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 Worldhe 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.
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