Yngwie Malmsteen Quotes

Bob Seger was a huge inspiration.

Richard Lloyd of Television is one of my favorite guitarists. His mentor was Jimi Hendrix when he was just 14. Jimi was always pounding everything he knew into that kid.

I was watching TV once, and 'Jailhouse Rock' comes on, and I'm like, 'What is this?' I started watching it, and at the end, I thought, 'This is what I want to do. That's what I want to be. That's for me. That's it!'

Hendrix was a perfect guitarist. And that's all I wanted to do as a kid. Play a guitar properly and jump around.

A lot of kids bought guitars and started playing rock'n'roll because of us.

He saw us play a few times in fact. I did this song called I Can't Keep From Crying Sometimes, and Jimi loved it. He paid me a huge compliment when he told me that he was thinking of doing something similar himself!

If there was no Black Sabbath, I could still possibly be a morning newspaper delivery boy. No fun.

My dad always played a lot of music, so I heard him playing all the time, and then I decided that I wanted to learn to play guitar, so I got an acoustic and started taking lessons. I wanted to be able to shred like Yngwie Malmsteen.

I've always been the first to admit that Jimi was a very big influence on my early stuff.

But KISS inspired me personally to pick up a guitar and go for it.

One summer I remember, I got exposed to Chuck Berry and Buddy Holly and Buddy Holly was a very very big, made a very big impression on me. Because of a lot of things, you know, the way he looked and his charisma.

When I was 13, I got my first guitar, and I could sort of play Ted Nugent songs, but I couldn't play the solos. But I could play along with entire Ramones songs.

When I get 13 or 14 years old, I get crazy with rock music, like, like, deeply crazy. And one of my favorite bands at that moment was, for example, like - bands like Metallica or Led Zeppelin, Black Sabbath, Pink Floyd and Santana, you know? And then I start to play metal, actually, when I was - at the age of 15.

I consider the guitar a tool for the most part. I do pick up the acoustic now and then, I certainly don't have any routine. Usually the only time I practice is when the band gets together. Hendrix has always been one of my favorite players, but I was a sucker for Nugent in the late 1970's.

I heard the Beatles and the Stones, and Mom bought me an electric guitar. I played lead for four years and then switched to bass. One day someone suggested that I should sing, so I sheepishly stepped up to the microphone and the rest is rock history.

When I was 13, I was just figuring out how to play 'Eruption,' poorly, by Eddie Van Halen.

I don't care what anybody says about Ringo. I cut my rock-n-roll teeth listening to him.

Everything I know, I stole directly from Ace Frehley, Angus Young, and Keith Richards. That's how you learn.

If a little kid picks up Guitar Hero and learns 'Smoke On The Water,' he soon finds out that if he wants the chicks to look at him, he'd better learn it on the guitar!

I got into rock music at thirteen, listening to Van Halen, learned how to play the electric guitar.

Initially, I just used the guitar as a prop. I'd pose with it in front of a mirror in my Kiss makeup when I was skipping school. Then I figured out how to play the main riff to Deep Purple's 'Smoke on the Water' on just the E string. Next, my old man showed me how to play barre chords, and that's when things started getting really heavy.

It's like being in a trance, like I get this electric current through my fingertips. Sometimes I shake. People say I look like Hendrix when I'm about to rip a solo because I move my shoulders like he does and do the chewing.

I worked with George Harrison - who was the reason I started playing guitar.

Raffi doesn't have any grand theories about why his music has been so successful, but he credits a group called the Babysitters as early inspiration.

If it wasn't for guys like Gary Moore, I wouldn't exist. He not only proved that the blues could rock but it could draw a crowd as well. All of which made a huge impression on me.