My will power has always been very strong. If I want something, I'll get it. I've had no trouble keeping my head on my shoulders, nor do I have any chips on there. Yngwie Malmsteen More Quotes by Yngwie Malmsteen More Quotes From Yngwie Malmsteen Ritchie Blackmore was a huge early influence on me, but after that I had to find my own way ... Johann Sebastian Bach was probably the most influential guy ever on me ... Vivaldi, Beethoven and eventually Paganini ... all of a sudden I was thinking in all these other areas, instead of blues riffs. Yngwie Malmsteen music guy thinking Fast is only cool if it's melodic and has substance. Yngwie Malmsteen substance inspiring funny What I think is the most important thing to learn about any instrument is the basics of music. Learn your ABCs before you write a Hemingway novel. Yngwie Malmsteen important writing thinking I don't think you can learn to be a complete musician. That has to come from within, and it entails a lot of sacrifice. Yngwie Malmsteen sacrifice musician thinking The only thing I ever really wanted was a Strat .. I started playing guitar after seeing Jimi Hendrix on TV the day he died...then I got Deep Purples' Fireball album which was also a big influence .. I have a collection of more than 200 of them that includes Strats from every year since March 1954 - the first month the Strat was made Yngwie Malmsteen guitar music years My mom really wanted me to be a musician so she gave me a guitar for my fifth birthday, but I didn't start playing till I was seven. Yngwie Malmsteen musician guitar mom I've always been heavily influenced by classical music, mostly by baroque music. Yngwie Malmsteen baroque-music classical-music music I wasn't very big on going to school. I tried to get a gig as a luthier. Yngwie Malmsteen gigs bigs school I'm working on guitars for free, because I love working on guitars anyway. Yngwie Malmsteen guitar Just the whole thing of getting up in the morning - I love the sunshine, I love the palm trees. I'm that kind of guy. I like to drive around with the top down and just enjoy life. I never did that before, so it's a beautiful thing. Yngwie Malmsteen morning beautiful love life There was an old acoustic in the house that my mother had given me for my fifth birthday. I took it off the wall and started jamming. I was seven years old at the time. Yngwie Malmsteen me mother time birthday I've been playing for aeons now, but way, way back, I remember Eddie Van Halen came out ,and I loved his playing. He was amazing. But then everyone started copying his guitars with Floyds, and I didn't. Yngwie Malmsteen loved amazing remember way The simple truth is that in order to become good, you have to be obsessed. You have to put in an awful lot of time and hard work and couple that with desire and unflagging perseverance. Yngwie Malmsteen good hard-work simple work When the glam metal thing of the late '80s became too glammy, then instead of having two bottles of hairspray in your hair, it became better not to wash your hair at all. To me it's all trend stuff. I don't follow that stuff. I just do what I feel is the right thing. I don't know what the reason is for that. It's not fashion. Yngwie Malmsteen feel me fashion hair I want to say something very clearly. I understand that I'm a self-confident person who might come off with the wrong attitude sometimes, but I don't mean to. I just believe in certain things, and I know exactly what I want. I've always sacrificed things in order to become the best musician I could be. Yngwie Malmsteen best attitude sometimes believe I'd rather have people dislike my style than change it. If someone says, 'Hey, Yngwie, you play too damn much,' I don't care. They way I play is the way I like to play. If people like it, great. If they don't, it's still fine with me. Yngwie Malmsteen me you style change Because I write the music, I write the lyrics, I write the vocal melody lines - I write everything. Just because I let somebody sing something doesn't mean they're more important than the bass player or the keyboard player or the drummer. Yngwie Malmsteen everything drummer music important Sweep picking is when the right hand sweeps down and up the strings in succession. But when you do sweep picking, one note rings into the next, and it sounds almost like you're playing a chord, and that's exactly what you don't want. Yngwie Malmsteen down like you want I grew up in a family that was very musical, learned the blues and everything like that. And I became a little bit frustrated with the simplicity of rock n' roll and blues. I started listening to a lot of classical music - mainly Bach, Vivaldi. Yngwie Malmsteen simplicity family music listening I remember when I was a kid, if you had your name on a piece of vinyl, man, you were, like, in the halls of Valhalla; all of sudden, you were hanging out with Odin and being at the table of the gods. You were the real deal; you weren't some guy struggling in a garage somewhere. Yngwie Malmsteen name you man remember