When Graham Bonnet left Rainbow he formed Alcatrazz, working with a talented young guitarist called Yngwie Malmsteen. Yngwie's talent soon shone through and he and the band "parted ways" after just one album. Well, that and the fact he tried to kill Graham after an on-stage incident. Graham gives his version of events in a new video interview with Vintage Rock Pod.
VRP: And in terms of Yngwie, then, because obviously he was getting a lot of the limelight, wasn't he, at this stage. So with him leaving after the first record, was that because his star was shining bright and he wanted to go and chase that, or was it you decided to move him on? Or what happened there?
Graham Bonnet: "Well, he was looking for something better because he wasn't too thrilled with the other guys in the band either, like I wasn't. I was looking for somebody who was like a real shithot keyboard player, a really shithot bass player, which I didn't find. We got somebody who would do because we had to make this record.
"He (Yngwie) knew people were watching him every night he went on stage. They watched this kid do all this. People were aghast. How's he doing that? I mean, now it's like commonplace. Everybody bloody plays like that now. But he's out there.
"He's taller than me by about four inches, I think. And he had his high heels on, his Cuban boots, Cuban heel boots. But he started doing that (overplaying) while I was trying to sing a verse of a song. 'Yngwie you know, when I get to this bit, I've got to have the stage here. This is my bit. This is where I'm singing the verse,' whatever it may be.
"But he was playing through everything because people were looking at him, he wanted to be seen. And I thought, well, this guy's going to go he's looking to go on to something else. Which eventually happened, because what happened one night, I don't know if you heard the story, but he grabbed me. I went off stage and I went off to the bus and he came off stage and grabbed me by the throat, started pressing in here (pointing to his throat), really really hard, trying to destroy my tonsils and whatever else. And I was like, 'what are you doing?' He said, 'you fucking bastard, you pull my fucking cord out of my guitar when I do my lead.' And I didn't at all. I didn't know. I actually walked off stage and had pulled it out by accident because the stage was dark and the spotlight was on him. And I'd gone off to the bus just to get some air, sort of thing. And he thought I did it on purpose, which I didn't. And so he tried to kill me, basically. And he could destroy my vocal cords and my tonsils, whatever. As I said, he's bigger than me.
"And then our Yugoslavian, one of our Yugoslavian roadies, I remember him so well, bless him he died not so long ago. And he got hold of Yngwie, got hold of him by the head, put him under his arm like this and said, 'you fucking touch Graham one more time, I break your fucking neck.' Because he was stronger and bigger than him (Yngwie).
"So that night when we're driving home, we fired him on the bus. But he went on to better things. He progressed. Whereas we went down the shitter, the band went down a shitter for a while."
Listen to the podcast here, watch the video below:
