I finally listened to an Yngwie Malmsteen/Rising Force album today

"Marching Out" is such a great album !!!

 

Yeah Yngwie just played on the Steeler album it was all written before he got to la,my childhood friend was their tour manager lighting designer .

 

Too many notes, it overwhelms me.

I admire and respect the time and talent
it took him to play like that, it's just too
complicated.

 

bumping this just to reming you that Seventh Sign is an excellent 90's power metal album

as good as any of the Rising Force Albums

Mike Vescera is an amazing singer and he makes JSS run for his money

 

People love to hate on Yngwie. But they do the same without anyone whose head stands above the rest. Back in the 80's his debut blew me away. It was the same time Gretzky was rising as #1 hockey player. Both were mocked by those who just cannot handle someone being that much better than everyone else. Today we havent gotten any better as the media landscape proves. People have some wierd hate for anything better, rather want to tear it down to their level to feel better? Weird. I tried as hard as I could back then to learn how to play like Yngwie and realized their was a talent disconnect. But it helped me be good enough to do the club scene.

 

Folks have to say it's soulless, otherwise they have to (for whatever reason) reassess guitar players, and that is just not acceptable. The list is made and no alternatives are acceptable. Lol

 

Although Vai can certainly shred, he is certainly not a shredder.
The Flex-able album has a vast array of different types of tracks and is highly influenced by everything from Zappa to Pop music.
Through his albums there are acoustic, vocal ballads, orchestral pieces, and a ton of stuff that really just wouldn't fit anywhere near shredder.
Certainly he is a technically gifted guitarist, but shredder doesn't really fit.

He has guested with Meatloaf, Joe Jackson and tons of varieties of performers, from guitar oriented music through jazz, pop and all the rest.

Sadly folks see Crossroads and think that is all there is to the story.

Much like Yngwie, Vai was sentenced without a proper trial by most

 

I admire his technical ability but was never a big fan of his neoclassical shredding but I did get to see him on the Odyssey tour at a small club in New Haven CT Toads Place.

If I remember correctly that band played mostly straight 80's rock and put on a good show.

I had read that he admired Dio's Rainbow in the Dark(?) song which he considered the type of music he wanted at the time.

Ritchie Blackmore's take on Yngwie

What do you think of Yngwie Malmsteen? He's often credited you as an influence.

Blackmore: He's always been very nice to me, and I always get on very well with him. I don't understand him, though—his playing, what he wears. His movements are also a bit creepy. Normally you say, "Well, the guy's just an idiot." But, when you hear him play you think, "This guy's no idiot. He knows what he's doing." He's got to calm down. He's not Paganini—though he thinks he is. When Yngwie can break all of his strings but one, and play the same piece on one string, then I'll be impressed. In three or four years, we'll probably hear some good stuff from him.

Ritchie Blackmore Talks Yngwie Malmsteen, Jimi Hendrix and Deep Purple in 1991 Interview | Guitar World

 

If you dig Jeff Scott Soto's vocals he is currently the singer for Sons of Apollo featuring Billy Sheehan, Derek Sherinian, Ron Bumblefoot Thal and Mike Portnoy.

 

Of course Yngwie doesn't agree, as indicated by what he said in that show Metal Evolution a few years ago: "People say to me 'Hey, slow down - sometimes less is more.' Less is more? How can this be? More is more."

 

Paging Yngwie fans.

There's this 4CD set called Now Your Ships Are Burned, with all his albums up to Eclipse. It's allegedly remeastered by Andy Pearce. Does anyone have it and can comment on sound quality?

 

I have it, but have only listened to it in the car.

I had to replace the debut, and it looked like the best way to do that.

 

I've seen Vai live... 4 times? 5 times?

Virtually every song included a "big solo" - usually in the "shredding" vein.

So no, "Crossroads" isn't the only Vai I know...

 

I guess it's a personal perception thing

 

I had that issue of GW. Really good interview overall with Blackmore. His “three or four years” prediction put us at around the Seventh Sign album which was about the last one before I started losing interest.

For me, Yngwie had a really good stretch of albums to Seventh Sign, but then I kind of start to feel like I was buying the same album over and over again and jumped ship. I did enjoy Inspiration and the Concerto albums, but for regular studio material, they started to leave me cold.

I’ll always check out the samples from his latest albums, but it doesn’t help (for me at least) that he’s singing.

 

Perhaps. You define "shredding" as something different/more specific than I do.

I think you view "shredding songs" as one that're just fast, hard rock tunes that revolve entirely around lead work. I don't - I mean "shredding" to include any song with a fast, complex solo.

My main POV about how Vai always "shreds" comes from a 1999 show I saw. Like I said, I've seen Vai a few times, entirely because a good friend is a big fan.

We saw Vai at a Cleveland club in 1999, and it was standing room general admission on the floor. Initially we stood maybe 2/3rds of the way back, but after a couple songs, my friend was so jazzed that he decided he had to move closer. I said I was fine where I was - I didn't want to deal with the jostling closer to the stage - but he should move nearer and I'd be fine on my own.

Standing by myself with any distractions from interactions with my friend, I paid really close attention to the songs, and it really seemed like every one of them had some long, complex solo.

Even the slow, acoustic song still had Vai going all widdly widdly!

So that's why I say Vai "shreds" all the time!

 

Not to thread rap,I have never been convinced of this guy’s creativity.Besides technical chops what else has this self proclaimed genius done?

 

ugh, noodling crap

 

Sorry to hear about your ears and worse, your comprehension. Get well.

 

That's fair.
The general usage of shredding seems to be put forward as pointless, speed for speeds sake, with little to no melody, predominantly endless scale runs and what people perceive to be emotionless playing in a robotic sense.
I don't hear Vai that way.
To me to rate Vai in that way, is to rate Coltrane, McLaughlin, and many many others, seen as important classic artists, in exactly the same light.

I think it is short sighted to label Vai or Malmsteen that way, but of course, everybody has their spin. They certainly played some technically demanding stuff, and like any technically brilliant player, it is easy for them to fall prey to overkill at various points, but I don't see it as the rule. Holdsworth would come in the same category also.

The thing I find terribly interesting is that many many seventies guitarists were praised for their speed and dexterity (and, particularly live, they used this style/technique a lot) but we never hear folks trashing them for it ... yet it is the same dog in a different stance.

 

The song “Rising Force” on the Odyssey album, with Joe Lynn Turner on vocals, is the best all-around Yngwie song IMO. It’s hooky, has great vocals and has that early aggression of Yngwie trying to prove himself. If I’m not mistaken he made Odyssey after recovering from some serious car accident injuries. I have always looked at Odyssey as his “you can’t stop me” album.

The Rising Force album certainly has some classic YJM moments, but the song “Now Your Ships Are Burned” has his most show-offy solo and is worth a listen. It’s good, clean fun.

 

A very good mastering with high dynamic range. I only listened to the first album, which sounds almost identical to the original CD.

 

When he was first featured in the US Guitar Player magazine, I turned the page and genuinely thought "What's Ritchie doing here?", for he looked like a Blackmore clone. The strat, the hair, the black clothes, the leather waistcoat with the rectangular cutout at the front, laced across the gap with bootlaces..... the whole package, taken item-for-item from what Ritchie did.

 

Wow the world just seems to hate a good guitarist these days ...