Yngwie Malmsteen was an unknown teenager still living in his native Sweden when a Guitar Player Spotlight column changed his life. In the blink of an eye, he went from a wannabe hotshot to a player getting harassed by Kiss, who wanted him in the band.
It was a fairytale turnaround, and it all started with a cassette that had Guitar Player’s tastemaker, Mike Varney, drooling. It made him a guitar hero overnight.
“I sent this cassette tape to Guitar Player magazine, and it was me playing drums, bass, keyboards, guitar, obviously, and vocals. They went fucking ape shit,” he recalls to eonmusic. “And this guy, he would send my cassettes to everybody. I had people from Kiss and Night Ranger [calling me].”
Everyone wanted a slice of the Strat obsessive’s talents. Not long after he packed a suitcase – supposedly involving little more than an electric guitar and a toothbrush – UFO came calling, too. Ultimately, he says Phil Mogg’s lack of organization saw him rejecting the Brits for Alcatrazz.
It was an offer he took after Kiss, who were “hot” on his talents at first, grew cold.
“I can’t remember all the people who would call,” Malmsteen expands. “I was still in Sweden. I was 18 years old, a kid. I didn’t know what the fuck was going on. It was funny because I remember [with] Kiss — I don’t know if it was a manager or whoever called – but he kept [saying], ‘You’re hot, you’re hot.’ I’m like, ‘What the hell?’”
With English as his second language, the teenager had no idea what “hot” meant. But the number of phone calls helped work around the language barrier. It was obvious he was being courted.
“They wanted me to come over and join Kiss,” he says. “They asked me if I’m six foot tall, apparently they wanted me to be six foot and I’m more than that, so they didn’t call back.”
David Lee Roth was another close miss. It was 1985, and the singer, raging at Eddie Van Halen’s secret solo tracking session with Michael Jackson, quit Van Halen to go solo.
He wanted a guitarist to outgun his former bandmate, and while ex-Frank Zappa man Steve Vai ultimately got the gig, Malmsteen was also on Roth’s radar.
“I was on tour with my solo band, and I had a band called Talas as an opening act,” he explains. “The bass player was Billy Sheehan [who would become a key player in Roth’s band]. Roth would come to the shows all the time. He had just left Van Halen, and he wanted to get the hottest guitar player.”
Roth, having seen Malmsteen play, was clearly on the hook. But he gave the singer the cold shoulder.
“He told me he thought we could do a great thing together,” he relays. “I think he’s an awesome guy, and I really like the Van Halen albums with him. I probably should have done it, but I didn’t. I basically said, ‘Thanks, but no thanks. I’m honored, but I’m really on a roll now,’ which I kind of was.”
