It’s always interesting to see a guitar virtuoso, being fascinated by another guitar virtuoso. In a recent interview with GuitarWorld, John 5 called Yngwie Malmsteen’s playing ‘genius.’ and said that he was blown away by him. In his own words, he said:
“I have to include Yngwie Malmsteen. I was just obsessed with his playing and remember being blown away by him. His playing was a real game-changer because it was genius. But genius is not, ‘Oh, that guy can play’ – that’s not genius to me. I think genius is something I can’t see. And that’s what Yngwie Malmsteen did – he changed everything and created this style.”
He continued to share his fascination of Malmsteen by adding:
“That’s what genius is, it’s the thing you can’t see but is created. And he created something that really had an effect on me and zillions of other people all over the world.”
John 5 Quit His Tour With Yngwie In 2021
Despite John 5’s admiration for Yngwie Malmsteen, the tour they did together didn’t exactly go according to plan. John 5 announced on Instagram that he would not play the remaining shows on their 2021 US tour together due to health concerns. The incident occurred at a time when Covid concerns were becoming more prominent. The Mötley Crüe guitarist, who spoke positively about Yngwie in his statement, said:
“I am certain that these Yngwie shows will be amazing, as they always are. I’m sorry i won’t be there to share my new music with you all. I’ll be back out on the road as soon as is safe and possible.”
At the time, there was a lot of speculation and a lot of unhappy fans just from what they learned from that statement alone. But later John 5 would make things clear.
No Hugging, No Touring
After announcing his exit from the tour, he talked about this situation in an interview he gave to Whiplash in 2021. He said:
“I lost some very close friends to COVID. And it was just going crazy and going rampant. And I was gonna be touring in these places where there’s a lot of people. And I love to meet people, I love to say hello to people; I love to give people hugs. And I didn’t wanna restrict people of that; I didn’t wanna be, like, ‘Oh, back up, buddy.’ Because I wanna say hello to people as well. So I’m just gonna wait till the spring till everything hopefully calms down so I can get out there and do it right and feel comfortable about it.”
It took us a while to find out what had happened in the process of John 5 not being able to continue on the tour, but we eventually found out that there was no conflict between Yngwie and John 5.
