Yngwie Malmsteen plays the Blues… sort of
I’d like to first start off by saying Yngwie Malmsteen is and will always be a guitar god. As the father of neoclassical metal, I have immense respect for Malmsteen’s technical prowess, compositional skills, and ability to shred with such ferocity that your eyeballs could melt. That being said, if Robert Johnson sold his soul to the devil at the crossroads so he could be a blues master, then Yngwie sold his soul off Craigslist to a classic rock station in Tampa.
The album is weird. I read an interview where Malmsteen talked about Blue Lightning and he said:
“I've been asked to do a blues album for the last 30 years. And this time I finally said, 'Sure, why not? Let's try it!' I just didn't want to be stuck in the standard, pentatonic, play a 12-bar thing. I didn't want to do that.”.
While the quote sounds good on paper, the combination of neoclassical arpeggios and shreds on top of legendary blues rock songs is odd. At best. The entire album is made up of a few originals, but it is mostly a cover album. He covers two Jimi Hendrix songs (Foxey Lady and Purple Haze), Paint it Black by the Rolling Stones, Demon’s Eye and Smoke on the Water by Deep Purple, and even a ZZ Top song (Blue Jean Blues). The cover I am most disappointed by is While My Guitar Gently Weeps, one of my favorite Beatles’ songs and favorite solos by Eric Clapton (who collaborated with the Beatles on this song).
Gently Weeps is considered one of the greatest guitar songs of all time, in large part thanks to the magnificent soloing and riffing done by George Harrison and Eric Clapton. The song not only sounds melancholic, it feels sad. So much so that the guitar truly does sound like it is wailing in agony. The emotion reflected in the masterpiece is why I am so disappointed in Blue Lightning. Malmsteen simply doesn’t sound sad.
The Blues gets its most signature sound and feeling from the emotions put out by the player. If you listen and watch the great masters of blues and rock guitar such as Robert Johnson, B.B. King, and Jimi Hendrix, you can see how big an impact their emotions have on their playing. Listening to Malmsteen play feels like he is just jamming and playing along to the tune, but not actually feeling it. It feels soulless and falls flat. All the arpeggios and sweeps in the world can’t save the album from what it is, a very talented musician showing off how talented he is.
Malmsteen’s album gets 1.5 blue lightning bolts
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