Yngwie has been my longest standing favorite guitarist that I still listen to regularly. The one thing that I’ve always felt set him apart from a lot of other shredders of the 80s is that, at least initially, he was still writing vocal songs with actual hooks, and then he’d do his thing in the solo section. If you’re a fan of his influences it is painfully obvious his intent with Rising Force was basically to make a suped up, more metal version of Rainbow. Just look at some of the musicians he chose to work with, a lot of them were former Rainbow band members (Graham Bonnet, Joe Lynn Turner, Doogie White, Cozy Powell, Bob Daisley).
Anyway, you’ll never get a player like Yngwie to tell it exactly like it is, but I think that is partially because musicians of his generation (boomers that grew up in the 70s) tend to be super secretive and protective about what they did and would never admit to who they got their ideas from, as a way to make themselves seem more serendipitous and mysterious. It was in some weird way part of their showmanship.
I also believe that even if you did grill Yngwie on questions like “no really, what did you do when you practiced, are you conscious of this and that etc” that you’d still get an answer like he typically gives, because after all the interviews I’ve seen on CtC I think some of these players are legit when they say things like “I just used my ears” or “I never really considered my technique.”
Ironically, Yngwie’s instructional videos are some of the most instructional out there, in as much that he never just shows exercises. He shows exactly the lines and phrases he really uses when he plays. A lot of the other REH or Hot Licks videos by dudes like GIlbert, Moore, etc. they showed great exercises but often left out the actual licks that they use (remember how long it took for Gilbert to ever demonstrate that 11-note sequence he plays like, everywhere?).
