Young Yngwie VS Old(er) Yngwie

General Music Discussion
#1

When you compare the playing of Yngwie when he was at his peak to his current playing, there is a big difference in terms of accuracy, timing, phrasing, coping with speed etc.

Generally (and sadly), his playing (especially live) is much sloppier now. I noticed this also with Eric Johnson, although his playing has not deteriorated as much as Yngwie’s.

I find this interesting, because it makes me wonder what exactly changed from when they were blazing compared to now where they are struggling more.

In my opinion, their hand position or pickslant should not have changed.
Live, they play the same songs they have been playing for decades, so it’s safe to assume that the material is well-rehearsed.

So what is left then? What is the factor that makes it sloppier and more inaccurate?
Do they practice less?
Has their hand-synching deteriorated for whatever reason?
Is it something else?

What I noticed with my own playing thanks to CTC is that the right hand and left hand can be miles apart in terms of ability for a particular lick or technique.

Teemu said in his interview that he practices many licks separately for the right and left hand. This is one of the best pieces of advice I have received, because I then noticed that with many faster licks it is not my right hand that is at fault, but my left hand. My left hand is often simply not strong or fast enought to keep up with my right hand. So ultimately, when the pickslant is right, syncing becomes the bottleneck.

From what I can see, hand synching “trumps” pickslant and hand position (when these two are already correct of course), otherwise Yngwie would be still blazing.

What are your thoughts on this?

4 Likes
#2

Considering the fact that Yngwie had to almost relearn to play guitar after falling into coma, and considering that he broke his hand, plus he was never a fan of healthy lifestytle… I guess his playing is not so bad today.

#5

I think Yngwie had a better tone in the early days, it was like a heavily boosted power amp saturated singing sound. As time went on it became different, with more “hair” on it. His playing was best from the Alcatrazz to the Odyssey album (which was released post car crash) IMO. Some of his playing on No Parole From Rock n Roll is just incredible and so clean.

4 Likes
#6

I think @Hanky_Pooh has pretty much covered Yngwie.

As for Eric Johnson, there are several factors which I think should be mentioned.

Personally, I believe that the Eric’s single note lead technique was sharpest during the early to mid nineties, from just before the release of Ah Via Musicom to just after the release of Venus Isle.

This was the period where Eric’s perfectionism and neuroticism were also at there highest, which lead to some astonishing guitar playing, and this began to have negative consequences in his personal and professional life.

After Ah Via Musicom, Eric completely recorded and completely scrapped his follow up album not less than three times, before finally completing and releasing Venus Isle, under significant pressure from his record label. Eric’s perfectionism resulted in the dissolution of his working relationship with his bandmates Tommy Taylor and Kyle Brock.

Maybe more significantly, his father’s health was failing and his relationship with his long-term girlfriend came to an end, and she was tragically murdered shortly after. Venus Isle is dedicated to her memory.

During these personal and professional issues, Eric began having severe issues with tinnitus. He mentioned in interviews that watching television at low volume levels was painful. Amplified practice and live performances must have been unbearable. You can see him wearing ear protection during clips of him from this period, including the jam portion of the first G3 tour.

In the late nineties, Eric began mentioning in interviews that he was trying to let go of his perfectionism and neuroticisms and that he wanted to make music with a more off-the-cuff feel. This lead to the Alien Love Child live project.

He began poking fun at his own reputation for perfectionism and neuroticism. He mentioned in interviews that he wanted to be freer in improvisation, and made an effort to move away from some of his signature fast runs in favor of more harmonically interesting passages.

For the most part, he’s been successful in this endeavor. His playing on Bloom and Up Close has more of a jazz and fusion influence than his earlier albums, and his working relationships with bandmates have been repaired.

I think this change in Eric’s mindset is one of the primary reasons for the slight dulling of his single note lead technique , but I don’t feel he has deteriorated as a musician or as a guitar player at all. His chord vocabulary is ever expanding, his harmonic and melodic sense has grown in new directions and he has been more focused on his acoustic guitar and piano playing. His 2016 acoustic album “EJ” is thoroughly excellent.

I think, in some part, age has been a factor also. Age catches up with everybody eventually and Eric is in his sixties now. I know that he also had a tendon problem in his left hand and needed a surgery to have it re-sheathed.

3 Likes
#7

I think you pretty much nailed it. It bears mentioning that Malmsteen is easily the most flamboyant and “physical” in terms of showmanship of any shred guitar hero and it can’t be easy doing what he does onstage as he gets older. Power to him.

Apparently Bob Daisley has some juicy Malmsteen stories in his book. I really need to get a copy.

