentatonic.” 

Listening to Bach certainly changed that for the young Malmsteen, but again, he says it was rock – not the violin – that lit the touch paper. 

“I love the sound of the rock,” reiterates Malmsteen. “The sound of the stacks and the stuff like that! I didn’t want to play classical violin.”

Consider the record corrected. Which reminds us, on that point of correcting the record, alongside many other worthy contenders, both Malmsteen and Holdsworth were left off Rolling Stone’s 250 greatest guitarists of all time list – a straight injustice in our book.

Alex Skolnick has revealed that his former guitar teacher, Joe Satriani, once warned him off trying to sound too much like Yngwie Malmsteen.

The Testament guitarist famously studied under Satch when the latter was a (somewhat revered) teacher at Berklee in the early-’80s. 

Now, in a new interview with our pals at Guitar Player, Skolnick says the principles the electric guitar master taught him were not solely limited to technique. 

“I remember when I was taking lessons from Joe Satriani,” Skolnick begins.

“At the time, everybody was going crazy about Yngwie Malmsteen, and I liked what he was doing, too. Joe kind of told me, ‘That’s fine, but don’t get too into him. Don’t try to sound like him, because in a few years there will be somebody else who’s the hot guy.’”

As Skolnick relates, Satriani’s wise words were not intended as a slight on Malmsteen. Indeed, Satch has nothing against Malmsteen – as proved when the two virtuosos joined forces on the 2003 G3 tour. 

Instead, his intention was to point out a more general truism of guitar playing – that you can only do you. That said, the advice proved more pertinent than even Satriani expected.

“It’s funny,” notes Skolnick. “Because a few years later Joe was the guy everybody was talking about. People were learning everything on Surfing With the Alien, but I tried to keep my distance, because I remembered what Joe had told me.

“It was kind of funny, really. Joe was a great teacher and a huge influence on me, but I knew I shouldn’t try to sound like him. He was doing his thing, but it wasn’t supposed to be my thing.”

Head to Guitar Player to read Skolnick’s full interview, where he shares his top five tips for guitarists.

In the meantime, if you’re in the mood for some jaw-dropping fretboard theatrics from Skolnick’s old tutor, then good news! Joe Satriani, Steve Vai and Eric Johnson are reuniting for a G3 reunion tour next year.

If you want to learn classically rooted shred techniques, then there is surely no finer teacher than Yngwie Malmsteen. The Swedish maestro single-handedly invented the neoclassical shred movement with his debut album, Rising Force, in 1984.

Now Malmsteen has put together a tutorial series called – what else – MaestroClass with TrueFire in which he shares the techniques and lines behind 10 of his tracks, and we’ve got an exclusive preview of the performance clip for his masterpiece, Far Beyond the Sun.

Watching the video, it’s an astonishingly clean performance of a track that set a new template for complex lead work and, thanks to the multiple camera angles, you can get indecently close to every arpeggio, whammy dive and squealing bend.

Malmsteen maintains a lot of the rhythms from the song owe more than a little to Beethoven’s fifth, and mastering it will teach you a lot not just about shred, but also classical composition.

“I became an aficionado of Bach and Beethoven, but when I heard Paganini, that was the biggest moment,” he once told Guitarist.

“Nobody was playing those crazy arpeggios. Everybody was just playing the [pentatonic] box. But I wanted to play that shit on guitar.”

Elsewhere, the TrueFire session will break down the likes of Malmsteen’s Toccata, Top Down Foot Down, Blue, Trilogy, Fugue, No Rest for the Wicked, Blackstar, Badinere and Si Vis Pacem – all tabbed and notated to the videos.

“We are thrilled to welcome Yngwie to the TrueFire family with this release of MaestroClass,”  says TrueFire’s statement. “[It is] his first-ever interactive video learning experience and indisputably the ‘ultimate’ neoclassical guitar masterclass.”

Malmsteen’s influence goes way beyond the shred world, too. In fact, just last week we caught Weezer’s Rivers Cuomo shredding a section of Far Beyond The Sun on Chris Shiflett’s podcast.

For more information, on Malmsteen’s MaestroClass, head to TrueFire.

The second instalment of Chris Shiflett’s Shred With Shifty podcast debuts today (July 27) and features Rivers Cuomo. During the conversation, the Weezer guitarist hails the influence of Yngwie Malmsteen and even gives a quick demo of the super Swede’s shred classic, Far Beyond the Sun.

The clip opens with Cuomo and Shiflett discussing the Weezer man’s beginnings on the electric guitar, in which he runs through the motivational impact of Quiet Riot’s Metal Health. However, the conversation soon turns to lead influences. 

“Well, Ace [Frehley] was the first one,” says Cuomo. “[Just] so many air guitar sessions from the time I was a young kid – and that was just always my favorite part of the song. Then later on I got super-into the Yngwie Malmsteen-type shredders.”

“I mean you hear like some of that in this solo for Only in Dreams,” comments Shiflett. “Not that it's shred but it is all in that… minor diatonic, where you're using all the notes, which… happens a lot in heavy metal. As opposed to more blues-based rock and roll which tends to be pentatonic scales.”

“Yeah, as a kid I was into Ace, which is the more the pentatonic thing, but then in the ’80s, heavy metal became much more classically influenced and you hear all the notes in the scale and the harmonic minor scale,” Cuomo responds. “At that point I just fell in love with that style and I couldn't turn back.”

As Shiflett observes, it’s a thread that persisted well into Cuomo’s work with Weezer. Indeed, when Shiflett asks Cuomo to remember the first lick he learned that made him feel like a lead guitar player – he again points back to Malmsteen. 

“Probably learning some of those Yngwie licks,” comments Cuomo. “Far Beyond the Sun. That kind of stuff.”

Shiflett then asks Cuomo for a quick demonstration and despite claiming “it’s been decades”, the Weezer man pulls off a (surprisingly sharp) segment of the Malmsteen’s 1984 calling card – much to his host’s delight. 

“That’s amazing, dude!” says Shiflett. “You just whipped that out! It was perfect.”

Shiflett’s new podcast is fast becoming essential listening for guitarists. Each episode drills down on a particular track from its guest. Episode one featured Alex Lifeson and future instalments are set to include the likes of Richie Sambora, Nile Rodgers, Lindsay Ell, Brad Paisley, Mike McCready and Brent Mason.

Search for Shred With Shifty wherever you get your podcasts to hear the full Rivers Cuomo chat and head to Volume for the exclusive full video.

For more on the Weezer man’s ’80s metal influences, check out our 2021 Rivers Cuomo interview, in which he talks shred playing, Van Halen and his “Pandora’s box of evil guitar tools”. 

Hot on the heels of the release of his 19th studio album, Every Loser, Iggy Pop has spoken about the “rough” sound he tries to create with his recorded material.

In a new conversation with Billboard, the punk rock icon discusses his desire to have a “DIY” sound with his albums, rather than a pristine sound you might hear in music by other artists, making a comparison between ’50s rabble-rouser Link Wray and neoclassical shred god Yngwie Malmsteen to prove his point.

