Yngwie Malmsteen says he never listened to Sabbath and Zeppelin

The virtuoso Swedish guitarist Yngwie Malmsteen continues on the road in 2024 and during a press conference at Hellfest Festival, recorded by Loud TV and transcribed by Ultimate Guitar, he was asked about his influences. The musician talked about how much classical music was important for him and said that he never really listened to Led Zeppelin and Black Sabbath.

Yngwie Malmsteen says he never listened to Sabbath and Zeppelin

“I didn’t hear Black Sabbath, I didn’t hear Led Zeppelin. I didn’t hear any fu**ing thing. But on my eighth birthday, I got Purple’s ‘Fireball’, which, by the way, everybody should check out… Now, I didn’t have anything to compare that to… And the next thing I heard was ‘Made in Japan’. By time I was nine years old, I could play every note on ‘Made in Japan’, note for note, everything.”

“But it took me a very short time to realize that this is all pentatonic modes… It’s blues, which is beautiful. I love BB King. I love them all. [But] for me, being a little freak, I realized, ‘It’s got to be more than this.’ So, somebody played Genesis’ ‘Selling England by the Pound’, and I was 10, nine years old.”

He continued:

“And I go, ‘Wow, what’s this? Diminished scales?’ All of a sudden, I realized what I loved with this, wasn’t the guitar player. It was the notes and the chord progressions. And I knew my mother had about 1000 Bach records, so I started listening to Johansson Bach,” Yngwie Malmsteen said.

The musician continued saying that he stopped listening to Ritchie Blackmore when he was 10 but noted that he is a big fan of the Deep Purple and Rainbow guitarist. He call him one of the greatest Blues guitarists of all time but also noted that he can’t be compared with Ritchie, because they are really different players.