In a new interview with Guitar Player contributor Jonathan Graham, legendary Swedish guitarist Yngwie Malmsteen spoke about some of the offers he had received over the years to join established bands or collaborate with well-known musicians. He said (as transcribed by BLABBERMOUTH.NET): “Well, it depends on how you mean. When I first came to the States, I was offered to join UFO. And then on the same day as I offered to do the UFO thing, which was a big step from [my then-band] STEELER, I guess, I got contacted by the thing that becameALCATRAZZ. It wasn’t called ALCATRAZZ [yet]. They didn’t have any songs, nothing. I wrote all the songs. And I chose that situation because I wanted to write songs instead of just… As much as I like UFO, I didn’t wanna be stepping into someone else’s thing.
“I was asked to join Dave [Lee] Roth‘s band. What happened was that he was leaving, or left already, VAN HALEN, and I was doing a big American tour [with] AC/DC. And then right after that I did my own tour of America with a band called TALAS opening up, which was Billy Sheehan‘s band. And Dave would come to the shows all the time. Plus, we would hang out too, at the Troubadour and stuff, back in the party days. And it would’ve been a great thing, but I think that… I mean, he obviously asked Billy Sheehan too, so Billy took it. I mean, it wasn’t officially on a paper like this or something like this, but it was very obvious what he was thinking about. And at the time, I was thinking, ‘Oh, no. I’m doing great,’ whatever.
“Very early on, I was offered to join KISS, but that was very short-lived because they called me when I was still in Sweden in 1982, ’cause [my] tape had been circulating… I’m six [feet and] three [inches tall]. But I didn’t know that, because I’m [familiar with the] metric [system of weights and measures]. I said, ‘I don’t know.’ I said, ‘I’m 192 [centimeters tall].’ They didn’t know what that means, and I didn’t know what ‘six foot’ means.”