“There’s one thing about my records… they’re all in one way or another kind of rough sounding,” he says. “They never get too polished.

“Some of them, maybe Lust For Life, a couple things on Brick By Brick did [sound more pristine], but my own taste is more for the DIY. I like Link Wray a lot better than Yngwie Malmsteen, put it that way. I think that influences the producers I work with to stop short of polishing the project too much.”

Iggy Pop dropped his new album, Every Loser, last week on January 6. Produced by Andrew Watt, the record features some of the Ozzy Osbourne collaborator’s usual sidemen, including Pearl Jam guitarist Stone Gossard, Chili Peppers men Josh Klinghoffer and Chad Smith and Blink-182 drummer Travis Barker.

Other guests who appear on the album include current and former Jane’s Addiction members Dave Navarro and Chris Chaney, and late Foo Fighters drummer Taylor Hawkins, in what were some of his final recordings before his death last year.

“He’s a great guy, just a beautiful cat,” Pop says of Hawkins elsewhere in the interview. “His drumming is very unique. Chad’s the backbone of the record, but I felt fortunate we could have Taylor on it, too, and he was perfect for those songs. 

“It’s such a sad thing that he had to go so quick, but he was doing something he really wanted to do and he was doing it very well, and was at the top of the heap, and that’s something, y’know?”

Pop also speaks on the spontaneous nature of writing the album, and how Watt’s influence helped spur the creative process on.

“It just sort of came along,” he says. “Especially if you’re my age, you can’t really grimace and tighten your fist and say, ‘OK, goddamnit, I’m gonna put together a rock album!’ It just kind of happened. 

“So the credit goes to [Watt] for having the drive and interest – and also, I would say, some credit goes to me for having already jammed or played live with the guys who played [on the album] and having a feel for what would work best with what [Watt] had prepared.”

By the time he was barely 18, Jason Becker was already living out the dream – wowing crowds around the world in the electric guitar duo Cacophony with his six-string brother-in-arms, Marty Friedman.

You don't see teenage guitarists tearing it up on the world stage every day, but as the above video shows, Jason Becker was by no means an ordinary guitar player.

In the video, a 16-year-old (the video describes him as being 15, which – given he was born in 1969 and it was apparently shot in 1986 – doesn't entirely add up) Becker blows the doors off of his high school talent show with an astonishing rendition of Yngwie Malmsteen's Black Star. 

Given the humble setting, Becker's performance – the stadium-ready poses, whammy bar squeals, jaw-loosening tapping sequences – seems almost comically out of place, like Eddie Van Halen showing up and plugging in at your local dive bar. 

Clearly, even at that age, the California native was ready for far bigger stages.

Mind you, that wasn't even the first time Becker had stolen the limelight at Kennedy High School's annual talent show. A year earlier, at 15, Becker got a well-deserved ovation from his classmates after nailing Gary Moore's intro solo from End of the World onstage.

Becker has said that it was the influence of Malmsteen who pushed not only his playing, but his stage presence, to the next level.

"When I was a junior in high school, [Rising Force, Malmsteen's debut album] was my jam," Becker told Louder in a 2016 interview. "His guitar playing had so much energy and passion to me. I wanted to learn all of his techniques, but it was more than just his killer playing. 

"I really needed to have some of his cockiness in my personality, as well as my music. I became a lot more outgoing and fun as a person. I started talking to and flirting with girls. In a way, Yngwie taught me how to be a rock star.”

After the dissolution of Cacophony in 1989, Becker – in a sign of just how high his star had risen in a few short years – was selected by David Lee Roth to replace Steve Vai as the lead guitarist in his band.

While he was preparing his parts for Roth's third solo album, A Little Ain't Enough, Becker began feeling a nagging pain in his left leg. In 1990, barely out of his teens, Becker was diagnosed with ALS (Lou Gehrig’s Disease), and given less than five years to live. 

Though the disease slowly robbed Becker of the ability to play guitar, walk, talk and breathe on his own, he continues to compose and release music to this day, communicating with his eyes via a system developed by his father. His most recent album was 2018's Triumphant Hearts, which featured Joe Satriani, Steve Vai, Neal Schon, Steve Morse, Paul Gilbert, and Joe Bonamassa.

For more on Becker's story, and to donate to the Jason Becker Special Needs Trust – which helps Becker's family deal with his significant medical expenses – visit the guitarist's website.

Yngwie Malmsteen is currently in the midst of his Parabellum tour promoting his latest studio album, and the Swedish speed demon recently took time out during a soundcheck to showcase his current pedalboard setup.

It’s a Boss-heavy rig, controlled by the brand’s ES-8 Effects Switching System, which is used by Malmsteen to recall eight of his most-used live tones.

As for how his rig is ordered, Malmsteen’s electric guitar – of course, his Fender Stratocaster signature guitar – is hooked up to a Line 6 wireless system, which in turn feeds his signal into his Dunlop Cry Baby wah pedal.

The Boss ES-8 is next in the chain, and is the electronic mastermind behind Malmsteen’s multiple tones. Wired to the ES-8 are five effects pedals, three of which are also from the Boss catalog.

The Boss CE-2w Waza Craft chorus pedal, Digital Delay DD-3 and Noise Suppressor NS-2 all make the cut, and line up alongside Malmsteen’s signature Fender overdrive pedal, which closes out the top rail.

Malmsteen’s final stompbox is the MXR Dyna-Comp compressor pedal, with the DigiTech Whammy pedal and Boss RE-20 Space Echo rounding off the ‘board.

As for how the shredder curates his pedals, patch one is a high-gain full-stack, while patch two and three are overdriven and clean variations of delay-soaked sounds. From there, patch four then engages the Waza Craft chorus pedal for vocal sections and patch five triggers the MXR compressor for more blues-y passages.

A version of that same tone but with added delay occupies the sixth patch, with patch seven introducing some wacky octave action courtesy of the Whammy.

Last but not least is the Boss RE-20, which Malmsteen uses to dutifully demonstrate the wild off-the-cuff noises he can conjure up using the twin-pedal unit.

And, of course, Malmsteen’s Marshall Mountain, which dominates the background on the stage, also gets an honorable mention from the shred titan.

It's a fairly modest pedal setup, and one that Malmsteen seems to have used consistently over the past few years. Indeed, he used a similar variation of the Boss-loaded rig back in 2017, which also included an additional Fuzz Face fuzz pedal. Heck, even the ES-8's two Ferrari stickers have remained intact.

Head over to Malmsteen’s website to check out his upcoming Parabellum tour dates.

Yngwie Malmsteen needs little introduction but he sure deserves one. Few players have done more to digest the broad-spectrum grandeur of classical music and apply it to electric guitar music, to rock guitar.

He's a man who – as the header at the top of the page says – needs more. More volume. More speed. More theatricality. The former comes by way of a Marshall backline you can see from space (his words). The speed? That's from decades of practice. The theatricality? Well, that comes out in pretty much everything he does. 

