About YNGWIE MALMSTEEN:
Yngwie Malmsteen was born in Stockholm, Sweden, on June 30, 1963. Applying his intense curiosity and tenacity to first an old Mosrite and then a cheap Stratocaster, Yngwie immersed himself in the music of such bands like Deep Purple and spent long hours practicing to learn their songs. His admiration for Ritchie Blackmore’s classically influenced playing led him back to the source: Bach, Vivaldi, Beethoven, and Mozart. As Yngwie absorbed the classical structures of the masters, his prodigious style began to take shape.
By age 10, he began to focus all his energies on music. His mother and sister, the latter a talented flautist, recognized his unique musical gifts and gave him support and encouragement. His mastery of the instrument progressed rapidly. In his early teens, Yngwie saw a television performance of Russian violinist Gideon Kremer, who performed the highly difficult 24 Caprices of 19th-century virtuoso violinist Niccolo Paganini. The effect was profound, and Yngwie understood at last how to combine his love of classical music with his burgeoning guitar skills and onstage charisma.
Yngwie’s first solo album, ‘Rising Force’ (now considered the bible for neoclassical rock) made it to #60 on the Billboard charts, an impressive feat for a mostly instrumental guitar album with no commercial airplay. The album also gained Yngwie a Grammy nomination for best rock instrumental performance. He was voted “Best New Talent” in several readers’ polls, “Best Rock Guitarist” the year after, and Rising Force became “Album of the Year”. Rising Force blazed a trail on the concert circuit that established Yngwie as one of rock guitar’s brightest new stars and added a new genre to the music lexicon: neoclassical rock.
With his place in guitar history firmly established, Yngwie’s neo-classical compositions fueled the ears of fans and the ambitions of aspiring guitarists worldwide for over a decade with such powerhouse classic albums as ‘Marching Out’, ‘Trilogy’, ‘Odyssey’, ‘Live in Leningrad / Trial By Fire’ (gold-selling concert video of Yngwie’s 1989 sold-out concerts in Moscow and Leningrad), ‘Fire & Ice’ (which debuted in Japan at #1 and sold over 100,000 copies on the day of its release), ‘The Seventh Sign’, ‘Magnum Opus’, ‘Inspiration’ (covering the music of Deep Purple, Rainbow, U.K., Kansas, Scorpions, Rush, and Jimi Hendrix), ‘Facing the Animal’, ‘Alchemy’, and ‘Attack!!’
Early in 2009, Yngwie contributed three tracks to the video game Rock Band, for both Xbox and PlayStation. Still promoting Perpetual Flame, Yngwie and the band played a series of killer concerts in Japan with rock icons Deep Purple. By mid-summer, Yngwie astonished fans and critics alike by releasing an album completely off the beaten path for him; an entirely instrumental collection of ballads from Yngwie’s earlier work performed on acoustic guitar with orchestral arrangements. To everyone’s surprise, ‘Angels of Love’ (inspired by Yngwie’s wife April) hit the top of Amazon.com’s New Age music list.
Recognition of Yngwie’s place in music history continued to come in. In TIME Magazine, Yngwie found himself included as one of the “10 Greatest Electric Guitar Players.” Near the end of the year, Yngwie and his management company decided to begin releasing rare archival concert footage. The first was Yngwie in Korea, shot during his 2001 War to End All Wars Tour, in Seoul, South Korea. And that, asserts Yngwie, is just the tip of the iceberg of things to come!
