Yngwie Malmsteen was asked by Nick Bowcott on how often he practices the guitar these days, to which he replied (transcribed by UG):
“Not so much. I do, I have a guitar in front of TV, a little Marshall in the living room. I always play, but it’s more like a… I play when I’m inspired, it’s not like ‘Oh, I have to do it.’ It just happens by itself.
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“When I play I approach it as if it was the show. Even if I play for myself. Everything had to be perfect at spot. And I would always record, that’s the best trick, because you hear things they might not think of.”
Yngwie also revealed he initially wasn’t that interested in music as a little kid, saying:
“My older brother and sister were really good – they were playing Chopin and Mozart; my mother’s a jazz singer, my father’s a guitar player, my grandfather’s a drummer, my uncle’s an opera singer, so on and so on. Very musical [family], everybody spoke about musical terms.
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“So for my 4th birthday I got a violin, for 5th birthday I got a guitar, on my 6th birthday I got a trumpet, but I didn’t bother with it.
“And then on September 18th [1970, Yngwie was 7 at the time], they’re saying on TV that Jimi Hendrix died and they showed him smashing a burning guitar, and I liked that. [The destruction] was the initial thing, but the musical part became, obviously, more important.”