He is a conversationalist. Malmsteen appreciates that this is the business of entertaining. Who else would think of triggering a drum sound with a  .357 Magnum? You get the picture – Malmsteen is quite the character. Here, the man, the myth, the legend answers 10 quick-fire questions, with typical candor. 

How’d you first get into the guitar?

“I come from a very musical family; my mother was a jazz singer [who also] sang in the choir, and my father was a guitar player. My older siblings were musicians too, playing classical violin and piano. 

“I was given my first guitar, a cheap, shitty acoustic, on my 5th birthday but didn’t start playing it until I was 7 when I saw Jimi Hendrix smashing his guitar on TV. I thought it was cool and so I wanted to do that too!”

What was your first “real” guitar?

“My older brother played guitar, but when I was becoming better than him, he went out and bought an early Seventies Strat copy – but because he was never home, I’d play his guitar instead. I had that guitar from then on, and when my next birthday came around, my mother bought the guitar off my brother so I could keep it. Later, when I was around 12, I got my first Strat.”

What was the first song you learned?

“A piece of Swedish folk music from the 17th century. It was a very baroque-style melody in A harmonic minor.”

Tell us about your first gig.

“I was about eight. I had an electric guitar with a little amp, and although it wasn’t a good one, it made a lot of noise. It was at my school in the cafeteria, which had a sort of a stage. 

“I had asked one of my school friends to play drums, but he said he didn’t know how to, so I showed him how – so we could play the gig, which we did. I was on stage doing my shit, throwing my guitar around and being crazy onstage. I’m an extremist in everything I do. More is more in everything.”

Have you ever had a terrible show?

“I’ve always had the ability to bounce back from almost anything. I have what they call ‘tennis memory,’ so if something starts going wrong, whether it’s my fault or not, I’ll just turn around and go, “Well, fuckin’ watch this!” and will do something outrageous in order to make everything better. 

“For the last 30 years or more, I’ve never allowed myself a bad show. It’s always in my hands, so if I allow myself to let it slip and go out of control, it’s my fault and I will go off stage feeling shitty.”

What’s your favorite piece of gear?

“It’s my “Duck” [1972 Fender Stratocaster]. I don’t play it as much anymore, but there’s something special about it. But I love them all; I love all my Marshalls – and I love my smoke machines too. You can’t do a show without those!”

What’s your proudest moment?

“It’s my latest album, Parabellum. It was made in a very different way than I have done in a while. For the last 15 years, I’d go on the road then go into the studio and continue that cycle, but with Covid, it stopped all of that. So I was in the studio constantly for one year. I must have written something like 100 songs, 80 or 90 pieces, and for me those songs on the album were the crème de la crème.”

Any advice for eager newbies?

“I’d ask them first what they’re trying to achieve. If it’s to be famous or successful, there are numerous ways of getting there. But if their goal is to be a full musician, whether that be a composer or an artist, then there’s no shortcut. There’s a lot of dedication and hard work required. And there will always be a lot of people hating on you too.”

What’s more important – speed or emotion?

“I’m sure there are examples of empty fast notes. Those examples do exist. But if you listen to the way I play, and you hear a fast slur or a fast run, a fast arpeggio or whatever I’m playing, if you slowed that down, it would have full harmonic value along with passion and expression. And just listen to my vibrato – that’s all I have to say. Nothing more needs to be said. You can’t tell me that has no emotion. You must be tone deaf.”

Finally, do you have any regrets?

“There are a lot of things I do regret, but ultimately [one’s] life decisions have to work and act as a lesson. If from that lesson it led to a decision, which led to somewhere good, then it was a good thing to do and vice versa, and I’ve done my share of both. With the wealth of experience and wisdom I’ve gained from living the life I’ve lived, it is what it is, because at the time, I did the right thing – even when I may not have!”

• Parabellum is out now via Mascot Label Group.

Some players are synonymous with one type of electric guitar. Slash with the Gibson Les Paul, Eric Clapton with the Fender Stratocaster and Eddie Van Halen with his Frankenstein are just a few examples.

Yngwie Malmsteen is an equally strong case study, having developed a reputation as one of the fiercest and fastest players to ever wield a Stratocaster in recent times – he and Clapton were, after all, the first artists to ever be given a signature Strat.

During a recent appearance on Cory Wong’s Wongnotes podcast, Malmsteen took a trip down memory lane to recall the origins of his affinity for Fender’s flagship double-cut, and discussed why he’s demonstrated unwavering loyalty towards the model for his entire career.

In the process, the Swedish speed demon also revealed the main reason why he opted for the Strat instead of a Gibson Les Paul during his formative years as an up-and-coming player.

Like many of his contemporaries, Malmsteen was faced with two options as an aspiring guitarist: the Fender Stratocaster or Gibson Les Paul.

“When I was a kid, there was no variety,” Malmsteen began. “There was no radio, there was no TV, there was no magazine, nothing. There was one pop music station, but they never played rock. 

“I saw Stratocasters and I saw Les Pauls,” he continued. “And my brother had a Les Paul – and I’m like six, seven years old [at the time] – I thought the Les Paul looked like an acoustic guitar. It wasn’t exciting for me, you know?

“I had an acoustic – you want an electric guitar that looks like an electric guitar. Of course, I saw Hendrix and Blackmore and everyone else using them, too. It’s become such a natural thing for me.”

For Malmsteen, the simplicity and efficiency of the Strat was key, and to hammer his point home he then – in the most guitar-y way possible – referenced classical great Niccolò Paganini, who used Stradivarius violins.

“[Paganini] didn’t say, ‘I’m going to put a humbucker on this,’ or, ‘I’m going to put a Floyd Rose on this,’” Malmsteen observed. “He said, ‘No, I’m just going to take this one and play the shit out of it.”

Despite initially avoiding Les Pauls due to their aesthetics, Malmsteen has been known to pick one up every now and then. In fact, last April, he turned a vintage ‘59 Gibson Les Paul into an all-out shred machine, proving beyond all doubt that Yngwie can go full Yngwie on any guitar he dons.

Malmsteen’s loyalty to the Stratocaster was rewarded in 1988 when he was officially named alongside Eric Clapton as the first artist to get a signature Strat. Later in the interview with Wong, Malmsteen revealed that the first prototype he received from Fender made it onto his 1988 Odyssey record.

Specifically, it was the guitar he used to record the guitar solo on Heaven Tonight.

“Every guitar company came up to me when I was hot,” Malmsteen added. “I said, ‘No. I’d rather buy a Fender than get one for free from you.’ I was very loyal.”

The new star-studded Leslie West tribute album, Legacy: A Tribute to Leslie West, arrived in its entirety last Friday (March 25), and as expected the record contains a dizzying array of explosive electric guitar-driven tributes to the late Mountain icon.

Chief among the tracklist is Yngwie Malmsteen’s supercharged cover of West’s 1969 cut Long Red, which sees the Swedish speed demon deck out West’s acoustic cut with his trademark style of dizzying lead work.

