“I didn’t know what the f**k was going on”: Yngwie Malmsteen reveals that he was asked to join Kiss… and the bizarre reason they pulled out
Yngwie Malmsteen was once asked to join Kiss, but the reason why he was eventually turned down had nothing to do with his skills on guitar.
A member of the band’s team was very interested in having Malmsteen on board, according to the guitarist himself, but they never called him again after learning he was above six foot in height.
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In an interview with eonmusic , Malmsteen is asked about the bands he’s been asked to join across his career, including when he was nearly recruited to join Ozzy Osbourne after the death of Randy Rhoads.
“It was right after,” he confirms. “What happened was, I sent this cassette tape to Guitar Player magazine, and it was me playing drums, bass, keyboards, guitar, obviously, and vocals, and they went fucking ape shit. And this guy, he would send my cassettes to everybody. I had people from Kiss, from Night Ranger [calling me].
“I can’t remember all the people who would call. 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? What the hell?’, because I was speaking the Queen’s English in those days, and I didn’t [know what] ‘hot’ meant!”
He adds, “Anyway, they wanted me to come over and join Kiss, and 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.”
Kiss wrapped their farewell tour, End Of The Road, in 2023 with a huge show at Madison Square Garden in New York. And, of course, the band are set to continue on with a string of widely anticipated avatar shows in the style of ABBA’s Voyage in the future.
At the time, fans called on the band do a mighty show at the Las Vegas Sphere. Speaking to American Songwriter earlier this year, Kiss frontman Paul Stanley explained why they were never tempted by it.
“Towards the end of the tour, people were saying, ‘Why don’t you play the Sphere?’” Stanley recalled. “The truth of it is, the Sphere minimises a band. It makes a band miniature. You’re not going there to see a band – you’re going to see screens.”
The post “I didn’t know what the f**k was going on”: Yngwie Malmsteen reveals that he was asked to join Kiss… and the bizarre reason they pulled out appeared first on Guitar.com | All Things Guitar.
Source: www.guitar-bass.net
