Yngwie Malmsteen

Yngwie Johan Malmsteen (/ˈɪŋveɪ ˈmɑːlmstiːn/; born Lars Johan Yngve Lannerbäck, .mw-parser-output .IPA-label-small{font-size:85%}.mw-parser-output .references .IPA-label-small,.mw-parser-output .infobox .IPA-label-small,.mw-parser-output .navbox .IPA-label-small{font-size:100%}Swedish: on 30 June 1963) is a Swedish-American 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. Malmsteen is considered to be one of the best guitarists in rock and metal. In the early 1990s, he released the albums Eclipse (1990), Fire & Ice (1992), The Seventh Sign (1994) and Magnum Opus (1995).

Malmsteen was born Lars Johan Yngve Lannerbäck in Stockholm, Sweden, the third child of a musical family. In 1975, his mother reverted to her mother's (Yngwie's maternal grandmother Maud's) maiden name Malmsten, which Yngve promptly also started using as his surname. Later he slightly changed it to Malmsteen and altered his third given name Yngve to "Yngwie". Malmsteen played his first show on 11 May 1976 with his first band, Track on Earth, consisting of himself, his cousin Erik Lannerbäck and a friend from school playing the drums. Later his brother Björn joined on drums.

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. Yngwie Malmsteen has publicly stated that he is not influenced by the blues or the style of Ritchie Blackmore, the virtuoso claims that his guitar playing is inspired by classical violin, not classical guitar. Malmsteen has stated that Jimi Hendrix had no musical impact on him and did not contribute to his style. 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 in 1967, made Malmsteen think, "This is really cool."

From the late 1970s, Malmsteen played in local bands, sometimes together with future Talisman bassist Marcel Jacob, Europe bassist John Levén and architect Eero Koivisto. They recorded various demos and a single for CBS Records but nothing was officially released from this era until the 2002 releases of Rising Force – Birth of the Sun and Yngwie's own The Genesis album.

In early 1982, Mike Varney of Shrapnel Records first heard Yngwie Malmsteen's music through record store owner Bill Burkard, who played for him a demo tape of Malmsteen's early work (likely the 1978 "Powerhouse" demo) recorded when Yngwie was 15. Later in 1982, Malmsteen sent to Varney an untitled demo recording as a submission for Varney's Guitar Player magazine column. Guitar Player published this demo for the February 1983 edition of the magazine.

Biography summary from English Wikipedia, photograph via Wikimedia Commons.