Teaming up with Teddy Rondinelli for the effort, Malmsteen totally transforms the original track, swapping out its ethereal keys and calming acoustic guitar progressions for a high octane opening exchange powered by scorching blues bends and, of course, a healthy dose of shred.

Malmsteen’s fretboard fireworks – which take all of three seconds to arrive – continue undisturbed for the first full minute of the cover, before introducing the vocals in a furious, million-miles-per-hour flurry of notes.

It’s a dramatic take on West’s original, which was first released on his debut solo album, Mountain, in 1969. In the latter half of the track, Malmsteen’s unrelenting lead work continues unabated, and helps close the cover out with another solid minute-and-a-half of shredding, sweeping and soloing.

You can hear the effort in the video above.

Malmsteen is joined on the Legacy: A Tribute to Leslie West tracklist by a number of A-list guitar-playing peers, including Slash, who contributed to the record a cover of West’s totemic track, Mississippi Queen.

Joining Slash and Malmsteen on what is perhaps one of the greatest tribute album lineups we’ve ever seen is Zakk Wylde – whose take on West's Blood of the Sun was the record’s lead single – Dee Snider, Steve Morse, Elliot Easton and George Lynch.

Other names on the album include Marty Friedman, Mike Portnoy, Joe Lynn Turner, Martin Barre and Robby Krieger, as well as Randy and Tal Bachman, Eddie Ojeda, Marc Labelle and Rev Jones.

West’s widow, Jenni, said in a statement when the album was announced, “Nobody in this world has ever made me feel loved as much as Leslie, and I feel so honored and grateful that I could give him this gift. 

“He would often say, ‘If it doesn’t make my balls rumble, it’s not right,’” she continued. “And I think there’s some balls-rumbling tones on this record. When you’re listening to it, you might even think it’s Leslie playing – and that’s a good thing. He really believed that adage of imitation being the sincerest form of flattery. 

“Even when some of the players do their own twists on the music, they’re still doing it in a way that’s authentic and respectful, and Leslie would have appreciated that.”

Legacy: A Tribute to Leslie West is available to stream now.

The market for gear is saturated with signature guitars, amps, pedals, guitar picks and so forth, but what about all those artist collaborations we don’t see at NAMM?

Over the years, guitar players have proven to be an entrepreneurial breed. Sometimes out of a sense of philanthropy, restlessness from too much post-tour R&R. Or maybe sometimes it pays to have a sideline.

We all know the music industry can be a harsh and unforgiving sector. It has never been easy to make a buck with an electric guitar in hand. Once upon a time, there were moguls, gruff folk putting the squeeze on the talent, and great big managerial sharks capable of swallowing a college fund whole.

Then came Napster, file-sharing, the hollowing out of the business model. Silicon Valley’s H bomb. When you add all that up then factor in the ever-capricious tastes of the record-buying public, it makes sense for a pro player to have some start-up business smarts.

Indeed, musicians have always shown a commercial acumen that would make them as welcome on campus at Harvard Business School as they would be at the Ryman. Here, we're going to look at some of our favorite guitar player collaborations with the captains of industry, and those who have taken the concept of the well-stocked merch table to its logical conclusion.

We'd be remiss not to give mention to some of the enterprising merch strategies over the years. KISS, in particular, are a case study in branding and reach. KISS Koffee remains a favorite brew for creatures of the night doing battle with the morning. Beer is big. But we typically see that in the wild as an outgrowth of the band’s brand – and indeed a penchant for a frothy cold one. Look at the joy their cold Canadian golden ale has given Rush’s Alex Lifeson and Geddy Lee.

All self-respecting rock and metal bands have a beer nowadays. Iron Maiden have a very brown, very English ale, the Trooper. Status Quo have a malty little number named for their 1972 album Piledriver. Those urbane sophisticates Megadeth have a Belgian-style saison, A Tout Le Monde, and AC/DC’s Australian Hardrock lager is a crisp German number that will have the average person bladdered and duckwalking to the toilet after a touch too much.

Whiskey? Well, Metallica’s Blackened American Whiskey is made using some traditional and avant-garde methods, with some batches exposed to 11 of the best from the ‘Tallica catalog to presumably improve the aging process. 

But if beer and whiskey seem like appropriately adjacent products to align with, the following guitarist x industry collabs are more left field, and just what do they tell us about the guitarists who brokered them?

1. Yngwie Malmsteen x Sharpie – A marker pen

Birthdays in Chez Malmsteen must be tricky. What do you get for the neoclassical shred virtuoso who has everything? A Ferrari makes a poor investment with gas prices the way they are. Not another guitar amp, that’s for sure. As the bold Mr Malmsteen has explained, and with no little delight, he has an embarrassment of riches on that front. His Great Wall of full-stack Marshalls – allegedly, though yet to be verified – can be seen from orbit.

A Stratocaster? Pah! He’s got them, his studio crowded by an array of signature Strats. How about a pen? Maybe some Montblanc, fancy-pants fountain pen? Well, you’re outta luck. Because Sharpie, yes, the marker pen brand, has already released a personalized range of Yngwie Sharpies. We’re not sure what cut, if any, Yngwie gets on this, but as signature gear goes this is, well, this is very practical: setlists, autographs, daubing arpeggio sequences onto bus shelters.

2. Billie Joe Armstrong x Kat Von D – Basketcase eyeliner

This collaboration between punk superstar Billie Joe Armstrong and makeup brand KVD raised eyebrows upon its release but it left eyes well and truly lined – just the thing for that up-all-night, shambled-in-from-Camden look.

Now, if the pharmacist is closed for the night, you could in a pinch borrow one of Yngwie’s Sharpies instead, but we don’t advise it. You won’t get that smoky come-hither that KVD’s non-precision eyeliner range excels at.

Unlike mascara, which always looks like something The Borrowers use to clean the chimney, and is mildly hazardous to the retinas, eyeliner is easy to apply and a very forgiving medium. You might even say it’s American idiot proof. Armstrong describes it as being the ultimate pick-up line in the punk scene, which is good to know for all you punk singles out there. Also good to know is proceeds went to the American Civil Liberties Union (ACLU).

Kat Von D and Billie Joe Armstrong also collaborated on another charitable endeavor, funding a chimpanzee sanctuary. Evidence once more of the Monkees’ influence on punk and alternative rock.

3. John Mayer x The Laundress – Out West laundry detergent

Many of us go weak at the knees at the mere mention of the words ‘John’ and ‘Mayer’. Often because of his carefully curated signal path, campus-schooled chops and exquisite phrasing. He knows our pressure points. Other times, well, he is – how to put it – kinda dreamy, and more than that, clearly a man who takes some care and attention when laundry day comes around.

When that day comes, you can bet that the Sob Rock superstar is washing his duds in his signature Out West detergent. It’s tough on stains, easy on colors, and can be used in the machine or fingerstyle (commonly referred to as ‘handwashing’).

