Yngwie Malmsteen Almost Got Kicked From Tour With Triumph, Rik Emmett Recalls: ‘He Was Being Sort of Egocentric in What He Was Doing’

“I said, ‘Let me just go talk to him in his dressing room. Y’know, guitar player to guitar player.'”

Although bands such as Kiss, Queen, and Styx seem to get all the credit for trailblazing over-the-top live shows, one band that certainly also contributed to the cause during the ’70s and ’80s was Triumph, and in particular, their use of lights, lasers, and pyrotechnics. Heck, the band even had a song titled “Blinding Light Show”!By late 1986, they were rocking North American arenas in support of their newly-released album, “The Sport of Kings.” And their opening act was none other than Yngwie J. Malmsteen, who had just issued his “Trilogy” LP.However, during a recent chat with Rock Interview Series, Triumph’s guitarist Rik Emmett remembered having to have a heart-to-heart talk with the Swedish guitarist to prevent him from being thrown off the tour early on (transcribed by Ultimate Guitar).

“The first night or two that he played, he kind of went overtime and he was being sort of egocentric in what he was doing. And then there was talk, like they were going to fire him off the tour. And I said, ‘Let me just go talk to him in his dressing room. Y’know, guitar player to guitar player.‘ And I think it helped that I was a columnist for Guitar Player Magazine.”

Soon after, a meeting was arranged between Emmett and Malmsteen in his dressing room.

“I said, ‘Look Yngwie, you are an incredible guitar player.’ I was smooching his butt… Because he is, what he does, he’s very singularly good at it. And I said, ‘But, you’re out here on the tour with us. We’re going to let you do your thing. But when you get to the 8:22 mark, you’re done. And you must realize that this is a professional enterprise.”

“We want you to succeed, we want the audience to be happy, we want you to be able to do a great show. But at 8:22, when your time is up, you can’t keep playing for the next half hour. You’re going to put the show into overtime, you’re going to cost me money out of my pocket. So, be reasonable to me and my business, and the business of Triumph, and don’t go overtime and you’ll be fine. It’ll be great. We can do a lot of shows together and it’ll work.'”

And it turned out that Malmsteen respected Emmett’s honesty.

“He was looking at me like, ‘I don’t think anybody ever talked to me this straight before.’ And he went, ‘Yeah. OK.’ And he never played one second overtime after that night. He played his show and it was good, it was great. He’d do those things where he’d swing the guitar around on his strap, hit his poses, and play his Ritchie Blackmore licks, and then play his sweep [picking]. He was he was a tremendous player.”

However, Triumph’s main man wasn’t necessarily a fanatic of Malmsteen’s neoclassical shred stylings.

“His band, eh. And the style of music, after you’d heard three or four songs, you’d kind of heard every trick that was in the book, kind of. So, it wasn’t really my cup of tea, necessarily. But there’s people that really do love guitar heroes. And that’s what he was.”