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

Aidanspaghetti

I’m turning INTO him, physically.

DrBob

Musically he’s not my bag but he is a brilliant caricature of a rock guitarist. He’s like what would happen if the Muppets & Spitting Image collaborated on a project to make a “Rock God”.
And the thing is, whenever I’ve seen him interviewed he seems to be having the time of his life with it.

Quite jealous really..

Teetonetal

p90fool said:

Players like Guthrie Goven leave me absolutely cold I'm afraid, just utterly devoid of fire and panache. 

Seriously? 

This for me is the best guitar solo this century. 

p90fool

Teetonetal said:

p90fool said:

Players like Guthrie Goven leave me absolutely cold I'm afraid, just utterly devoid of fire and panache. 

Seriously? 

This for me is the best guitar solo this century. 

Yeah sorry He's a great musician obviously, but that noodling over a synth pad thing is almost cheating, a bit like Steve Hillage on amphetamines. 

I just like the interplay of great musicians, this gives me goosebumps, though it's all down to personal taste, obviously;

Teetonetal

One of the most gifted drummers, keys players and song writers on the same track and it's cheating?

But yeah it is all down to personal taste. For ne the hancock track is devoid of passion and interest.. I know it's great musicians but it just doesn't do anything for me.. far too overplayed.

So there we are, it's all just opinion. All valid. Because we all have different perspectives there isn't one singular truth, is there?

p90fool

Teetonetal said:

One of the most gifted drummers, keys players and song writers on the same track and it's cheating?

But yeah it is all down to personal taste. For ne the hancock track is devoid of passion and interest.. I know it's great musicians but it just doesn't do anything for me.. far too overplayed.

So there we are, it's all just opinion. All valid. Because we all have different perspectives there isn't one singular truth, is there?

Absolutely not, though there's one simple fact which transcends any subjective discussion, and that is that Yngwie is hilarious!

SquireJapan

I love Yngwie - I really do believe he's playing a character. His autobiography is very telling (if you read between the lines). He's a very very canny man.

I saw him live for the first time late last year. It was pretty terrible, I lasted about 40 mins, then left and went back to the pub. Too fast, no passion ... my guess is he's now pretty deaf as per Paul Gilbert, and can't hear the drums to keep time ... so the drums play to him. It's like someone pressed play on a guitar version of a player piano, a player piano with a faulty timing mechanism...

I still love rising force, and keep playing tiny bits of it very slowly ... he changed the shape of modern guitar, and I think it's difficult to deny that. He occupies a similar space to EVH for me; love the music, changed the face of guitar ... the guy himself is a different matter.

I would still love to be able to rip through Black Star like he does on the record, just like I would love to rip through "I'm the one". I keep trying, sometimes getting closer

Philly_Q

I spent at least the first 20 years of my guitar-playing life wanting to be, if not actually Yngwie Malmsteen, then definitely some kind of mind-bogglingly fleet-fingered guitar hero (...without ever actually progressing beyond Lil Wayne level).

For the last 15 years or so my love of The Guitar Solo hasn't diminished in the slightest, there was no great moment of revelation, but I've gradually come to realise that a guitar solo is essentially a bit of frippery, some very nice icing on the far more important cake that is the song.  I now have no real wish to be a "better" guitarist than, say, Tony Iommi, Andy Powell, Leslie West or Tim Sult.  It would be lovely to be technically brilliant and amazing, a master of sweep-picking and all that bollocks, but I'd rather be able to jam a big heavy groove and write a decent song.

That said, in fact I'm still just Lil Wayne....

If we're talking about Yngwie in particular, I certainly don't dislike him or what he does.  He's funny, whether it's all an act or completely genuine.  I like his choice of guitars, I lke his sound and he's certainly not the worst offender in the mindless shredding stakes.  I haven't heard all his albums, but of the ones I have heard I think he was at his best working with people he actually respected - Graham Bonnet, Joe Lynn Turner, Barriemore Barlow.  They kept his ego in check... a little.

handsomerik

When did I decide I didn’t want to be Malmsteen? I didn’t really think about it. 

When did i decide that I DID want to be Mateus Asato? Immediately after hearing him play anything at all. 

:-)

Telejester

handsomerik said:

When did I decide I didn’t want to be Malmsteen? I didn’t really think about it. 

When did i decide that I DID want to be Mateus Asato? Immediately after hearing him play anything at all. 

:-)

never heard of him

dindude

Teetonetal said:

p90fool said:

Players like Guthrie Goven leave me absolutely cold I'm afraid, just utterly devoid of fire and panache. 