Unlike germanium diodes, it operates well in all temperatures, and it’s suitable for cotton, linen, blends, and synthetics, and more. It hasn’t been tested on animals, and 50 percent of the retail price goes to supporting voluntary private land conservation in the state of Montana.

Wait, you don’t think we’re going to let you out of here without some notes on the scent? Grab this and your cotton Oxford will be as fresh as a daisy, offering “crisp and powdery notes with undertones of sandalwood, leather, and amber surrounded by spice, patchouli, and musk”. We’ve all smelled worse on the last train home.

4. Hot sauces: Joe Perry, Billy Gibbons, Obituary’s Trevor Peres and more…

Janie might have a gun but Aerosmith guitarist Joe Perry has his own range of Rock Your World barbecue and hot sauces and they’re so darn tasty you’re gonna need a pump for this stuff. Boneyard Brew table sauce? Just the thing when sitting down to eat the rich. Or maybe you prefer some mellower piquant sweetness, try the house Original BBQ sauce.

In case you get some pulled pork stuck between your gnashers, or maybe if dinner was so enjoyable you have to break into song before dessert, Perry has been known to ship these sauces with a guitar pick. 

Apparently, the back story to this saucy tale – and let’s be real here, there have been a few saucy tales in the history of Aerosmith – is that Perry found the food on tour too bland, and so he cooked up his own sauce. It sure does add a whole new level of subtext to Lord of the Thighs. Or to Get Your Wings for that matter.

Then you have Billy Gibbons and Tim Montana’s range of salsas, BBQ and hot sauces. Those who sprinkle reaper chilli flakes on their granola in the morning might enjoy the Have Mercy hot sauce, rated 9 on the heat dial, but if it’s a casual lunch and you need something to put on the kids’ sandwiches, the Blanco BBQ looks the part.

As for Obituary’s Trevor Peres and his collaboration with Bump In Sauce – evocatively named T-Bone’s Famous Original “Rib’Licious” BBQ Sauce, it presumably has that uncanny ability to make anything and everything taste not just edible but delicious. You could grab the Rat off of Obituary guitarist Trevor Peres’ pedalboard, slather it in “Rib’Licious” then wedge in a brioche bun and it’d taste like ambrosia.

Is it strange for guitar players to have their own BBQ sauces? Well, not when they hail from the Sunshine State. They know a thing or two about grilling down in Tampa, Florida. But there sure are plenty of pickers who have put their name to condiments – Johnny Winter, Ron “Bumblefoot” Thal, Zakk Wylde, Dexter Holland, and Doyle Wolfgang von Frankenstein have all got their own signature sauces. Speaking of…

5. Doyle Wolfgang von Frankenstein – Vegan Monster Protein

Mention Doyle Wolfgang von Frankenstein and mealtime and it’s not necessarily hot sauce that springs to mind. Doyle might look like he would eat your first-born with fries and peas but IRL he is a vegan, and has developed a high-protein formula that will help you add to your abs, tighten your buns and rack up those gains.

Vegan Monster Protein, which was also [unconfirmed] his nickname in the Misfits, is easily prepared. Simply mix with eight to 16 ounces of water – or some non-dairy milk – and you are good to go. You can also use it as a meal replacement shake.

Pro tip (well, more of a suggestion): why not mix it with tomato juice then spike it with Doyle’s Cajun-style hot sauce, whose basil might add a little je ne sais quoi and make the Vegan Monster Protein a Vegan Monster Hangover cure?

6. Mustaine vs Hammett: Dave Mustaine x Net Worth Coffee Brokers vs Muddy Waters Kirk Hammett Greeny Blues Blend

Having resisted the clean tone joke with regards John Mayer and his detergent, it behooves us not to mention the word bitterness or anything leaving a bad taste in the mouth here when talking about Dave Mustaine, Kirk Hammett and a humble cup of good morning America. 

MegaDave had every right to be proud of this roast, working with his wife Pam on this signature blend. Sadly, it is no longer available, but for all your coffee needs and here to save breakfast we have Kirk Hammett. 

His partnership with Muddy Waters Coffee Company on the Greeny Blues Blend is inspired by his Greeny ’59 Les Paul Standard and offers “a rich, full-bodied dark roast with notes of dark chocolate, earth and tropical fruit.” Like Mustaine, Hammett’s coffee collaboration sees money going to good causes, with portions from each sale of Greeny Blues Blend ($20 for 12 ounces) going to music industry non-profit Crew Nation.

7. John Petrucci x Captain Fawcett Nebula beard oil

There are some telltale signs that Dream Theater’s John Petrucci has officially got his shit together. Number one: listen to his discography, a body of work in which compositional audacity is met in kind with executional exactitude. No slop. This is a disciplined man.

We also know he loves barbecue, holding court at the grill. So why couldn’t JP have joined the legions of guitar players and brought a barbecue sauce to market? 

Well, no, because with a beard as lustrous, vigorous and luxuriant as his, the last thing you want is to soil it with a cayenne-rich condiment. Instead, looking for a new vertical, Petrucci went all in on beard care, bottling up some magic whisker elixir in the shape of his signature blend of beard oil.

It’s a serum known only to Petrucci and the good Captain Fawcett, and it might just give your facial shrubbery the gloss of the immortal. “Exhilarating top notes of bergamot & aromatic myrtle riff with a bittersweet tang of grapefruit, rising to an intense heart of earthy, violet orris, dark coffee & tenacious woody cedar. A pulse of seductive musk trails a smoky backbeat laced with vetiver & luxurious leather…” 

No, not the title of the new Dream Theater album, but how your beard will smell when gussied up with Petrucci’s Nebula.

8. Billy Gibbons’ signature sandwich – the Whisker Bomb Po’ Boy from Antone’s, Texas

The man with the most famous whiskers in rock ’n’ roll history is not afraid to upend beard best practice and take a walk on the wild side when lunchtime comes around.

Here he has a Whisker Bomb Po’ Boy from Texan sandwich institution Antone’s that is a guaranteed three-napkin meal. It contains, of course, some Billy Gibbons signature Whisker Bomb sauce, which is applied to a filling of buttermilk fried-green tomatoes, harissa, chipotle mayo, goat’s cheese and arugula, and served up on warm fresh French bread from Royal Bakery.

The Whisker Bomb Po’ Boy is part of a charity initiative with proceeds going to the Clifford Antone Foundation, a non-profit “dedicated to preserving music culture”. But with all those condiments, it’s going to be right up there with cereal milk as the number one threat to beard-wearers across Texas.

9. Brian May x Seiko – Red Special watch

Timekeeping is an essential skill for the guitar player, and we have all manner of gadgets to help us, from the bleep-bleep of the internet metronome, wrist-bands with haptics, to these strange people commonly referred to as drummers. But what about when you’re not playing? How do you stay punctual? 

For Dr Brian Harold May, that’s easy: he has a signature Seiko watch, his second collaboration with the Japanese watchmakers.

