Shred history reimagined: Yngwie Malmsteen regrets turning down David Lee Roth

Legendary Swedish guitarist Yngwie Malmsteen discussed some of the invitations he had gotten over the years to work with well-known musicians or join established bands, including David Lee Roth‘s post-Van Halen solo band, in a recent interview with Eamon O’Neill of Eonmusic, as per Blabbermouth.

What happened was that I was on tour with my solo band in 1985, and I had a band called Talas as an opening act, and the bass player in Talas was Billy Sheehan. Roth would come to the shows all the time, and he had just left Van Halen. And he wanted to get the hottest guitar player, I guess. So he told me he thought we could do a great thing together. And I think he’s an awesome guy, and I really like the Van Halen albums with him; they’re really good and everything. I probably should have done it, but I didn’t. So I just basically said, ‘Thanks, but no thanks. I’m honored, but I’m really on a roll now,’ which I kind of was, but not really. [Laughs] So we’re on a friendly basis. He would give me a lot of advice about how to deal with the press and shit. A very, very smart guy. And then he got Steve [Vai], which was great, so it all worked out.

Malmsteen, the third child of a musical family, was born in Stockholm, Sweden, as Lars Johan Yngve Lannerbäck. Yngve immediately began using Malmsten as his surname once his mother went back to her mother’s (Yngwie‘s maternal grandmother Maud’s) maiden name in 1975. Later, he changed his third given name, Yngve, to “Yngwie” and slightly changed it to Malmsteen. On May 11, 1976, Malmsteen performed live for the first time with his first band, Track on Earth, which included him, his cousin Erik Lannerbäck, and a school friend who played the drums. Björn, his brother, later joined on the drums. He was greatly affected by classical music as a youth, especially by Johann Sebastian Bach and the Italian virtuoso violinist and composer Niccolò Paganini from the 19th century.