In fact, as numerous Guitar Magazine articles and Youtube tributes reveal, Malmsteen and his fans were never irrelevant; the mainstream media just forget about them. Now, thanks to the Internet and a renewed interested in 1980s fashions and guitar rock, a new generation has discovered him. “I noticed it at a concert a few years ago,” he said. “I realized that people were going crazy. They don't just think its cool, they fucking love it.”
“The American market is very finicky. I'm not saying the people, I'm saying the media. They decide this is what's gonna happen and that's it ... . It's a lot more diverse now than it used to be.”
From the beginning, Malmsteen was known among journalists as being cocky and hard to interview. To avoid military service in Sweden he allegedly visited a recruiting office with a gun. He made the tabloids there in the early 1990s when his girlfriend's mom accused him of threatening her with a shotgun. A few years before he totaled his Jaguar in an accident that left his right arm temporarily paralyzed.
His new album, Unleash the Fury, which has not been released in Taiwan but will be on sale at the concert, is a tongue-in-cheek tribute to that image. The title comes from an incident in the late 1980s when Malmsteen and his band were trashed on board a flight to Japan. A fellow passenger threw water at him, prompting Malmsteen to launch into a diatribe that ended with the line: “You have unleashed the fucking fury!”
If Monday's interview was any judge, he's mellowed out. Fans see a change and say the new fit and trim Malmsteen is playing better than ever. “I'm in good shape. A year-and-a-half or two years ago I made drastic changes and tried to become more focused. No drinking, nothing.”
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