I believed the press for years that Yngwie single handedly launched modern mainstream neoclassical guitar back in 83/84 when he released his first solo album.
However it isn't true! While Vinnie Moore was playing at half speed on his "Minds Eye" album already the modern neoclassical sound and feel had been recorded.....
I was shown the true protagonist by a friend who lent me a 1977 album called "Taken by force" by some people called "Scorpions". Some bloke called Ulrich Jon Roth was widdling on the album exactly what Yngwie would "unleash to the world" more than 5 years later!!
It was the first pre-Yngwie commercial record I had heard where nearly every song is written in a harmonic minor key and I think it is in track 3 where Uli plays a 100% Yngwie run at the same speed as a fill, as for "Sails of Charon" a song completely written in E harmonic minor and apparently Scorpions fans rate it as a classic, yet in the field of shred this should surely supplant "Black Star" as a first study piece for speed sound and theoretical knowledge?
To think Ulrich did that album using normal strings on an unmodified dodgy CBS Strat....
So what of Yngwie? Well he is guilt of - deceit (noooooo!!) he ponced about bragging while guitar magazines went ape over his "Trilogy" album citing "Icarus Dream Suite" as being the pinnacle of neoclassical guitar expression and he took all the credits for writing the whole guitar piece.
However.... he didn't!! If anyone listens to Tomaso Albinoni's Adagio in G minor its practically note for note what Yngwie plays and that was many, many, many years before Yngwie "wrote" "Icarus Dream Suite".
So there we have it my childhood ruined and now I kneel at the alter of Uli, the true innovator of modern mainstream neoclassical guitar, forever shall I now use standard string gauges and a quality fuzz pedal.....
Still Yngwie's much more fun to watch live