Jake E. Lee opines Yngwie Malmsteen only really good at one little thing with his guitar playing

Jake E. Lee opines Yngwie Malmsteen only really good at one little thing with his guitar playing

Red Dragon Cartel and former Ozzy Osbourne and Badlands guitarist Jake E. Lee had some choice words for fellow guitarist Yngwie J. Malmsteen when the former as interviewed on the Talk Toomey podcast.

With respect to Malmsteen, Lee opined (as transcribed by Blabbermouth): “He’s a dick — that’s my main problem with him. He’s an arrogant fucking asshole, and he always has been. I don’t know if he is right now, to be honest — I haven’t seen him in forever. But I can only assume that if when you’re younger, you’re that arrogant and that big of a dick, that you really never change. So I assume he still is. But no, he was just — he was a dick. And he was a great guitar player. But even then, he was really good at one little thing that he does — doing the sweeps and arpeggios and playing fast — and that’s all he could do. That’s one of my problems with him — it’s a very narrow band of guitar playing. He just focuses on this one part. He’s a shitty rhythm player; he can’t write a song worth a fuck. And I’m saying this, and this sounds bad — I feel a little bit bad — but knowing what an asshole he is, I don’t feel that bad. You can’t be that arrogant if you’re only really good at one minute aspect of the art of playing guitar. And that’s all he was… And … yeah, fuck him.”

You can listen to the audio of the interview with Lee via the Talk Toomey podcast.