Yngwie Malmsteen: Jeff Scott Soto discusses life with Yngwie

Metal Shrine: Working with Yngwie and those two albums, what do you remember from… you didn't audition, do you remember what songs you played or did you just jam?

Jeff Scott Soto: I remember it like it was yesterday. I met Yngwie and I basically got the call… I was surprised I got the call because they didn't expect the demos that I sent them. I was 16 years old when I sang it and I didn't even expect that I would get listened to and when I found out later, that out of the box of tapes that they brought to Yngwie, only two were taken out and played for him. The first one that they played him was the absolute worst one that was in the box and the second one they played him was my tape. Everything else they didn't bother with. That is amazing to me, that they got this 18-year-old kid who was 16 on the demo and that was good enough to play for Yngwie at that point in time compared to everything else that was sent to him. I went down to the studio to meet him and he was working on the instrumental album and he was kind of cold and reserved. He didn't put any real interest into meeting me. He was in the middle of doing his record and was like, "Yeah, I'll take some time and meet this guy, whatever!" He brought me into a little room, pulled out this acoustic guitar and started playing. "OK, I've got this song so just come up with some melodies!" So I'm kind of singing along and he goes, "OK, this is the chorus and this is the melody for this — ba ba bapa ba!" And I'm just jotting down lyrics as fast as I can and I'm trying to remember the melody and singing it to him, just me and him, like a duet kind of thing and he goes, "Yeah, that sounds pretty cool! Let's put it on tape!" He goes into the control room and they set up the microphone in the room in front of him and they start playing that same song, but with the whole band playing and I was like, "Oh, Jesus, now I've got to sing these lyrics and this melody!" and I'm trying to remember everything right on the spot. I think I even have a copy of that. They mixed me a copy of it on a cassette tape and I still have that somewhere at home. And that was my audition. I basically sang "As Above, So Below" with my kind of fake lyrics and tried to remember the melody and all he remembered was the soaring high notes I was able to hit at the very end and he said, "Man, sounds cool! Let's get together at my house and demo some more songs and we'll see what happens from here!" And it was about three weeks of that, that we did together and which eventually led to "Welcome to the band!" more