Taking Sides: Yngwie Malmsteen vs King Diamond

Fine, leave me out, then, Scott

"There's a hole in the sky.
Don't ask me why.
Because I don't know."

King Diamond wins.

KD at least has a sense of humour - just look at him.

He's one of the few 80's shred-types that can still reliably sell out a club appearance in the hinterlands, like say, Allentown, PA.

An old friend of mine from the Highway Kings recently went to see him just like he goes to see all the Mercyful Fate/King Diamond shows that slog through the region. The attendances were in Malmsteen's favor because he draws every male metal guitarist.

Also, you have the phenom of people have either not bought any Malmsteen records, or just one or two, who faithfully attend such shows. One supposes the appeal lies in a mindset shared by those who went to "strongest man in the world" exhibitions a century and a half ago. Or the unbeatable wrestling bear, the man who could pull a railroad car with his teeth.

Malmsteen's most definitely in that league.

Never underestimate the guitar mag demographic, either. If Malmsteen and his like hadn't come along, they would have invented others.

It ties in with the love American men for engineering skills over art.
They're fascinated by physically blinding technique and total mechanization to a very high degree, in awe of it, really.

And that also ties in with the appeal of Eddie Van Halen. Compare the
Van Halen 2CD set with the Black Sabbath box. Which is the better buy?

Well, Tony Iommi is just about the finest expressionist hard rock guitarist ever. Of the first eight albums, not one is really a dud, particularly when compared to 2004 standards of excellence.

But Eddie van Halen, now, that man built American guitar stores. For two decades you couldn't go in them on Saturday's without being terrorized by tappers, even though he -did not- invent the technique. The Kramer company expanded on his reputation alone and went bankrupt upon the arrival of grunge. He has had signature amplifiers designed and sold by his name as well as too many guitars to mention.

Iommi didn't get any of that. He just contributed to making a better catalog by Black Sabbath.

Sweep picking is stupid.

Give me VENOM!

http://www.fiese-scheitel.de/fiese-scheitel3.data/Komponenten/Bilder/metall/nitro/angelo.jpg

I mean, c'mon people - the answer is obvious.

I guess I was being a little too dry. Eddie van Halen coupled with the American love of fads and trademark equipment made it almost impossible to find good middle-priced guitars without goddamned locking tremolos in the US for at least ten years. For that, I will always despise him.

Imagine if the same phenomenon translated to supermarkets. All you would have been able to buy would have been the equivalent of Spaghetti-O's and TV dinners for a decade.

x-post, if Spaghetti-O's had whammy bars, I would be a happy man!

http://homepage.mac.com/viktor2/btw/Terrible%20Ted.html

I'll bet KD loves life a lot more than Yngwie.

He could easily be compared and contrasted with the mass love of things like Liberace, the love of guided bomb camera footage, top fuel drag racing, The Rock or Hulk Hogan, Sylvester Stallone, Mr. T.,
hunting and shooting exhibitions, World War II vintage movie reels of weapons and canned foodstuffs rolling off factory assembly lines, the firebombing of Tokyo, flying car of the future fantasies, the panoply of weird American inventors always striving to invent perpetaul motion machines.

ALCATRAZZ VS MERCYFUL FATE!
OH THE RUMBLE OF TITANS!

(Melissa and Don't Break The Oath own that one so majorly that my ankles are deflating in trepidation)

Or earlier yet?

STEELER VS BLACK ROSE!

Phrrph.....I haven't heard either, to be honest. Black Rose is apparently all Deep Purply.. Steeler? Probably sucks too...

I'll bet KD loves life a lot more than Yngwie.
I dunno, Yngwie's waistline and clothing seems to show a nice love for
life. Not to mention that Yngwie's always writing songs with gummy-titles like "Spanish Castle Magic" and "InstruMENTAL Institution", while King Diamond writes concept albums about people who rape children.

Seems to me to be attributable to Hendrix.

But is it Yngwie or King Diamond?

Touche.

George, surely no one would have cared about Eddie's flash if he couldn't write a decent pop song, right?

"Eruption/You Really Got Me" is what put Van Halen on the mag right out of the starting gate. It wasn't a hit single but it made them headliners within about a year. The first tour had them opening for Journey and Ronnie Montrose. Next, I believe they opened for Black Sabbath on the "Never Say Die" tour.

They got more chart action with "Pretty Woman."

Finally, "Jump," came along and made another big breakthrough.
And I agree, EVH's ability to write a catchy song did so much more for getting the flash in front of the mass audience. In the same way, Steve Vai benefited greatly from Whitesnake and David Lee Roth's second and third solo records.