Seriously? 

This for me is the best guitar solo this century. 

Agreed, that Solo is out of this world. When Guthrie is on this form he absolutely has soul fire and passion, you can here it, and in that clip you can see it.

See I’d put someone like Mateus Asato in the camp of someone who is impressive and I should like but I find incredibly bland after 1 minute. Same for Nick Johnston.

Back to YJM. Loads of swagger, fire and attitude - shame it’s so fucking unlistenable. 

I say say you need both musicality and fire/passion to be top flight. YJM only has one of those so is the same category for me, just different things missing.

Telejester

very true, piddly piddly piddly has an interest span of approx 30 secs, after that it is yawnsville

Neill

@p90fool Steve Hillage on amphetamines... brilliant, wish I'd thought of that.  

hywelg

Never had to make that decision. Always wanted to be Mick Taylor then Paul Kossoff or Peter Green.  They have soul. Touch, feel, note choice, expression and space make for a much more pleasurable listening experience to my ears. 

TTBZ

Never wanted to play like him. I was always more into Paul Gilbert's playing and attitude -just a cool guy having fun shredding the shit out of his guitar. I met Yngwie a few months ago and he was very nice and welcoming to me. I felt a bit sorry for his tech, band and sound guy though - he seemed very demanding but perhaps that's just part of his shtick as well.

Clarky

Teetonetal said:

p90fool said:

Players like Guthrie Goven leave me absolutely cold I'm afraid, just utterly devoid of fire and panache. 

Seriously? 

This for me is the best guitar solo this century. 

beautiful solo.. beautifully constructed.. beautifully played..

the face he pulls at the end of it looks like relief..

Teetonetal

Clarky said:

beautiful solo.. beautifully constructed.. beautifully played..

the face he pulls at the end of it looks like relief..

I understand he did this, plus a couple of others in one improvised take

Flanging_Fred

As usual, I'm a bit late to this thread party.

I first heard Yngwie when Rising Force came out, I must have been 15 or 16. I absolutely loved it, totally blew me away. I went to see him at Poole arts centre and enjoyed that as well. Then for some reason I didn't listen to any more of his stuff or read much about him  after that.

The other week I signed up to Spotify and for some reason decided to listen to Rising Force for the first time in decades. Yup, still enjoyed it.  Then I thought I'd listen to some more of his stuff and, um, err I can see why people find it laughably bad.

So for me Yngwie is like a musical time capsule back to when I was a excited hormonal teenager and that part of me still wants to be able to play like that.

Just in very small doses.

thegummy

Flanging_Fred said:

As usual, I'm a bit late to this thread party.

I first heard Yngwie when Rising Force came out, I must have been 15 or 16. I absolutely loved it, totally blew me away. I went to see him at Poole arts centre and enjoyed that as well. Then for some reason I didn't listen to any more of his stuff or read much about him  after that.

The other week I signed up to Spotify and for some reason decided to listen to Rising Force for the first time in decades. Yup, still enjoyed it.  Then I thought I'd listen to some more of his stuff and, um, err I can see why people find it laughably bad.

So for me Yngwie is like a musical time capsule back to when I was a excited hormonal teenager and that part of me still wants to be able to play like that.

Just in very small doses.

There are a few artists that I was into as a teenager and still love those albums to this day but would never listen to anything else by them.

stratman3142

Flanging_Fred said:

As usual, I'm a bit late to this thread party.

I first heard Yngwie when Rising Force came out, I must have been 15 or 16. I absolutely loved it, totally blew me away. I went to see him at Poole arts centre and enjoyed that as well. Then for some reason I didn't listen to any more of his stuff or read much about him  after that.

The other week I signed up to Spotify and for some reason decided to listen to Rising Force for the first time in decades. Yup, still enjoyed it.  Then I thought I'd listen to some more of his stuff and, um, err I can see why people find it laughably bad.

So for me Yngwie is like a musical time capsule back to when I was a excited hormonal teenager and that part of me still wants to be able to play like that.

Just in very small doses.

That's similar to how I feel about Yngwie regarding early impressions and then the passage of time. I still regard him as a great expressive player who spearheaded a certain style. But he's stayed in a specific zone and my tastes don't lie in that area any more.

I was watching Adam Neely on Youtube recently and, on the topic of virtuosos, he referred to Yngwie as 'one dimensional' compared to someone such as Steve Vai, which is a comment I can relate to.