Yngwie Malmsteen recently opened up about his father’s remarkable past, revealing that the man led a secret life as a Cold War spy. The guitarist described his father’s military background and unexpected connection to his own record’s release behind the Iron Curtain.
When asked what kind of person his father was, Malmsteen shared the story in detail.
“What kind of person was your dad?”
“He was an amazing man. I didn’t really grow up with him because my mom and dad were separated from when I was one or something. My mom passed really early on, then I became close with him. His older brother is Sweden’s most famous illustrator. His younger brother is a royal opera tenor in Sweden. [My dad] was a soldier! That’s what he did,” Malmsteen said.
“He was a professional soldier in the special forces, then he became a spy during the Cold War. He spied on the Russians. No lie! In 1986, at the height of the Cold War, some numbnut at PolyGram Records sold the ‘Trilogy’ album to the only state-run communist label in the Soviet Union, Melodiya. They sold 16 million copies in the Soviet Union. It was an official release. One day, my dad is over there, under cover, like James Bond. He’s hanging out with an opera singer: ‘Leonard! This record is amazing!’ It was ‘Trilogy’! But it said ‘Yngwie J. Malmsteen’ in Russian on the record. He goes, ‘That’s my kid!’ That’s how we did the 20 shows in the Soviet Union,” he continued.
When asked if his father sounded like a cool guy, Malmsteen agreed and shared another anecdote about his father’s time overseeing the band’s shows in the Soviet Union.
“That was my dad, yeah. And he actually went there because he was a drill sergeant when he was young, and then he became a captain and a colonel. And one time the Soviets would throw coins and stuff at everybody. Well, not at me, but for some reason they did it to all the others. And Joe [Lynn Turner] would say on the mic, ‘Don’t do that!’ And nobody gave a shit! And then one day, I had my dad go up, take the mic and say in Russian, ‘Don’t throw anything on the stage.’ And it stopped,” Malmsteen said.
The story sheds new light on the guitarist’s family history and the unusual circumstances that helped bring his music to Soviet audiences during the Cold War era.
The saga behind that 1986 pressing of “Trilogy” offers a fuller picture of just how unusual Malmsteen’s inroads into the Soviet Union really were. The record’s official release through Melodiya was a rare occurrence in itself. The state label was one of the few outlets permitted to distribute Western heavy metal at a time when such music was still viewed with suspicion by Soviet authorities. That single pressing effectively opened the door for Malmsteen to build a fanbase deep behind the Iron Curtain, long before most Western rock acts had any presence there at all.
The 20 shows Malmsteen references took place in early 1989, split between Moscow and Leningrad. The Moscow leg ran from January 18 through 29 at the Lushniki Palace of Sports. The Leningrad dates followed from February 1 through 10. Together, the run drew roughly 240,000 attendees, a staggering figure for a foreign metal act performing in the USSR at that point in the Cold War.
Those Leningrad performances would go on to hold historical weight beyond the tour itself. Recordings from the shows were later compiled and released as the live album “Trial by Fire: Live in Leningrad.” The album stands as a document of one of the earliest large-scale Western rock tours to be staged inside Soviet borders.
The scale of Malmsteen’s popularity in the region only grew from there. Subsequent record sales in Russia are estimated to have topped 27 million units. That figure stands as a testament to the impact that Melodiya’s decision to press “Trilogy” ultimately had on his career and legacy in the former Soviet Union.
