For many of us, Yngwie J. Malmsteen has broken ground like nobody else, taking guitar as a solo-instrument to levels previously un-reached. I caught up with a busy Yngwie, currently touring the States, and here's what he had to say:

Fredrik Hjelm: Mark Boals wasn't singing with you at the Universal Amphitheatre show in LA a couple weeks ago. Jeff Scott Soto, who was your singer on your first two albums, came on stage and covered for him on the last couple songs. Was that planned, or did you improvise that?

Yngwie Malmsteen: No, no! Jeff had called and e-mailed me about jamming together, so I just told him; "Hey, no problem - just come on stage and we'll jam a little bit!"

FH: So, what happened with Mark Boals?

YM: Well, we had some problems going on there, but we have a new singer now, Jorn Lande.

FH: How did you hook up with Lande?

YM: Though my drummer. I checked him out and he sounded really good. He's actually from Norway.

FH: Oh, yeah?! So you got the real Viking spirit going on now, don't you!?

YM: That's right! Viking spirit, yeah! (laughs)

FH: Spitfire records just re-released 8 of your albums from the nineties. Why is it those records never got the proper promotion in the U.S. in the first place, as your bio states?

YM: Well, we had really bad management at that point, management that couldn't handle the American market properly, so it all went down the drain when those productions were made. Everything went very well in Japan and Europe, though. What we do now is to go for the American market with full power, that's why we did the re-releases.

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