It celebrates May’s recent reissues and has a design inspired by his Red Special guitar, with a face that looks like pressed wood, and a deep red finish that contrasts nicely with the gold-and-black of the bezel and strap. That striped detail on the strap is meant to look like guitar strings, which as six-string references go is a deep cut, alluding perhaps to May’s signature Optima Gold electric guitar strings. 

10. Tony Iommi Monkey Special Xerjoff

By a nose, the most unlikely commercial collaboration of any guitarist, we have Tony Iommi, godfather of heavy metal and perfumer at large, working with Italian perfume house Xerjoff on a signature scent.

When we first heard the news it was smelling salts we needed, not a unisex perfume with strong opening notes of bergamot from Reggio Calabria, rum, Bulgarian Geranium and passionfruit.

But lo, the plot thickened, with Iommi sharing the story of how he was weaned on evergreen festive fragrances Old Spice and Brut, before becoming a collector as he toured the world. So heady was the whiff of the perfume counter that Iommi released his first music in eight years, Scent of the Dark.

Perhaps it is time we upped our olfactory game and upgraded to a bottle of Monkey Special, named for his iconic Gibson SG Special, and leave the Old Spice to the shark fishermen.

11. Deftones x Golden Barn – The Passenger Box signature cannabis

So, you’ve polished off that bag of Mustaine’s coffee at the back of the cupboard, chasing it down with a pint of Hammett’s, and now you’re so wired with the caffeine that you find yourself arguing on the internet about Metallica, James Hetfield’s dog and the hinge in heavy metal history that took place right before the release of Kill ‘Em All.

That means it’s time to step away from the screen find your chill, and Deftones’ Stef Carpenter might just have the thing for you – a signature weed line developed in partnership with Golden Barn. Now, this is definitely a 21st century collab, and it looks to be available in California only, at least for now. For readers of a certain vintage, not to mention certain states, news of this is mind-blowing enough without actually sampling it.

Technically, this is a band collaboration, and shouldn’t count, but we strongly suspect Carpenter was operating as project manager for this one. “You can smell it immediately when you open it up,” he says. “It tastes just as it smells. It gets the job done.” A conversation one would never hope to have with a spaniel at the airport.

When Steve Vai joined Alcatrazz in 1984, he was yet to take his seat in the pantheon of electric guitar greats. Sure, he'd done time in Frank Zappa's band between 1980 and '83, but with a solo career just one year in, he remained relatively unknown at the time.

Vai successfully auditioned to play guitar in the Graham Bonnet-led outfit shortly after the departure of Yngwie Malmsteen, but as he explains in a new conversation with the Swedish shred maestro, the band's fans were not informed of the lineup change.

Speaking on Malmsteen's new YouTube interview series Coffee Talk, Vai recalled the process of auditioning for the band, and the collective look on the crowd's faces when he emerged onstage instead of Malmsteen at his first gig.

“I heard [that you had left Alcatrazz] and [so] I went down to audition,” Vai tells Malmsteen. “And it was interesting because I didn't play like you – I was expecting that they would want somebody that could really shred, because I wasn't really that guy.”

As Vai explains, he went to the audition and played for the band, but judging by their reactions, assumed he didn't land the gig. “I thought, ‘Okay, they got who they wanted – they found the right replacement for the best that they could do,’” he says. “And then I got a call [saying] that I got the gig.”

He continues: “The first show – I think it was in Riverside [California] – and nobody knew [that you had left]. The majority of people were there to see you. And [I was] walking out onto the stage, and nobody knew that you weren't there.”

While Malmsteen insists somebody must have been informed, Vai is quick to offer conclusive evidence that the crowd were very much left in the dark about his departure.

“Yngwie, as far as I could tell, nobody knew because the entire audience was chanting your name as I was walking to the stage,” Vai laughs. “And [I was] completely unknown. [I was] just this weird guy that [was] not Yngwie!”

Recalling the look of shock on the faces in the crowd when he got up on stage, Vai concludes, “It was hilarious, but I got through it.”

Aside from their respective solo careers, Vai and Malmsteen both play in touring supergroup Generation Axe alongside Zakk Wylde, Tosin Abasi and Nuno Bettencourt, while the pair have previously played together as part of Joe Satriani's all-star G3 shows, documented on 2004's G3: Rockin' in the Free World live release.

After releasing the Rock III Custom Nylon, a Jazz III pick for high-gain shredders last month, Dunlop has partnered with shred legend Yngwie Malmsteen for a signature Delrin guitar pick.

Available in three gauges – 1.14mm, 1.5mm and 2mm – the Yngwie Malmsteen Custom Delrin Pick is based on Dunlop's Delrin 500 design, and features a beveled edge for “blistering speed and laser-focused accuracy”. 

Visually, the pick sports Yngwie Malmsteen's name in stylized typography on the front, and his signature on the back. Each gauge dons its own colorway: 1.14mm comes in yellow, 1.5mm in white and 2mm in red.

“For clean, precise picking that sounds great, these picks are the only choice!” Malmsteen says. He adds that this is his pick of choice for “complex compositions and violin-style arpeggios”.

The Yngwie Malmsteen Custom Delrin Pick is available now at $10.99 for a pack of six. For more info, head to Dunlop.

Yngwie Malmsteen adds himself to the list of artists with signature Dunlop plectrums. Last year, Periphery's Misha Mansoor teamed up with the brand for the Custom Delrin Flow which, like Malmsteen's new pick model, features a sculpted edge for added dynamic control. 

Yngwie Malmsteen has postponed a series of dates on his current US tour.

A statement posted to social media on the guitarist's behalf on Friday (December 10) explained that “Yngwie has been instructed to take a few days rest” on “doctor's orders”. The statement clarifies that the postponement is not Covid-related.

“All purchased tickets and meet and greets will be honored for the rescheduled dates,” the statement continues. “Yngwie's looking forward to resting up and seeing all of you when the time comes.”

Malmsteen's California shows in Fresno, Montclair and Santa Clarita on December 10, 11 and 12 were postponed, though it's not yet clear which future dates will be affected. The guitarist's website is yet to be updated, and still has him scheduled to perform four dates between December 14 and 18 in Albuquerque, Dallas, Tulsa and Houston.

Earlier this month, fan-shot footage emerged on YouTube of Malmsteen's recent November 23 concert in Harrisburg, Pennsylvania.

During the set, the shredder tore through a selection of cuts from his expansive discography, including Wolves at the Door and Relentless Fury from his latest album Parabellum, his biggest hits like Rising Force and Black Star and a cover of Deep Purple's classic Smoke on the Water.

In a recent interview with Guitar World, Malmsteen discussed playing everything apart from drums on Parabellum.

“In rock ‘n’ roll it’s embedded in people’s minds that it has to be a band playing everything,” he said. “And I’m not saying there’s anything wrong with that – I love the Rolling Stones and Deep Purple and so many bands.

