The Israeli violinist Ivry Gitlis once referred to Niccolo Paganini as a phenomenon rather than a development. This sharp observation being cruelly true of many virtuosos, most of whom Richard Wagner, at his time, accused of “triviality and exhibitionist talents” makes Yngwie Malmsteen’s achievements stand out even starker in their defiance of traditional attitudes.

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Unlike Paganini, the 19th century violin shredder who inspired the young Swede during his early years, Malmsteen, against all odds, had managed to become an instrumental prodigy as well as an inventor of a new musical genre. At the time when rock audience viewed classical music with nothing but suspicion, Malmsteen managed not only to dazzle rock fans with his superhuman technical prowess, but, more importantly, to single-handedly create an entirely new style by bringing together rock and classical music in a unique and consistent way, forever transforming the way the guitar as an instrument and rock as a genre are approached, learned, and regarded both by professional musicians and ordinary folk. His titanic feat has changed our understanding of what it means to be not only a guitarist, or a rocker, but what it means to be a musician.

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Nothing, however, emerges out of the blue, in art especially. Just the way there was Arcangelo Corelli before Paganini, in rock there was Edward Van Halen before Malmsteen. But while Van Halen added high-speed gloss and a new technique to execution of straightforward rock songs, Malmsteen’s vision expanded the entire genre of rock, showing how it can be changed structurally by merging it with compositional patterns of classical music and demonstrating that while virtuosity can be an enviable virtue per se, it can have a truly revolutionary effect when backed by a radically new compositional approach. Prodigious mastery of his craft for Malmsteen was only a tool that served a much bigger purpose, a bigger vision, the one he continues developing to this day.

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Yngwie Malmsteen’s new album “Perpetual Flame,” to be released later on this month, couldn’t have been more aptly named, each track on it bursting with energy and vigour perhaps more captivating than on his debut Rising Force, which was released 24 years ago. On his new record Malmsteen is as far off from the familiar groove than he’s ever been on a rock record, embracing a variety of styles that range from rip-roaring fire of thumping metal tracks, to undertones of psychedelia, to Eastern modalities, to his signature neo-classical clarity when he delivers the magnificently dazzling, lucid magnum opus of the new record – “Caprici Di Diablo”.

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“I never seem to be tired of creating stuff,” Malmsteen tells me on the phone on September 18, which spookily coincides with the day of Jimi Hendrix’s death, marking the day when Malmsteen, having heard of the passing of the ultimate guitar hero, had decided to become a guitarist himself, while aged only 8. “Creative process is always very exciting,” he continues. “And on this particular album there were a lot of things I haven’t done before. As the songs took form and I heard the singing on them, I realized how much energy the whole thing was going to have. So I went into the studio again and I did some of the guitars again, just to capture this high energy. The whole thing is just that – it’s high energy, that’s all it is.”

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Talking about singing, with Tim Owens of Judas Priest and Iced Earth fame debuting on the new record as the new vocalist, I ask Malmsteen what qualities he was looking for in a singer this time around. “Half way through the album I’ve decided that I was definitely going to have a different singer on it,” Malmsteen replies. “Because I write songs and the lyrics, and I realised that the songs were getting really heavy. And we needed someone who could sing it really heavy. So that’s how Tim Owens came in. I write the lyrics, I write the melodies, all the vocal parts, and so I hear exactly what I want in my head. And, you know, I heard him in Judas Priest, and I did a thing with him a couple of years ago, actually, but we didn’t record it together. I recorded it at one place, and he recorded it at another. But it was on the same song. So I knew how good he was, you know. So we started talking, and I invited him down to sing on a few of my songs, the new songs that weren’t finished. And he was a no-brainer, you know. It worked out perfectly.”

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At the time when a lot of his contemporaries have settled into their chosen genre just a bit too comfortably, the stylistic variety on Malmsteen’s new record and his willingness to continue to experiment is something that both surprises and inspires, making the new album a lifting, invigorating record to get into. Asked about his drive to continue to go into directions he hadn’t explored before, he says that he is at his best when he is not forcing himself along any particular route and when he lets the creative process flow naturally. “In the last few years I’ve come to a conclusion that my best stuff comes out when I don’t try to do something,” he says. “When I don’t try to do a certain thing, then the best things come out. A while ago I really started to go with it. It’s like the music has its own life. And once it starts taking form, I go on for the ride. But then, of course, when it comes to arrangements, and the lyrics, and producing it, and stuff like that, that’s very much a thought process, I spend a lot of time thinking about those things. But the original ideas – riffs and melodies, they come out of nowhere. I never think about them, I just to do them. I have, of course, certain preferences, I really love songs with double kick drum, stuff like that, I love songs where stuff is tuned down, I tune the bass down… I also thought that it was very cool that I have started working on this record, then walked away from it, and then I came back in, and heard it with a different pair of ears, and then I came back again, and then I stopped and went on the road, and then I came back again. I got a lot more distance from it that way. Being the writer and the producer is sometimes difficult. You gotta think differently. When you are the producer, you gotta think differently from when you are the guitar player. You have to wear different hats.”

