Yngwie’s world actually makes perfect sense! Once Yngwie explains it all for you, that is. If he shuffles singers and backing musicians, it’s because he sees himself in the mold of the classical musician, much like his beloved Paganini, not a conventional band leader. Ergo, the singer, say, is only a hired gun in Yngwie’s posse, singing the notes and collecting a paycheck. So if the given singer, say, sports a huge unconvincing wig (covered in the book) and/or hides out towards the back of the stage singing and gesturing to an unpopulated back corner (visible on video), that’s okay. The singer’s in the mix. He’s not on the bottom line.

In his methodical manner and steady if uninspired prose, Yngwie disarms the reader. Control freak? He cops to it (see above). Prone to insane ravings? Well, he was drunk most of his adult life. Married three times? Took him three marriages to find a decent woman.

His taste in friends? Debateable.Ted Nugent — and I’m hoping I don’t have to explain to you, Dear Reader, the living open sore that is Ted Nugent: “Ted’s a really great guy… He has remained a good friend over
the years.”

Gene Simmons gets a shout-out, and I swear, there’s a short mash note to Thatcher’s England. Not that the Iron Maiden now lying next to her husband in, ironically enough, the boneyard of a hospital for elderly soldiers, would have given the fast-flying Yngwie a glance at her timepiece.

But Thatcher and Simmons, and Nugent, probably, fit Yngwie’s mold. Control every aspect of your career. Too much is never enough. Above all, self-determination. You alone control your destiny. If you don’t succeed, you didn’t try hard enough. Simple as that. So to hell with Yngwie’s native Sweden with its “welfare system” that “basically killed your ambition to try for anything out of the ordinary or to strive to reach higher goals and make something of yourself…”

You’ll get enough on Yngwie’s guitars, techniques, and influences (Deep Purple, no surprise; Gabriel-era Genesis, a big surprise, and one which makes more sense the more you hear Yngwie). He made it. He clawed his way out of the coffin, so to speak. No mercy for those who lie stilled, with dead clawed hands, in its earth. But when you make yourself, you make yourself a little insane.