A recording was leaked on the internet a couple of years ago of guitar virtuoso Yngwie Malmsteen screaming at a passenger during a flight to Tokyo after said passenger had dumped a pitcher of water on him. (You can listen to it here.)
Among the many quotable threats from that recording is the now infamous "You've unleashed the fucking fury." Until now, nobody has really asked him about the incident, possibly out of fear of unleashing the fucking fury once again.
CHARTattack: You said that you don't really buy records or listen to anything new. How are you able to keep in tune with what's going on in music today?
Yngwie Malmsteen: Even if I was into what's going on, I wouldn't try to modify my sound to whatever is in. That's just something that I've never done.
I came out in the '80s, but before the '80s I did my sound — what you guys call neo-classical, I guess. So I've always done it my way, and sometimes you get less appreciated for that and sometimes you get more appreciated because people will say, "This cat really means what he's doing and he sticks to his guns and he doesn't give a shit about the fashion."
I've always felt that I have a very honest vision of what I produce and create and get behind. This is my legacy, this is what I do and hopefully people will like it and some people may not like it, but I have to do what I feel is within myself.
You're a very versatile guitar player, though. Wouldn't you want to showcase your musical depth?
I have, you know. I've played some jazz, some flamenco, some country. But even though that's fun every now and again, that's not what I do or what I want to do.
I really like and really enjoy the style that I do. I have no intentions to say, "Hey, look. I can do this, too." I play many other instruments, too. I play the drums, bass and keyboard, but I like what I do, so I'm going to stick with that.
I know you did some singing on the new record, but you've always had someone else do the singing on your albums. Have you ever considered handling the vocal duties?
When I was in Sweden and I was a kid, I was the singer because we could never find a singer. I like it, but I enjoy writing songs and having them sung in the operatic way. My voice is bluesier. The stuff I write has that more operatic feel, and I'll leave that up to someone like Ripper [Tim Owens] to really do well.
Having said that, there's always a possibility to do different things. I might do a record differently. You know, I never say never. Especially now with our own label, there's no limit. We can do whatever we want, whenever we want.
There was an incident at an airport a while back. You know, the whole "You've unleashed the fury" incident. I don't think I've ever heard you talk about it before. Do you want to explain the incident?
There are so many things about that that are so bizarre. First of all, the incident itself happened in 1987.
Really?
Yeah, 1987. Me and the band, [former Rainbow vocalist] Joel Lynn Turner and [drummer] Anders Johansson, we were in a first class flight in Tokyo.
This was back in the day when I was drinking, but I don't do any of that shit anymore. We were all getting shit-faced and getting very rude and Jens [Johansson], our keyboard player, would go to the bathroom and get female napkins and slap Bloody Mary mix on them and throw them into people's food and we would start laughing and doing shots of Cognac... just being really nasty.
It was a 16-hour flight and we fell asleep, and all of a sudden me and Joe wake up and this lady takes a pitcher of ice water and pours it on my head and says "Cool off, boys," and I freak out.
But the really crazy thing is someone is fucking recording this in 1987, and then in 2003 or 2004, they put it on the internet. So when I heard that, I was kind of mad. I was like, "What is this? I don't know what to say. What is this crazy world we live in?" So that's what happened.
Well, it's cool that you have a sense of humour about it now. After all, you did title one of your records Unleash The Fury.
If you don't have a sense of humour, you have no business doing what I'm doing. I take everything with a fucking grain of salt. I mean, I'm a serious artist. I'm a serious musician. But I also have humour involved in it. I mean, the things that you got to go through doing this shit, you have to. It is what it is.
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