Songs made these guys strip their peers, like Malmsteen, who's a guitar purist's possession.

You could say the same for Harvey Mandel who tapped long before EVH came along. Relatively speaking, almost no one has heard Harvey's
records like "The Snake" and "Shangrenade." Some are familiar with him through Canned Heat and some from the Stones' "Black & Blue."
Obviously, a big pop hit might have changed that.

As for tapping, it's true that he wasn't the first to do this on record; at least two others (Harvey Mandel and Ollie Halsall) beat him to it. But who's to say that he didn't come up with the technique independently? Sonny Stitt claims that he was playing in a bebop style before ever hearing Charlie Parker, usually considered the inventor of bop, so why not Eddie? He always claimed Eric Clapton was his hero, anyways.

Sorry to come off a bit defensive - I just get sick of people lumping EVH with bores like Yngwie/Satriani, etc. Now, Steve Vai: He's a better comparison, and he was never boring either. (At least not on his hired-gun sessions; I've never heard his solo LPs, but they don't LOOK boring on the cover.)

So did King Diamond's Conspiracy album

I liked Yngwie for a very brief period in my youth. That Rising Force album had some OK songs, if I remember right...

I hate Van Halen (but not David Lee Roth) - the most overrated canonized band this side of KISS

You were in FIFTH GRADE when that came out? Cripes are you young!

That's not the reason this was done. Black Sabbath albums up to at least "Vol. 4" were very underproduced. This was the way Rodger Bain did things for the first two, Sabbath and the engineers did it on "Vol. 4," although it's credited to their manager. What Iommi was doing was doubling his solos and the rhythm tracks to make the recording full, and it was common on all heavy guitar band records from the time. Budgie, Dirty Tricks, lots of others, used the same methods.

This was covered in later years by analog doubling and now digital
stereo doubling. It has some advantages and disadvantages, both which are matters of taste. However, the technique is used on almost all hard rock and heavy metal records, including Van Halen records.
The guitar feed is sent through a very short delay and split hard right and left at full volume on both sides or slewed right or left depending on where you want it to sit in the stereo field. It can make
the guitar sound like one very loud and full instrument playing in a small live room, or two being played in tight synchrony. Sweeping the frequencies of the delayed signal at a cyclic rate adds a chorus effect, also real common in hard rock and metal.

Iommi doubled his solos manually on the early records. It's not a measure of the weakness of the technique or composition.

Eddie's thrill-ride solos, on the other hand, were always dynamic, adventurous and even funny sometimes. Plus, they were often recorded live off-the-floor in real time.

As were the early Sabbath albums.

As for tapping, it's true that he wasn't the first to do this on record; at least two others (Harvey Mandel and Ollie Halsall) beat him to it. But who's to say that he didn't come up with the technique independently?

Rick Derringer, for one, another guitarist. He's been in print in the guitar mags at one time or another saying Danny Johnson, his second
guitarist in the "Derringer" years did it. And that Eddie often came to see Derringer in soCal, and van Halen being a covers band before
signing, may have imitated him. Or maybe he did come up with it in
a vacuum.

However, rediscovering an obscure antibiotic in science independently of people who did it a decade earlier doesn't earn any scratch points.
Neither does this.

But EVH was absolutely responsible for popularizing it. And then it went into abuse, like almost anything involving mostly blinding eye-hand coordination stunts do, which is what it is.

I just get sick of people lumping EVH with bores like Yngwie/Satriani, etc.

I didn't. EVH was a class or two above them.

Now, Steve Vai: He's a better comparison, and he was never boring either. (At least not on his hired-gun sessions; I've never heard his solo LPs, but they don't LOOK boring on the cover.

Nope, never boring. But circus freak shows aren't boring, either.
David Lee Roth made good use of that. He had Vai playing some silly-looking two-necks-in-a-V-shaped guitar in a mass exposure video just like the rest of the circus geeks' pics in this thread.

Hey, Vai's "Attitude Song" drops the jaws of everyone who hears it for the first time. Then they play it over and over for about fifteen minutes and it goes to the bottom of the pile. Barring "Attitude Song," the solo etude Ralph Macchio "played" in "Crossroad" does the same thing.

[First let me apologize for not reading the entirety of your posts carefully enough. Based on your mildly derogatory remarks and profession of hatred, I was under the impression that you were denigrading Edward Van Halen outright – I totally missed your description of EVH as “revolutionary.” If only I’d seen that, I never would have posted at all. So I commend you for being objective enough to praise a muscian whom you claim to despise.]

