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1) This is the story of a gift gone wrong. Heavy metal guilt. And long delayed redemption. Let's start in 1981. I'm 14 years old. And a heavy metal fanatic. I particularly love fast guitar players. One of my best mate at the time (still my dear friend) @pzizzo is a great player.
2) Peter has a band called White Heat. I am their "manager." Biggest accomplishment: convincing the school principal at our Quaker school to let them play at an assembly despite the devil worshippy music the band covered.
3) (this accomplishment undercut by me screwing up at the soundboard and accidentally unplugging something, so that when the singer opened his mouth, no sound came out, and all the older kids and jocks started laughing at us, laughs that finally stopped when we graduated).
4) BUT ANYWAY. In 1981 a man named Mike Varney released an album called US Metal which collected the best unknown and little known shredding guitarists in the country. We decided that Peter deserved to be on the next volume in the series.
5)So I, at 14, begin trying to reach this Mike Varney, who was in San Francisco. There was no email. So I called him on the phone. I was a pretty obsessive kid. So I kept calling him until, finally, he returned my call.
6) I tried to act like I was a grown up, but he saw through it. I was talking fast, like a Wes Anderson character, and throwing around every big word and music reference I knew. My dad was in the music business, so I name checked a whole bunch of people that I didn't really know.
7) Varney seemed like he was decades older than me, but he was under 25. And I guess my enthusiasm and commitment made him laugh. Also, as maybe the only thing in my defense, I was a true expert in heavy metal. I collected records. I knew every little vinyl store.
8) And it had to be kind of absurd to be talking to this kid who's voice hadn't changed about the engineer who remixed a version of the Tygers of Pan Tang's b-side 10 inch.
9) Some time during this initial period of talking (we talked every day. I would bring quarters to school and use the pay phone instead of going to classes, pretending I was talking to a tutor) Mike actually called me one night.
10) really, really late at night. My parents had put a phone line in my room that was just for me because I was always talking to all these heavy metal people. So Mike wakes me up and says, "I just got this demo tape, and I need to play it for you."
11) He rewinds and I hear a voice talking. The voice is accented and at first I think he is playing it for me because it is a weird and strange freak sending a terrible demo. But Mike says no, keep listening. And the guy says...
12) "Hi Mike. My name is Yngwie Malmsteen. I am from Stockholm Sweden and my goal is to have total control of my instrument, the electric guitar." And then music starts and a guitar solo comes in, and I think Mike is rewinding again.
13) That's how fast and blistering the playing is. Then there is more talking, and Yngwie explains that Ritchie Blackmore is his biggest influence. And that he really wants to come to America. I ask Mike to make me a copy of the demo and send it to me, and he says, no.
14) He is not copying it. There will be one copy only. And he is going to fly this Yngwie to the states to make a record with him.
15) Soon thereafter, my family makes a trip to the west coast and I get to meet Mike in person. He's just the best guy, totally nice to me, and we become real friends, even though he is 10 years older than me.
16) the next summer, 1982, I go on a student bus tour out west and we go through San Francisco and Mike comes and gets me and takes me to the Iron Maiden concert festival A Day On The Green. We go backstage and I get Clive Burr to give me a sweatband I wear for 2 years straight.
17) But that is not the gift. The gift is: I beg Mike to let me have a copy of the Yngwie tape. He again says he doesn't want to make any copies of it. He wants this to be the only copy. By now, word of Yngwie is getting out. He's about to make the Steeler record.
18) I tell Mike that I really need to play this for the guys back home. Peter in particular. Plus @edgrauer and @DavidLevien, whom I had met on the student bus tour.
19) Mike says "Ok, Brian, I will trust you with the original copy. But you have to mail it back the second you get home and play it for your friends. And you can't copy it.
20) I promise on both counts. And I keep the no copying promise. But as far as sending it back.
21) I mean to. But I play it for Pete and he wants to borrow it to learn the solos and Ed does, too, and then I can't figure out how to mail it safely and then...
22) Then one of my friends takes it on a trip to florida (mike is calling me now, instead of me calling him, and I am ducking his calls. Or answering and promising I gave it to my mom to mail back or some such) and in florida, he is with a girl.
23) he breaks up with the girl, leaving the tape in her car's player, accidentally.
24) But lies to me about it. Tells me it's in a suitcase somewhere. Eventually, he comes clean. I tell him to call her and get her to send it to us or Mike.
25) But she won't answer his call. (I have to start a new thread. 25 seems to be the limit. We are almost finished).
