Swedish guitar legend YNGWIE MALMSTEEN spoke with Pollstar.com recently about a number of topics. A few excerpts from the chat follow:

Pollstar.com: Your music is out there even more now for aspiring guitarists to learn from. There’s even an Yngwie Malmsteen Award on Guitar Hero II. How does it feel to be included in this trend?

Malmsteen: "It’s been tremendous for me because I’ve been doing this for many years. A few years ago, I took my son to a big video store and there was a cat there that knew who I was and everything. I’m sure he did this to amuse me but he said, ‘Check this out!’ and he put on his plastic guitar. I’m like ‘Is this guy for real?’ This was before [the trend] exploded and I was very skeptical. But having said that, I am completely for it now. This has become what MTV was 20 years ago but this is even cooler because it’s interactive. We can go to Best Buy where I live, for instance, and there’s a full-blown music store as well. They sell the Marshalls and Strats like Guitar Center. To see these kids standing there, trying out their plastic guitars and then look over to the real ones, it’s a good thing."

Pollstar.com: How have you kept your vision for your music through all the different trends?

Malmsteen: "Some people had the misconception for a while that I had something to do with the ’80s. I became known in the ’80s, or what people now think of as the ’80s. And when the ’80s became the ’90s and everybody wanted to turn everything upside down, it didn’t change what I wanted to do. I’ve never turned my coat to the wind. It’s actually turned out, in the long run, to be the right thing to do. There’s a lot of people who were doing what I was doing 25 years ago who are not [now.] What’s ‘in’ is bound to go ‘out,’ so if you don’t have a steady course, you’re lost. What’s more important is that, to quote [Italian musician and composer] Niccolò Paganini, ‘One must feel strongly to make others feel strongly.’ When you feel so strongly about what you do, people can’t help but like it or hate it but they won’t ignore it. If you’re real about it – what you see is what you get – that’s longevity. I love to go on stage because every night is different – a different audience and a different show. Every time I hit the stage, I play like it’s the last show I’m going to do.

Pollstar.com: What prompted you to launch Rising Force Records now?

Malmsteen: "It’s something we had discussed for a long time. [When] I was very, very young, just a teenager … people saw me coming a mile away, so I got ripped off a lot. The music was all that mattered to me. I didn’t think of it as a money thing and I had many managers. About five years ago, my wife became a manager and since then, no matter what happens, it’s always in the family and that’s been a great thing. We made the decision to start the label because it keeps an eye on what I’m doing. But we did discuss it many times over because of this whole thing about digital downloading."

Read the entire interview Pollstar.com.