2 Likes
#8

I have no Yngwie stories! I know a lot of this stuff is commonly discussed, but I try to temper our online presence a bit whenever the subject of actual living people we might want to work with comes up. i.e. Not to scare them off.

Instead I can answer maybe the question you might be thinking about but not asking: Is there any reason for your technique to go to hell as you get older? The answer is a very clear no. Look at Batio. Practices only moderately. Has all the chops when he needs them. He’s not always spotlessly clean but then again he walked into our studio in 30 degree weather with zero, and I mean zero, warmup. He just sat down and I cued up “Rainforest”. The intro sweeps were dicey. Everything after that was fine. The scale playing was essentially the same as it was when I interviewed him ten years ago and he had been practicing for two hours that day before I got there.

In short, there is strong research evidence to suggest that complicated mechanical skills only need moderate practice to maintain, even well into later life (70-80+). Unfortunately the old dog / new tricks cliche does appear to also have some validity to it. Mainly that it may become more difficult to pick up new skills as you age. But the good news is that it’s not impossible - it just takes longer. And once you get those skills, you can likely keep them around for a long, long time with only moderate maintenance.

5 Likes
#10

It’s tricky. Truth is this stuff is out there and there’s not much we can do about it. It sounds like you’re thinking about being respectful and that’s really the best we can ask.

Joe is a super nice dude and since I have worked with him before I would think we can make that happen.

3 Likes
#11

I do have a a story, and I’ll try to keep it respectful. Back in the day I was given a tour of the backstage areas of the AC/DC Fly on the Wall tour. (Master engineer Steve Dove, I remain eternally grateful for that opportunity.) A small, otherwise shy, precocious teen, I asked a lot of probably annoying questions. To Angus, how do you manage to hold on to your pick? Answer, “we use a lot of them.” (Angus was very kind to us and even helped recommend a birthday present for me to my parent through the engineer.) I was amazed to see that they were all sober and drinking Perrier. The loss of Bon Scott really hit them hard, and they all had families. Yngwie’s Rising Force opened that night. (Lot of loss in that band over the years. I feel terrible about Malcolm’s recent passing.) I asked the engineer about the soberness of the band and he explained the situation. I then asked about Malmsteen. Paraphrased, calmly spoken response, “Yngwie’s different. He still throws TV sets out windows.” What a night that was. Went from classical guitar lesson straight to Market Square Arena on short notice of comp tickets. Anyhow, having seen Ynqwie with G3 a couple of times, I can’t attest to any evidence of lasting injury other than the transition from essentially being a boy in the fast lane to all that he is now. Be well, friends, and hug 'em while you got 'em.

2 Likes
#12

Thank you for all your reactions guys, it was not my intention to start “disrespectful” discussions (I would love to have Yngwie or Eric on CTC). It was genuine curiosity from my part about Yngwie’s and Eric’s playing. The answers were quite insightful, thank you for that.

On the matter of “does becoming older make your playing suck”, I think the answer is “not necessarily.”

What Troy said is true, there are a lot of older players that are as good or even better than they were technically and musically compared to when they were younger (for example, Petrucci seems to be doing just fine, Nuno too and Batio of course).

Let’s hope that one day we can admire Yngwie and/or Eric (or Nuno) on CTC, that would be amazing :slight_smile:

4 Likes
#13

I gotta say, when I saw Yngwie at Generation Axe a couple years ago he blew my mind and I enjoyed his set the most of all the performers. Nuno Bettencourt was a very close second. There were moments in Yngwie’s set where you could feel the notes starting to run away from him a bit or the hand synch was starting to drift apart but he would pull it together at the last second with a big sexy vibrato and a high kick or classic guitar flip. It was like watching a stunt rider or a trapeze artist. His set was full of guitar derring-do and he sometimes only made it out by the skin of his teeth. His show actually had a sense of drama and danger to it, which perfectly matches the vibe of his music and the setting of red stage lighting and dry ice. It was a pompous display of lead guitar decadence and it was everything I hoped it would be.

Nuno was incredible though. Easily the sharpest picker in the shed that night. I’m not a fan of Tosin’s music but I was pretty impressed with him during the “jam” tunes where they would trade solos. He knew how to play actual melodies and ideas whereas the other guys would just make 80’s rock n roll noise during their bits.

5 Likes
#14

My only complaints about old-er Yngwie is he needs to patch things up with Jeff Scott Soto, Mark Boals, or Joe Lynn Turner and get a real singer for live performances. The albums with Ripper were fantastic.
Is it just me or does his modern tone seem to be a little over-gainy? The thing I always liked about his 80s tone was how it had the perfect amount of gain, it only really sounds distorted when he played chords.