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Asked if he has favourite tracks on the new record, Malmsteen says that he loves them all, but singles out “Caprici Di Diablo” as the track where he challenged himself the most. “On that track I went further than I ever went with anything,” he says. “And that was extremely demanding stuff. It’s partially written, partially improvised. I waited until the last minute to do that part. I was like, ‘No, no, I’m not ready, I’m not ready!’ And then it kind of came to a close and I went into the studio and thought, ‘Right, that is it, let’s bite the bullet.’ I definitely challenged myself on that one. And I’d actually say that with most guitar solos on this record I really kind of went one mile extra.”

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In his ability to think not simply as an instrumentalist, or a soloist, and not even purely as a composer, but to be able to unite his material under one creative paradigm, Malmsteen remains a formidable master and a conceptualist par excellence. To achieve this, mere skill is not enough, as one has to have a vision that goes beyond regular competence. One also has to have conviction and courage. I ask him how confident he was in his early years that his hybrid of rock and classical music was going to work and would find acclaim, given that rock fans at the time were more than skeptical about classical music. “Today is the day when I started to play guitar back in 1970,” he begins. “Eighteenth of September 1970. That’s when I started playing. And I became extremely serious about it. Very, very serious. It was almost fanatical, you know. It was fanatical. And very early on I realised that I didn’t feel happy with just the blues-based rock’n’roll harmonies. I didn’t find enough excitement in that. And having said that, I love bands like AC/DC, I love them, I thought of it just yesterday, I think they are incredible. But for me, for what I wanted to do, I was leaning more and more towards harmonic minors, diminished patterns, the pedal notes, arpeggios, and all that stuff, and once I found out about Niccolo Paganini, that was it, I tried to play whatever I could find by him. Which is a very bizarre thing to do. And definitely there was no planning, like, “Oh, if I went and got this really good, then it would be fine.” No, absolutely not. It was quite the opposite. And I started that a long time before I came to the States. So when I started recording properly with Steeler and Alcatrazz, and all that stuff, it was the first time people heard it, but it wasn’t the first time I’ve done it. So the whole classical infusion before that is something that is imbedded in my brain, and my soul, whatever. And that can’t be changed, it’s just the way it is. And so I never tried to do something just in order to do it. I had to be serious about it. So everything that I do is actually genuine in the sense that I don’t fake it. And that’s why it is like that. For better or worse.”

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With Malmsteen’s firework chops continuing to stagger on the new album, I wonder if maintaining such an astounding technique requires a lot of time and energy. Given that he continues to develop not only as a guitarist, but as a composer, I wonder if there are enough hours in the day to keep working on both. “I think that technical guitar playing is something you have to keep working on,” he says. “Otherwise your achievement won’t be as good. I don’t practice per se, I just have a guitar by the TV set. When I watch TV, I play. And that seems to work. And as far as composition, I definitely put much more effort into it than ever before. That’s just a lot of thought process. You have to think almost like an author. It’s not so much performing as structuring. And, you know, I’m very pleased that I learnt music theory extremely early on, the actual map of music. So that is never a problem. It’s cool because you don’t have to think about that. But as far as the lyrics and as far as the arrangements and how many verses you want and where the bridge is going and all that stuff, it takes construction. But I enjoy that actually.”

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A musician with an intense and rare passion to translate his entire being into music, without making recognition his ultimate goal, Malmsteen has still managed to receive a tremendous amount of acclaim throughout this career. Attention that he was getting in the early days, and which at the time seemed to many simply a reaction to the phenomenon, doesn’t seem to subside, as he has now proven to be much more than just another chopsman. To this day he continues to draw recognition from all sectors of the music industry, 2008 proving to be a particularly busy year for him. On October 13 Malmsteen will be inducted into Hollywood's Rock Walk where his hand prints will be seen alongside hand prints, signatures, and faces of such legends as Elvis Presley, Jerry Lee Lewis, James Brown, and John Lee Hooker. Plus just a few days ago KOCH Entertainment Distribution announced that it has signed an exclusive distribution deal with Malmsteen’s Rising Force Records. And to top it all off, a new Fender/Yngwie Malmsteen custom shop guitar will be unveiled later in the year with a limited run of 100 instruments. I ask him about the characteristics of this guitar and who it is ultimately aimed at. “Who would buy it?” he asks. “I would buy it!” he laughs, and continues, “I went to the Fender guitar shop a couple of weeks ago and I saw, I think, 60 of them finished. And John Cruz is overlooking the whole thing. He is the master builder there. And the first time I saw it was in Frankfurt back in March. I saw one. It’s so amazing. It’s unbelievable how they made that guitar. It’s also an extreme honour, of course. It really is amazing because he got the weight, the feel of the neck, everything exactly the same, plus it looks exactly the same, all the scratches look exactly the same. It plays and feels exactly the same, which is amazing. This was the guitar I took with me from Sweden, just one guitar when I was just a kid. It is also on the cover of Rising Force”, so it has historical meaning.”

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The history continues, in this case not a string of random events and coincidences, but a coherent line which connects the past with the present, all achievements in Malmsteen’s career brought about by hard work, inspiration, and creative focus. Which also goes to explain how a tradition that started centuries ago has now shed its pejorative connotations and developed into one where a musician can have miraculous technical ability and at the same time be able to see and create things of ultimate lasting value, beyond mechanical skill and theatricality. To this day Malmsteen continues to combine both with astounding conviction, while remaining the ultimate artist, performer, and entertainer.

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First published in Crusher magazine in November 2010.