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The Early Years Lars Johann Yngwie Lannerback was born in Stockholm, Sweden, on the last day of June, 1963. That same year, the Beatles had just emerged from Liverpool, England, soon to make their mark on music history. But it would be another twenty years before a lanky, tousel-haired Swede with hungry eyes would stand the music world on its head once again. The intervening years before 1983 when Yngwie J. Malmsteen was officially discovered by the music industry provided an environment ripe for the development of a musical prodigy. The marriage between Yngwie's army captain father and artistic free spirit mother ended in divorce not long after Yngwie was born. The youngest child in a permissive household that included his mother Rigmor, sister Ann Louise, and brother Bjorn, Yngwie (named, his mother claimed, for an old boyfriend) was wild and unruly, and delighted in "anything that had a lot of violence in it." Music, especially guitar playing, was reserved for wimps,...