“And 99.9 percent of the songs in those bands usually come about when the guitar player comes up with a riff, the drummer starts playing along with it and finally the singer comes in and starts singing over that. Which is great. But for some reason I tend to approach things more like a writer or a painter would.

“Like, the painter paints the foreground, he paints the background… he doesn’t go, 'Oh, can you do this part for me?' It’s the same with a classical composer, for that matter. And that’s just the way I approach it.”

New fan-shot footage of Yngwie Malmsteen's recent concert at the Harrisburg Midtown Arts Center in Harrisburg, Pennsylvania has emerged on YouTube.

The show – one of the first on Malmsteen's current month-long fall US tour – saw the guitar wizard blaze through a selection of cuts from his discography, including Wolves at the Door and Relentless Fury from his latest album, Parabellum, some of his biggest hits like Rising Force and Black Star, and a cover of Deep Purple's legendary Smoke on the Water.

After working with a series of singers over the course of his decades-spanning career, the guitarist now handles lead vocal duties himself – as seen during the Harrisburg, Pennsylvania performance.

Malmsteen's backing band for the tour includes bassist Emilio Martinez, keyboardist Nick Marino and drummer Brian Wilson.

Despite Yngwie's enviable guitar chops, he revealed in a Guitar World interview earlier this month that he has “never practiced in the true meaning of the word”.

“Practicing is taking something and repeating it over and over,” he said. “But from day one, the first time I picked up a guitar when I was seven, in my head I thought I was a performer. I never, ever, ever felt like, ‘Oh yeah, let me play this repetitiously until it's right.’

He did concede though that he plays, expectedly, “quite a lot”. “If I'm watching TV, I play guitar,” he continued. “And looking back, most of the time I'm touring or recording, so it's like I'm never not doing it. It's always active somehow. And if I don't play for a little bit, I notice.”

Elsewhere in the interview, Malmsteen discussed recording every single instrument – and vocal line – on his latest album Parabellum himself, apart from drums.

“It's a very bizarre thing to try to explain, because in rock 'n' roll it's embedded in people's minds that it has to be a band playing everything,” he explained. “And I'm not saying there's anything wrong with that – I love the Rolling Stones and Deep Purple and so many bands.

“And 99.9 percent of the songs in those bands usually come about when the guitar player comes up with a riff, the drummer starts playing along with it and finally the singer comes in and starts singing over that. Which is great. But for some reason I tend to approach things more like a writer or a painter would. 

“Like, the painter paints the foreground, he paints the background… he doesn’t go, 'Oh, can you do this part for me?' It’s the same with a classical composer, for that matter. And that’s just the way I approach it. Even when I was a little kid, if the drummer wasn’t in the rehearsal room I’d just put the record button on. Like, the demo tape version of Black Star that I did in 1982, that’s me playing drums, bass, keyboards and guitar. So this is nothing new for me.” 

“Did I ever tell you the story about when I first came to America?” Yngwie Malmsteen asks a few minutes into his conversation with Guitar World. The Swedish neoclassical shred legend is calling from – where else? – his Ferrari (“Sun’s up, top’s down”), and as the wind whips by in the background, he unfolds a tale from his past to illuminate how he approached the insane guitar work that characterizes his new album, Parabellum. 

“I was a little kid, like 18 or 19, and I was new in the country – I spoke English but I didn’t know some of the terminology,” he begins. “And right away I recorded one album with [Los Angeles-by-way-of-Nashville metal band] Steeler. We did it in one day, in a barn. Then right after that, I did the Alcatrazz album [1983’s No Parole from Rock ‘n’ Roll], and we had a producer there. It was really proper. 

“I did a solo, and I’ll never forget it – the producer goes, ‘Oh, yeah, that was really good. Let’s do one more, but a little slower – remember, less is more.’ And I honestly looked at him and went, ‘You mean more is more, right? You made a mistake!’”

Malmsteen lets out a laugh, but he’s also deadly serious. “That wasn’t a joke,” he says. “To me, more is more. And that became my thing.” Indeed it did. To be sure, these very pages have chronicled plenty of exceptionally creative, incredibly proficient and mind-bogglingly speedy guitar shredders over the past four decades. But none of these players is Yngwie Malmsteen. 

The 58-year-old virtuoso has always been, and will likely always remain, in a class of his own. And Parabellum will only serve to further cement the Malmsteen legend, and maybe even nudge it a bit further along.  

From the unaccompanied shred salvo that kicks off the fierce album opener, Wolves at the Door, to the neoclassical romp Presto Vivace in C# Minor, the majestic note spirals that punctuate the power ballad Eternal Bliss to the pummeling rhythms and lightspeed harmonized lines of Toccata, and the staccato, flamenco-esque acoustic picking of (Fight) the Good Fight to the kitchen-sink six-string indulgences of the eight-minute instrumental closer, Sea of Tranquility, the new record is an Yngwie-on-steroids shred extravaganza, and light years away from its predecessor, the bluesy (though, admittedly, still pretty shreddy) Blue Lightning. 

“This time,” Malmsteen says, “I told my record label, ‘I’m going to give you an album that is what I am all about. Prepare yourselves!’” And so, once again, the fury has been unleashed. Much like Malmsteen’s record label, you’ve been warned. 

Your last album, Blue Lightning, was a bit of a departure from what we’ve come to expect from an Yngwie Malmsteen record. But I’d say that, with Parabellum, we get the “full Yngwie”. You come out with all guns blazing. 

“I guess it was all balled up, huh? [Laughs] I can’t explain to you what happened. But I think that, you can listen to shit I did in 1979, 1980, when I was like 16 years old, and, I mean, I don’t think it sounds as good as this, but you could say it’s similar in approach, where there are really no boundaries. There’s no, ‘Oh, maybe that’s a little too much…’ This is what it is, you know?”

What led you to go in this direction? 

“With this one I had a full year of doing nothing. Normally I’m touring, but I was in the studio 24/7 for nine months. It was crazy. The only time I remember doing something similar was when I did [1986’s] Trilogy. Because normally you’re on tour, and you cut the drums somewhere and then you do vocals somewhere else, that type of thing. And I don’t say that to mean it’s bad or good. 

“But what I am saying is that this time I became extremely meticulous about things. And also I was very inspired and very passionate about what I did. I hope that shows.  Also, I’ll say it’s been quite a while since I’ve even attempted to do something that would please a certain audience or fit into a certain format or whatever. And that’s true for this record, too. 

“I just did what felt natural to me. I didn’t say, “Oh, I’ve got to do this, I’ve got to do that.” What you hear is what you get. That’s me right there on that record. I’m not trying to be something or trying to add something different. It’s a very natural thing, you know?”

Did you not feel that way about Blue Lightning? 

“I thought Blue Lightning was really cool. But you know, I was kind of requested to do it. I don’t really take requests, but that one was a request, more or less [from Malmsteen’s label, Mascot Records]. And I said, ‘Yeah, shit, I’m game, why not?’ Some of the songs that I covered, or did my variations on, rather, are songs I’ve always loved. And then I also wrote a bunch of songs that were in the same bluesy vein. And that didn’t feel weird to me because my first initiation with guitar was the blues. 