Tony Iommi was a master of riffs and fills, but his solos were mostly unimpressive, to the extent that he often had to double-track them with slight variations (as in "Paranoid") to make 'em more interesting.
That's not the reason this was done. Black Sabbath albums up to at least "Vol. 4" were very underproduced. This was the way Rodger Bain did things for the first two, Sabbath and the engineers did it on "Vol. 4," although it's credited to their manager. What Iommi was doing was doubling his solos and the rhythm tracks to make the recording full, and it was common on all heavy guitar band records from the time. Budgie, Dirty Tricks, lots of others, used the same methods.

This was covered in later years by analog doubling and now digital
stereo doubling

There are many Iommi solos which are fleshed out using that automatic doubling technique (used by countless guitarists including, yes, Eddie Van Halen). There are many more in which he duplicates the solo note-for-note. (Again, an extremely common practice.) And there are many more in which he double-tracks a solo, but NOT verbatim, choosing instead to veer off at random points for a few seconds before returning to the original solo. As for “Paranoid” I’m not sure what he actually did, because the solo(s) is/are split between the two stereo channels, one much fuzzier than the other. I was being kinda flip when I accused him of doubling his solos to make ‘em sound more interesting, rather than merely fleshing out the sound. I wasn’t implying that there’s anything wrong with overdubbing to beef up the sound – how could I, when my beloved Kingdom Come owes a lot of its amazing sonic impact to Louis Dambra’s strategy of “riff upon riff upon riff” (thanx julian cope). And I shouldn’t have implied that EVH’s habit of recording off the floor made him superior to Tony Iommi. But the bottom line is that I simply don’t find Iommi’s soloing terribly distinctive. Lotsa simple blues-rock licks that were all the rage in '68. Mick Box (Uriah Heep), Tony Bourge (Budgie), Tony McPhee (Groundhogs): Three of Black Sabbath’s contemporaries, bands that were’nt as good as Sabbath, with guitarists I find overall inferior to Tony Iommi, even though all three had a knack for playing memorable solos, which Iommi didn’t, to my ears.

Iommi doubled his solos manually on the early records. It's not a measure of the weakness of the technique or composition.

Whatever the intent, the RESULT of doubling solos with minor variations every few seconds is to render them both more interesting, since neither one has to stand on its own.

But EVH was absolutely responsible for popularizing [tapping]. And then it went into abuse, like almost anything involving mostly blinding eye-hand coordination stunts do, which is what it is.

It's more than a hand-eye stunt, it had MUSICAL results too. I was digging the sounds that he made even before I knew what the band looked like, let alone how those sounds were created

He could easily be compared and contrasted with the mass love of things like Liberace, the love of guided bomb camera footage, top fuel drag racing, The Rock or Hulk Hogan, Sylvester Stallone, Mr. T.,
hunting and shooting exhibitions, World War II vintage movie reels of weapons and canned foodstuffs rolling off factory assembly lines, the firebombing of Tokyo, flying car of the future fantasies, the panoply of weird American inventors always striving to invent perpetaul motion machines

Ha ha ha! Nice analogy. Wonder how many people love Hulk Hogan and Liberace both?

Regarding that hammer-on stuff, I actually don’t care who invented it. I just thought that you were implying that EVH stole the technique, and considered your implication to be a direct result of your Eddie-hatred. Again, a mistake I might not have made if I’d read more carefully.

I just get sick of people lumping EVH with bores like Yngwie/Satriani, etc.

I didn't. EVH was a class or two above them

I never accused you personally of comparing EVH to Yngwie/Satriani. Other people do that, sometimes. (As upthread.)

Now, Steve Vai: He's a better comparison, and he was never boring either. (At least not on his hired-gun sessions; I've never heard his solo LPs, but they don't LOOK boring on the cover.

Nope, never boring. But circus freak shows aren't boring, either.

Ha ha ha again!

David Lee Roth made good use of that. He had Vai playing some silly-looking two-necks-in-a-V-shaped guitar in a mass exposure video just like the rest of the circus geeks' pics in this thread.

A moot point, since I've never seen the vid in question.

Hey, Vai's "Attitude Song" drops the jaws of everyone who hears it for the first time. Then they play it over and over for about fifteen minutes and it goes to the bottom of the pile. Barring "Attitude Song," the solo etude Ralph Macchio "played" in "Crossroad" does the same thing.

Actually, I don't even LIKE Vai too much, don't know why I even mentioned him. But he’s definitely an original.

In conclusion, I still disagree with a few of your points, but I've read your stuff over the years and know that we're in agreement on many other things, so I'm quitting now.

And next time, I'll read more thoroughly.