Yngwie Malmsteen

“A lot of people probably get the idea that I'm this extremely calculated kind of guy, and in a lot of ways, I am. But when it comes to music or artistic expression, I'm very uncalculated and...”

“I listened to all those blues records. They were great - Clapton, John Mayall. Then eventually I heard Genesis with Peter Gabriel, and I didn't really understand the difference then, but som...”

“When I was first getting into the guitar, I played it incessantly. I lived it, breathed it, ate it, and slept it. I was also extremely self-critical, so from early on, I made sure to develop...”

“If you look at somebody like Bach, he didn't need collaborators to write for keyboards, cello, violin or anything else. I feel the same way about my music. The times that I have worked with...”

“The biggest mistake people make about me is that they see me as some sort of god-like figure with a big ego. If I see a button, a T-shirt, that says, 'Yngwie is God,' I just look at it as a...”

“I've used Fender Strats with Marshalls since forever, though since I last played London, I've switched to my YJM Seymour Duncan pickups, and I also have a Fender YJM overdrive pedal, which i...”

“Every record store and record chain has folded; they don't exist. They do not exist. And the only two outlets that would still sell CDs were Best Buy and Wal-Mart. They now have stopped sell...”

“When the glam metal thing of the late '80s became too glammy, then instead of having two bottles of hairspray in your hair, it became better not to wash your hair at all. To me it's all tren...”

“If I played something incorrectly, I whipped myself mercilessly. Whenever I made a mistake, I made sure that I would never allow myself to repeat it. Every guitarist wants to play well. But...”

“I love all kinds of Indian music, and Indian food as well. If the chance arises for me to play in India, I'm there.”

“Because I write the music, I write the lyrics, I write the vocal melody lines - I write everything. Just because I let somebody sing something doesn't mean they're more important than the ba...”

“I always wrote everything - I wrote all the lyrics, I wrote all the melodies, everything; it's just somebody else sung it. And to me, the singer is nothing else than a different... like a ba...”

“My band's motto is 'Yngwie or the highway.' Do you think Leonardo Da Vinci allowed someone who came later to add to his paintings? It's impossible. That's the whole issue. I'm not a typical...”

“Steve Morse is a very good guitar player, but he's American, and he's using humbucker pickups. If you ask me, those two are not good.”

“I think the singer in Pearl Jam should eat some Pearl Jam! He cannot sing to save his life! And the guitar player needs to seek help.”

“I'd love to perform in India, but I don't book the gigs. It's one of the few places I haven't played. One of the Indian instruments that I love is the sitar. I played it on some of my songs,...”

“I want to say something very clearly. I understand that I'm a self-confident person who might come off with the wrong attitude sometimes, but I don't mean to. I just believe in certain thing...”

“The simple truth is that in order to become good, you have to be obsessed. You have to put in an awful lot of time and hard work and couple that with desire and unflagging perseverance.”

“What I do know is rock and roll and metal never goes away, ever. It took the back seat in America in the '90s. In Japan and South America, it was still really big. I never followed trends, s...”

“I am convinced that there are few, if any, American people that could even start believing or understanding what living in a socialist country does to a person.”