“I got my first guitar when I was five, and my whole family was musical. I would hear jazz and classical and all that stuff. But I didn’t want to know about that – I just wanted to play rock. And blues. Because that was what was cool to me. But the reason I diverted from that to do what now is my style is because I felt extremely limited with those five notes.  

“Having said that, I love B.B. King and Angus Young and all those blues players. I think they’re amazing. But for me, I felt more intrigued and more challenged and more fascinated with linear patterns and harmonic minors and diminished scales and all that stuff. That’s why I got away from the blues. At the same time, the blues was never a stranger to me.”   

You mentioned the benefit of having a lot of time in the studio for Parabellum. What did that bring to the songs? 

“One thing is that once I found a melody or a theme or riff or some crazy arpeggio section, I would record it, and then go, ‘Fuck, this is amazing. Now what am I going to do with it?’ And I could do anything I wanted with it. I can’t tell you how many times I’ve listened to one of my old records and said, ‘Oh, man, I wish I had done it like this.’ This time, I haven’t thought that yet. Maybe I will later but… [Laughs] 

“But now it’s like, “No, that’s exactly what I wanted to do.” And that was a luxury of time. I think almost all the songs transformed one way or another, as far as tempos and timing, half time or double time, arrangements. Again, that’s the luxury of time.

“Like, the song Wolves at the Door, I had four different versions of that one. Then I said, ‘I need to put something in the middle.’ So I came up with a G minor arpeggio thing. But after I listened back to it in my car I said, ‘No, I’m starting the song with this!’ So I moved it. 

“And Relentless Fury, at one point that was an uptempo song. Or the ballad [Eternal Bliss], I came up with the melodies on guitar, but then I decided to sing them instead. Because the melody will hold itself no matter what you do with it. The more time you can live with something, the more you can change things around, get them exactly how you want.”

I’ve heard you mention that there’s a gunshot on the record. 

“[Laughs] Okay. So, back in ’86 I was recording the Trilogy album and I had just discovered sampling and triggering, right? It was a new thing then. I had a Magnum pistol and I wanted to have it triggered by a snare drum, so that every time the drummer hit the snare a gunshot would go off. Like, pow! pow! 

“So I brought the gun into the studio, and we put up the mics and we put a big piece of wood there. ‘Okay, roll tape.’ We pull the trigger. Boom! Then we listen back. And all you hear is a little pop. Because the microphones couldn’t handle it. So that was ’86. Now, on this album I tried it again, and we got it. 

“I used a Berreta 92, the army pistol. And you can hear it a couple of times. It’s at the beginning of Relentless Fury, and it’s in the middle of Wolves at the Door. And there’s one more, I think, on the last song, Sea of Tranquility. It’s such a cool effect, you know? It’s something I wanted to do 35 years ago, and we finally got it right.”  

Let’s talk about some of the other, um, gear on the record. When it comes to guitars and amps, are you basically just using your signature models? 

“Yes. It’s a little bit boring because I use my Yngwie Malmsteen [Fender Stratocaster] guitars, I use my Yngwie Malmsteen YJM100 Marshalls, I use my Yngwie Malmsteen [Fender] strings and Yngwie Malmsteen [Seymour Duncan YJM Fury] pickups. Even the acoustic guitar on the record is the Ovation Yngwie [Viper] model. Although for the bass parts I used a Fender through a SansAmp. And I used a Roland [guitar] synthesizer to do all the keyboard parts. All the fast piano parts, that’s all on guitar.”  

You’re playing everything except drums.  

“Yes. The drums were played by Lawrence Lannerbach. I played all the other instruments. I sang all the vocals. Everything. When you have so much time, that’s when you can go, ‘Hey, let me do 50 vocal overdubs.’”

In the last few years you’ve taken on more and more of the workload yourself. What do you like about that approach? 

“It’s a very bizarre thing to try to explain, because in rock ‘n’ roll it’s embedded in people’s minds that it has to be a band playing everything, right? And I’m not saying there’s anything wrong with that – I love the Rolling Stones and Deep Purple and so many bands. 

“And 99.9 percent of the songs in those bands usually come about when the guitar player comes up with a riff, the drummer starts playing along with it and finally the singer comes in and starts singing over that. Which is great. But for some reason I tend to approach things more like a writer or a painter would. 

“Like, the painter paints the foreground, he paints the background… he doesn’t go, 'Oh, can you do this part for me?' It’s the same with a classical composer, for that matter. And that’s just the way I approach it. Even when I was a little kid, if the drummer wasn’t in the rehearsal room I’d just put the record button on. Like, the demo tape version of Black Star that I did in 1982, that’s me playing drums, bass, keyboards and guitar. So this is nothing new for me.” 

Do you still sit down and practice and try to learn new things? 

“Well, practice, the true meaning of the word, I’ve never done that. Ever. Because practicing is taking something and repeating it over and over. But from day one, the first time I picked up a guitar when I was seven, in my head I thought I was a performer, you know? I never, ever, ever felt like, ‘Oh yeah, let me play this repetitiously until it’s right.’ 

“I said, ‘No, I’d better get it right now because I can’t accept being substandard!’ It’s a very strange approach, but that’s what I’ve always thought. And you know, I play quite a lot. If I’m watching TV, I play guitar. And looking back, most of the time I’m touring or recording, so it’s like I’m never not doing it. It’s always active somehow. And if I don’t play for a little bit, I notice.” 

I once had a conversation with [former Steeler vocalist] Ron Keel, and he told me that, when you first came to the U.S., you were always playing guitar. He said you would wake up and grab your Strat before you even got out of bed. Then you’d pour a bowl of cereal with one hand and continue playing guitar with the other. Is this an accurate description of Yngwie Malmsteen circa 1983? 

“It is. But it’s funny because it’s almost like he’s talking about me when I was even younger. In the 1950s in Sweden, my uncle built a recording studio in a building that was owned by my grandfather. I got to use that facility when I was a kid. I was lucky. 

“But it was in the city, and my mom’s house was 45 minutes out by train and a bus. So I would walk to the bus, and while I was waiting for the bus I would take a guitar and start playing. As soon as I was on the bus, I would start playing. When I got to the train I would play guitar on the train. Then I’d change trains and I’d go to my last stop – still playing – and I would walk to my studio and play guitar until it was time to catch the last train back, which was at 2am. 

“Then when I got home, I would start playing until I fell asleep. When I woke up in the morning? My guitar was still on me. And the first thing I would do is play. I would do this over and over and over and over.”

That’s commitment. 

“The most bizarre thing is, I didn’t know why I was doing it. Because it wasn’t like, ‘Oh yeah, if you do this you’re gonna get this reward or that reward.’ It was just some sort of relentless drive to prove something to myself. So I don’t know that I was quite like that by the time I got to the States, but yeah, I was definitely like that. I was always committed.”

• Parabellum is out now via Mascot Label Group.