2 Likes
#15

Yngwie acts like he doesn´t cares about his fans anymore. His last album sounds effortless and soulless. His ego is eating him, he argued with people that helped him become what he was in ´80 and he plays things way faster than he can. It doesn´t sound any better faster.

Yngwie, I love you, your songs, your playing, but you are acting like a big child, immature, ungrateful and you think that everything should be about you. Grow up and come back please!

#16

lol, he never has. Speaking from plenty of experience and I witness accounts. Not heresy. But that’s a negative topic I’ll stay out of.

:bear:

#17

Who is “Joe” and what does he have to do with this thread. Looked for the post you replied too and didn’t find it.

My gues as to the answer to the question is thatngwie practiced relentlessly in his early days and his practice time has likely become a tiny fraction of what it used to be.

1 Like
#18

I’m very uneducated in terms of yngwie, I’m more intrested in eddie, I’ve noticed eddie, in fact, he’s become faster… In certain areas. There are loads of very intricate things he’s stopped doing, excessive tremolo runs for example, in terms of licks. He does still do the eruption tremolo.
But for all his regular stuff he’s flying through it.

I think the main thing he’s lost is drive, and that likely happens to them all. Life fucks us up one way or the other, either by taking things we lived for away, or us just having enough. Even sex, one of our greatest and annoying drivers gets dull if you do it to much, and I’m not necessarily talking about chemical diminished returns, they’re real people with many interests, who wants to practice guitar for hours when they see their life slowly fade away, getting old…

#19

I think that invade. Is a great guitar player, and i think that his playing technique has not changed. He may be only 54 years of age, but it shouldn’t matter what age he is, when he still has the energy to be able to play at high speed. The same could be said for eric clapton. He may be 72 years of age, and he still can play at his comfortable picking speed. The only difference between invade and eric is that invade is comfortable with his speed picking and does not know when to slow down and save his energy! And eric spent many decades perfecting his picking technique! And with patience, and years of playing eric was able to keep using his playing technique to be able to play at hissss age.

#20

Beside all the peronal issues in their lives i can imagine after that long time on stage and playing sets over and over again, I can imagine those guys might just focus on other things. Both styles were highly influenced by eficiency and accuracy and they nailed the technique to achieve that. Maybe it’s just about that they don’t want the reverse of that happen - the technique dictates the style.

We tend to see musicians (or people in general) as a static unit and probably that gets even motivated by the business behind it, But those guys are not machines they change over the years as everybody does.
Both of them now have theirs role in the long list of people that highly influenced music in general and imo have all rights to play or live the way they enjoy.

1 Like
#21

I’m a huge Yngwie Fan and Yngwie has been, ore than any other guitarist, my biggest influence musically. I say that so this won’t be misconstrued as the ramblings of a guy with a chip on his shoulder in regards to the subject of Yngwie Makmsteen.

When I see a man who was the most technically advanced rock guitarist of his era and one of the most influential rock guitarists of all time, snd I see his skills decline when there seems to be no good reason for it, I have to consider the possibility that this noticeable decline in the quality of his performances may be the result of alcoholiism, From a young age he was known to get drunk, at least sometimes. I read an interview of hm back in the very early days of his career ( shortly after the release of the Yngwie Malmsteen’s Rising Force album) in which he boasted of being able to play songs like Far Beyond The Sun perfectly while, as he stated it: “drunk off my ass.” We all know the story of him becoming inappropriately drunk on a plane flight during which he got into an argument with another passenger and exclaimed “Now you’ve done it; you’ve ulnleashed the fucking fury”!

Those incidents were in the early stages of his career. he certainly displayed the signs of being an alcoholic such as not being able to hold his liquor and consequently making a fool of himself. A man who was already showing signs of alcoholism that long ago would, unless he quit drinking, have progressed into a man with a very serious problem with alcohol, one which would certainly be capable of impairing the quality of his performances as well as his overall quality of life and health. :frowning_face:

3 Likes
#22

He may have done some stupid things,as a yong guitar player. But drugs and alcohol do not make you a fast guitarist! They destroy you’re brain! That assists you in you’re technique! Just don’t destroy you’re technique!

#23

Dude. Same.

Went for the Generation Axe tour last year in Singapore and it was my very first time catching Yngwie live. I was a lil skeptical that he could hold any articulation in his playing in this day and age but he was so goddamn fantastic throughout the set and smashed my expectations the moment he started playing.

Nuno another shocker, oh my god. I loved his dynamics so much, he truly is a one man band!

Although I must say, someone beside me was actually sleeping during Zakk Wyldde’s set :joy:

2 Likes