Former Ozzy Guitarist Jake E. Lee has recently bashed Yngwie J. Malmsteen.
During his appearance on The Talk Toomey Podcast, Jake E. Lee found himself speaking about the “Self-Proclaimed-Guitar-God” Yngwie J. Malmsteen.
Jake E. Lee went on to say that the Swede is “an arrogant fucking asshole” who is “only really good at one minute aspect of the art of playing guitar.”
Best known for his amazing work on both Bark at the Moon ⇗ (1983) and The Ultimate Sin ⇗ (1986) – The former Ozzy guitarist was sitting down to promote the second album from his Red Dragon Cartel project, “Patina”.
Speaking about Yngwie, Jake said: (Listen Below) “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.”
“I’ve always made sure that I end up in a position where I have control, because to be happy in a sort of democracy, that doesn’t work for me. I’m definitely a dictator. It’s just the way I am with music.” – Yngwie J. Malmsteen
In a separate interview Jake E. Lee added: “Since I was very young, I was always extremely serious about I was doing. I have one shot at this, and I have to do it myself.
I’m like a painter or like classical composer, because a composer wouldn’t have someone else write the cello parts of a piece of music — they’d write it themselves.
Now, that might come off as arrogance, but when I put my name on something, it has to be my work. Like it or hate it, it’s my vision and my creation. I don’t work in the traditional way, how most rock ‘n’ roll bands or musicians work.”
Jake E. Lee TRASHES Yngwie Malmsteen: He Is An Arrogant A**hole!

Now who could forget the infamous clip taken from Pantera’s tour video. A somewhat tubby Yngwie Malmsteen is confronted by Dime with donuts while shepherding two young American teen groupies into an elevator (probably underage) and reacts with his usual ego driven attitude and hostility turned up to the max. Notice how he angrily orders the groupies into the elevator grunting “GET IN” while being followed by the donuts. It’s nice to see Yngwie’s kind and gentle manner around ladies/young girls.
Yngwie Malmsteen doesn’t eat Donuts.
