When did you decide you didnt want to be Yngwie Malmsteen ?

Telejester

I remember in 1984 bringing home a vinyl copy of the Rising Force album by Yngwie, I was 15 yrs old and I swear I had a listening to Van Halen 1 in 1978 experience. The sheer accuracy and precision just blew me away and I wanted to be Yngwie. I saved and saved and eventually bought a red usa strat with maple neck to play thru my peavey bandit 65 in the bedroom and drove my mum and dad insane with reverb soaked high gain and endless speed picking and sweeping arpeggios.

This was all fine and dandy for years until I had the experience in 1988 which shook my guitar world. Cant remember where I was or what I was doing but I heard the track "see the light" by Jeff Healey and I was shellshocked to the boots.

Had to find out more and then imagine my shock when finding out he is blind and plays the guitar horizontally on his lap whilst seated. Got the see the light album on vinyl and  stuck it on dads turntable and sat down to listen. Where Yngwie ran up and down the same E harmonic scale on nearly every song and just didnt let up for a whole album at a time, Healey could literally stop traffic with a single note, that vibrato, that tone and that intensity and Yngwie grew old immediately.

I can appreciate Yngwie for what he did back in 84 but nowadays I find his music apocalyptically boring. May Jeff Healey rest in peace, my guitar hero forever and the man who killed my interest in Yngwie and the whole shred thing stone dead. When did you not want to be Yngwie, or do you want to play just like him ?

guitarfishbay

When I discovered Chopin and came to the realisation guitar can’t touch what a virtuoso pianist can do. Power, speed, beautiful melodies and thunderous accompaniment at the same time, massive dynamic range. Fast harmonic minor runs on a guitar are kind of wimpy in comparison.

Nunogilberto

When I saw the G3 Live In Denver DVD where he blew fast triplets over very single song they played - I lost interest pretty quickly to be fair...

Telejester

Nunogilberto said:

When I saw the G3 Live In Denver DVD where he blew fast triplets over very single song they played - I lost interest pretty quickly to be fair...

Know what you mean, ive no time for vai or satch , but when i saw a g3 clip where yngwie was part of the show, i just had to have a look. Yngwie came out with the pouting and the swagger and basically blew his whole repertoire within 30 secs, it turned out kinda embarrassing to watch. Now i would go to the g3 with eric johnson in a heartbeat, watch his set and then bail before the vai or satch sets. EJ playing songs like trademark just makes the world a better place, as for yngwie and the neverending kicking plectrums into the audience.......meh

thegummy

Never been that interested in him or that style.

I love Jeff Healey though, one of my favorite musicians.

Danny1969

It's not my cup of tea but for me he invented that style and he plays it with passion. Unfortunately what's missing is the songs, There's Rising Force and a couple of other good ones but it's mainly pretty feeble 

Lebarque

@fastonebaz still hasn't...  ;0)

cpcompany

My elder sister had one of his  albums. He had a poodle perm, jacket sleeves pulled up and loads of gold chains. I decided that he looked like a twat and I would definitely hate his music. Sometimes you can judge a book by its cover.

richardhomer

Never liked any - as I believe Frank Zappa called them - ‘Stunt Guitarists’. Malmsteen represents the polar opposite of what good guitar music should be like, for me.

I saw Jeff Healey play a small club in Manchester, somewhere around 1990. He was stunningly good....

Alnico

richardhomer said:

Never liked any - as I believe Frank Zappa called them - ‘Stunt Guitarists’. Malmsteen represents the polar opposite of what good guitar music should be like, for me.

I saw Jeff Healey play a small club in Manchester, somewhere around 1990. He was stunningly good....

I'm more jealous of that than anything I can remember.
Wow.
I was always and still am a big fan of Jeff Healey.
That's got to be an amazing memory.

MikeB

Jeff Healey at Rock City in Nottingham still rates as one of my favourite guitar gigs. Remember being on the balcony just watching in awe. Still can't work out how he stood up, without a strap,  and carried on playing for some songs without a dropped note! 

Teetonetal

Two things... I never ever got even close to his speed and accuracy despite a load of pracrice. 

Lyrics on his records were awful.

Perpetual remains my favourite piece of his.

pintspiller

I always wanted to be Ron Ashton

ToneControl

I got up to 2/3 of Vai speed, then threw my thin plectrums away and have always played with 3mm stubbies since: providing and excellent control of tone and encouraging a slower and more thoughtful approach to phrasing

Sassafras

Never seen the appeal of speed guitar.
Yes, it's impressive, yes, it's skilful. yes, it's boring, yes, it's self indulgent.
In the words of the well known music critic @RandallFlagg it's 'drivel'.

Iamnobody

This first time I heard him 

Then when I saw his hair it reaffirmed my decision!

Only joking. Until I started playing the guitar in the late 90’s and bought a magazine I’d never even heard of him...

Not my type of music I’m afraid. 

Funkfingers

pintspiller said:

I always wanted to be Ron Ashton

Have an E.

thegummy said:

Never been that interested in him or that style.

First heard his name through word of mouth from other guitarists. They spoke more of his self-aggrandising attitude than of anything he played.

Danny1969 said:

he invented that style ... what's missing is the songs

No and yes. I think of YJM as a Ritchie Blackmore devotee who took it too far. Blackmore came up with actual riffs that people can hum.

Limehouse_Blues

I'd never heard of him until an early 90s guitar mag interview from which I formed a negative opinion of him, admitedly at that time without having listened to him. He slagged off Satch in that interview and I was already a big Satch fan and he came across as arrogant.

i since listened to some of YJM's stuff and liked it more than Vai but less than Satch. I long ago gave up on trying to become a shredder myself though. Recently I started to get into hybrid picking with a pick (hitherto I'd always dispensed with picks for acoustic fingerstyle) to explore more electric country sounds. It's great fun but really hard. I honestly think that trying to play Susie Q properly is one of the hardest things I've tried to learn on the guitar. Much tougher than dozen note legato runs or tapping!

rsvmark

Might have posted this before so forgive my indulgence.

it was the Grand National weekend in Liverpool in the very early 90's and me and 4 mates had a great long weekend on the sauce culminating in Jeff Healey playing in town.

he was epic all night. Some girl down the front was shouting for 'Angel eyes' off the first album. She was bloody relentless and would not shut up. He patiently ignored her calls in between every song until she came out with this:

'Jeff, Jeff, play Angel Eyes for me and then make love to me'

sharp as a tack he responded:

'I would love to but the wife's backstage and I don't think she would like it.'

Classic

ps. Never wanted to be Yngwie either. Jeff Healey is far funnier!

Barney

When I realised I couldn't do it..!

impmann

When did I decide I didn’t want to be Yngwie?
The moment I first heard him.

Sorry not my bag.