Yngwie Malmsteen

Yngwie Johan Malmsteen (born Lars Johan Yngve Lannerbäck, ); born 30 June 1963) is a Swedish guitarist. He first became known in the 1980s for his neoclassical playing style in heavy metal, and has released 22 studio albums in a career spanning over 40 years. In August 2009, Time magazine named Malmsteen No. 9 on its list of the 10 best electric guitar players of all-time.

Malmsteen was born Lars Johan Yngve Lannerbäck in Stockholm, Sweden, the third child of a musical family.

At age 10, Malmsteen created his first band, Track on Earth, consisting of himself and a friend from school playing the drums.

At age 12, he took his mother's maiden name Malmsten as his surname, then slightly changed it to Malmsteen and altered his third given name Yngve to "Yngwie".

However watching the TV news reports on 18 September 1970 of Hendrix's death, which included footage of Hendrix smashing and burning his guitar at the Monterey Pop Festival of 1967, made Malmsteen think, "This is really cool."

Malmsteen's neoclassical style of metal became popular among hordes of guitarists during the mid-1980s, with contemporaries such as Jason Becker, Marty Friedman, Paul Gilbert, Tony MacAlpine, and Vinnie Moore becoming prominent.

In early 1982, Mike Varney of Shrapnel Records, who had heard a demo tape of Malmsteen's playing from the 1978 demo titled Powerhouse, brought Malmsteen to the United States.

He played briefly with the band Steeler on its 1983 self-titled album.

He then appeared with Graham Bonnet in the band Alcatrazz, playing on its 1983 debut No Parole from Rock 'n' Roll and the 1984 live album Live Sentence.

Bonnet and Malmsteen clashed about who was the frontman and had a fight during a show.

Malmsteen was fired on the spot from Alcatrazz and replaced by Steve Vai.

Vai had one day to learn the songs for the ongoing tour.

In 1984, Malmsteen released his first solo album Rising Force, which featured Barrie Barlow of Jethro Tull on drums and keyboard player Jens Johansson.

His album was meant to be an instrumental side-project of Alcatrazz, but it ended up featuring vocals by Jeff Scott Soto and Malmsteen left Alcatrazz soon after the release of Rising Force.

Rising Force won the Guitar Player's award for Best Rock Album and was nominated for a Grammy Award for 'Best Rock Instrumental', reaching no. 60 on the Billboard album chart.

Yngwie J. Malmsteen's Rising Force (as his band was thereafter known) next released Marching Out (1985).

Then he recruited Jens Johansson's brother Anders to play drums and bassist Marcel Jacob to record and tour with the band.

Jacob left in the middle of a tour and was replaced by Wally Voss.

Malmsteen's third album, Trilogy, featuring the vocals of Mark Boals (and Malmsteen on both guitar and bass), was released in 1986.

Boals left the band in the middle of the tour and was replaced by the former singer Jeff Scott Soto.

The tour was cancelled after Malmsteen was involved in a serious car accident, smashing his V12 Jaguar E-Type into a tree, which put him in a coma for a week.

Nerve damage to his right hand was reported.

During this time, Malmsteen's mother died from cancer.

New line-up changes for the next album with former Rainbow vocalist Joe Lynn Turner joined the band, along with session bassist Bob Daisley, who was hired to record some bass parts and help with the lyrics.

In April 1988, he released his fourth album Odyssey.

Odyssey was his most successful album, in part due to the success of its first single "Heaven Tonight".

In late 1988, Malmsteen's signature Fender Stratocaster guitar was released, making him and Eric Clapton the first artists to be honored by Fender.

Shows in the Soviet Union during the Odyssey tour were recorded and released in 1989 as a fifth album Trial by Fire: Live in Leningrad.

The classic Rising Force line-up with Malmsteen and the Johansson brothers was dissolved in 1989 when both Anders and Jens left.

That year later, Jens joined Dio replacing keyboardist Claude Schnell.

In the early 1990s, Malmsteen released two albums, Eclipse (1990) and Fire & Ice (1992), with the singer Göran Edman, followed by The Seventh Sign (1994) and Magnum Opus (1995) with former Loudness singer Mike Vescera.

Despite his early and continuous success in Europe and Asia, by the early 1990s heavy metal styles such as neoclassical metal and shredding had gone out of fashion in the US.

In the mid 1990s, Malmsteen released the albums Inspiration (1996) featuring three of his former singers Soto, Boals and Turner, Facing the Animal (1997) featuring Mats Levén on vocals and Cozy Powell on drums, followed by a live record Double Live! (1998) and another studio recording Alchemy (1999) featuring once again Mark Boals on vocals.

Around 1993, Malmsteen's future mother-in-law – who opposed his engagement to her daughter – had him arrested for allegedly holding her daughter hostage with a gun.

The charges were later dropped.

Malmsteen continued to record and release albums under the Japanese record label Pony Canyon and maintained a devoted following with fans in Europe and Japan and to a lesser extent in the US.

In 1996, Malmsteen joined forces with former band members Jeff Scott Soto and Marcel Jacob on the "Human Clay" album where he played lead guitar on the track "Jealousy".

As a teenager he was heavily influenced by classical music, particularly 19th century Italian virtuoso violinist and composer Niccolò Paganini as well as Johann Sebastian Bach.

During this time, he also discovered his most important guitar influence, Ritchie Blackmore.

Malmsteen has stated that Jimi Hendrix had no musical impact on him and did not contribute to his style.