In a 2006 interview with Australia’s X-Press Online, Yngwie stated about where the idea to combine classical music and rock guitar came from: “I was the youngest member of my family. I have an older brother and sister and my mother, my father, my uncles, my aunts — everybody is a musician. My grandfather was a drummer. It’s like music, music, music everywhere… and art, a lot of art and music. I had a very artistic kind of upbringing.

“As a little kid, I wasn’t really into being a musician. My mother gave me a guitar on my fifth birthday and a trumpet on my sixth birthday, and so on, but when I was seven, I saw a TV news special about Jimi Hendrix. It showed him burning his guitar and you didn’t even hear the music, just saw him burning a guitar, and I thought that was so cool. I already had a guitar, so I started playing that same day — September 18, 1970. I was only a little kid. One year later, my older sister Lulu gave me DEEP PURPLE‘s ‘Fireball’, which is a really hard rock album, and I went out and bought ‘In Rock’ the next day. I was listening to songs like ‘Fireball’, ‘Flight Of The Rat’ — just so heavy — so I learned how to play all these solos and stuff and, contrary to most people’s opinion or theory, is that DEEP PURPLE, along with all other rock ‘n’ roll bands were all blues-based. Pentatonic scales and my classical influence did not come from them. A lot of people seem to think so, but no, no, no, no. I love these guys… my favorite band ever. My classical music didn’t come from there, but my love for hard rock was definitely from PURPLE.

“What I wanted to do was try and take this whole thing with the double-bass drums and the Marshalls all the way up and all that shit, and play with counterpoints and pedal notes, inverted chords, Phrygian modes, inverted scales, diminished scales… all that shit. Then I saw a TV program: it was a guy playing violin. They said it was music from Niccolò Paganini. When I heard that, I said, ‘Fuck, that’s what I want to go for on the guitar.’ So my guitar playing is 99.9 percent influenced by classical violin, mainly Paganini, Vivaldi and Tchaikovsky, and my songwriting is very Bach in the structuring, because I’ve always loved the counterpoint and the harmonic minor kind of things. But I love the sound of the metal ensemble. That’s how it all started.”

Yngwie will embark on a 40th-anniversary tour this fall. Support on the trek, which will kick off on September 26 in Fort Myers, Florida and conclude on November 18 in New York City, will come from singer-songwriter Kurt Deimer.

For more information, visit www.yngwiemalmsteen.com/tour.

Yngwie‘s latest album, “Parabellum”, was released in July 2021 via Music Theories Recordings/Mascot Label Group. Only four of the songs on the LP feature vocals. The album title is Latin, translating as “Prepare For War”.

After working with some of the top hard singers of the past four decades, Yngwie now handles much of the lead vocals himself in his own band, backed by a lineup that includes keyboardist Nick Marino, bassist Emilio Martinez and drummer Kevin Klingenschmid.