Yngwie Johan Malmsteen ( ; born Lars Johan Yngve Lannerbäck, 30 June 1963) is a Swedish guitarist. He first became known in the 1980s for his neoclassical playing style in heavy metal, and has released 22 studio albums in a career spanning over 40 years. In 2009, Time magazine rated Malmsteen as number 9 among the 11 greatest electric guitar players of all time. Early life Malmsteen was born Lars Johan Yngve Lannerbäck in Stockholm, Sweden, the third child of a musical family. At age 10, Malmsteen created his first band, Track on Earth, consisting of himself and a friend from school playing the drums. At age 12, he took his mother's maiden name Malmsten as his surname, then slightly changed it to Malmsteen and altered his third given name Yngve to "Yngwie". As a teenager he was heavily influenced by classical music, particularly 19th century Italian virtuoso violinist and composer Niccolò Paganini as well as Johann Sebastian Bach. During this time, he also discovered his most important guitar influence, Ritchie Blackmore. Malmsteen has stated that Jimi Hendrix had no musical impact on him and did not contribute to his style. However watching the TV news reports on 18 September 1970 of Hendrix's death, which included footage of Hendrix smashing and burning his guitar at the Monterey Pop Festival of 1967, made Malmsteen think, "This is really cool." Career 1980s In early 1982, Mike Varney of Shrapnel Records, who had heard a demo tape of Malmsteen's playing from the 1978 demo titled Powerhouse, brought Malmsteen to the United States. He played briefly with the band Steeler on its 1983 self-titled album. He then appeared with Graham Bonnet in the band Alcatrazz, playing on its 1983 debut No Parole from Rock 'n' Roll and the 1984 live album Live Sentence. Bonnet and Malmsteen clashed about who was the frontman and had a fight during a show. Malmsteen was fired on the spot from Alcatrazz and replaced by Steve Vai. Vai had one day to learn the songs for the ongoing tour. In 1984, Malmsteen released his first solo album Rising Force, which featured Barrie Barlow of Jethro Tull on drums and keyboard player Jens Johansson. His album was meant to be an instrumental side-project of Alcatrazz, but it ended up featuring vocals by Jeff Scott Soto and Malmsteen left Alcatrazz soon after the release of Rising Force. Rising Force won the