Pop Music : Malmsteen: Shallow Virtuosity

An Yngwie Malmsteen concert, such as the one at the Variety on Saturday, is everything you might expect from a heavy-metal show: a fearsome wall of Marshalls, a blond drummer fond of crossing his sticks above his head, a wailing singer clad in anatomically correct spangled spandex, a keyboard player with a wide array of cat noises at his command.

Mostly, of course, there’s Malmsteen himself, a round-faced Swede who seems to delight equally in preening and flicking guitar picks into the audience. (How many guitar picks hath Malmsteen? One might as well ask the number of sand grains upon the beach.)

When he solos, which is most of the time, Malmsteen often leans forward, closes his eyes and puckers his lips, like a guy forced to kiss somebody. He is quite talented at slinging his strap-held guitar into orbit around his neck. He is adept at playing with his teeth.

But for all the noise and fury, his solos haven’t the melodic arch of Clapton nor the gonzo joy of Eddie Van Halen, the fuzzy majesty of Jane’s Addiction’s Dave Navarro nor the unfettered genius of Hendrix--it’s a shallow display of easy virtuosity, slack in invention, banal in effect.

He plays mostly quick scales and arpeggios, the by-the-numbers gruntwork that every conservatory student has learned to despise . . . although to admire when done well.

It is not Malmsteen’s fault that all the good licks have been taken, that all his best guitar stuff sounds either like a violin etude or an intro to a Van Halen song circa 1979. He is a remarkable technician--no doubt if he were a classical violinist, he’d have a solid if minor reputation for his skill with Paganini, Wieniawski and other composers with more flash than depth.

At least then, we wouldn’t be subjected to the tired Styx-with-licks heavy-metal bombast that he seems to write for himself.