“I love Ritchie Blackmore, no doubt about it, but my playing is nothing like his”: Yngwie Malmsteen says he wasn’t influenced by rock artists growing up
Yngwie Malmsteen says he wasn’t influenced by rock artists such as Ritchie Blackmore when growing up. Though he hugely appreciated the music of Deep Purple and others, he had moved on to classical influences as he grew older.
Malmsteen might be considered one of the greats when it comes to metal and hard rock, but he claims he stepped away from pentatonic scales used across blues and rock in search of something more complex.
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During a conference at Hellfest, he explains (via RadioWise): “I love BB King. I love all of them [bluesmen]. But I, who was a bit of a weirdo, thought: ‘It’s got to be more than that’. Then, when I was 9 or 10, someone played me Selling England by the Pound by Genesis. And I thought, ‘Wow, what is this? Diminished scales?’.
“Suddenly, I realised that what I loved about what I was hearing wasn’t the guitarist. It was the notes and the chord progressions. I knew my mother had about 1,000 Bach records, so I started listening to him.”
He later adds, “I stopped listening to Ritchie Blackmore completely when I was 10. I love Ritchie Blackmore, no doubt about it, but my playing is nothing like his. He was a blues guitarist, a fucking great fucker, one of the greatest of all time. I love him, and Jimmy Page. I love them all. But very early, very early, I stopped playing the pentatonic, which is the normal way of playing guitar.
“I listened to Charlie Christian, Joe Pass, Django Reinhardt, Hank Marvin, Jeff Beck, Ritchie Blackmore and Gary Moore – they were all listening to guitarists, which is great. However, I based my guitar playing on classical violin, not guitar. So it sounds a bit old fashioned to me when people tell me I was influenced by Blackmore: just listen to how we play.”
Yngwie Malmsteen is touring from September-November. You can view all scheduled live dates now.
The post “I love Ritchie Blackmore, no doubt about it, but my playing is nothing like his”: Yngwie Malmsteen says he wasn’t influenced by rock artists growing up appeared first on Guitar.com | All Things Guitar.
Source: www.guitar-bass.net
