In a new interview with Brazil’s Rádio Kiss FM 92.5, acclaimed hard rock vocalist Jeff Scott Soto, who sang on Yngwie Malmsteen’s first two albums, 1984’s “Rising Force” and 1985’s “Marching Out”, was asked which lessons he learned during his time with the legendary Swedish guitarist that he still applies to the way he approaches his career today. Jeff responded (as transcribed by BLABBERMOUTH.NET): “Well, one of the biggest lessons I learned when I was with Yngwie is how to do things and how not to do things. And what I saw, not necessarily Yngwie, but the management, just the way things were run, I saw that’s not the way I wanna do things with my own career, with my own future. So I learned a lot from there that I took into my own world and into the next steps of my career, and that’s why I’m still doing this, I guess.”Jeff continued: “That’s one [piece of] advice I always give to young musicians when they say, ‘What advice do you have for new musicians?’ I said, besides the fact that you have to stay with it — if you really want it, you have to stay with it because when you get ‘no, no, no, no, no, no,’ one day you’re gonna get one ‘yes,’ and that means you’re meant to be there. That’s my first advice. But the second advice, and it’s the most important advice — learn the business. There’s so many ways you can get screwed. There’s so many ways people can put the hat over your face, and you have no idea. You can sell one million albums and you’re still driving an old beat-up car. So you just wanna learn the business and know what you’re signing. When people are talking about the business — publishing copyright, mechanical royalties; there’s so many different things to learn — and I tell every musician, make sure you know that stuff before you get into this.”Jeff added: “It’s called the ‘music business’ for a reason. There’s music and there’s business. If you don’t learn the business, you’re screwed.”More than three years ago, Jeff claimed that Yngwie threatened to cancel his concert in May 2022 in Agoura Hills, California after finding out his former bandmate was in attendance. The following day, Malmsteen disputed Soto’s account of what happened in Agoura Hills, writing on his Facebook page: “Kids, don’t believe made up BS from people who are trying to stay relevant! He’s not important for me to cancel my show to my fans. On the other hand I was told by my agent that he snuck in there without paying so the security threw him out. Certain people make up stories… turn up at my show, get kicked out by security because they snuck in the venue WITHOUT PAYING, then turn around make up a story to try and grab media attention… some people are sick. STOP stalking me and get help”.Eight years ago, Soto engaged in a war of words with Malmsteen over the fact that Yngwie claimed in an interview that he “always wrote everything,” including the lyrics and melodies, and simply hired various vocalists to sing his material.Back in 2017, Soto told the “US American Made Guitars” show that “it’s false information” to suggest that he contributed nothing to Yngwie’s early albums “because we co-wrote [some of] those songs together. I actually authored those songs,” he said. “For him to say, ‘I wrote every lyric, every melody,’ it’s absolute falsity. And he’s speaking out of whatever anger or whatever throwaway conversation he might be having, but when it’s put on text, it comes across as very crude and very arrogant. So, of course, I don’t take that kind of stuff too personally.”The singer went on to say that faulty memory may be at least partly to blame for Yngwie’s comments. “Yngwie’s written so much of his own stuff, he’s written so much on his own when it comes to lyrics and melodies through the years,” he said. “Maybe the past eight albums… I don’t even know how many albums he’s put out, but for that many albums he’s put out, clearly his memory is fogged on the albums that he wasn’t doing all of that.”He continued: “Joe Lynn [Turner] was a very strong collaborator on the album [‘Odyssey’] with he did with Yngwie, as was I, as were some of the other singers that were involved with him. Maybe later on that changed and the other guys were basically just used to sing his words. And I was as well on some songs. I mean, ‘I Am A Viking’, I didn’t write one word or one melody on it. But the stuff that we did together, that’s stuff that we did together. And there’s some stuff I did on my own that’s on there — he didn’t add or remove one single thing from it. So, again, it’s selective memory. It could be he doesn’t wanna talk about me, he’s got a bad taste in his mouth about me, so he’s gonna do everything in his power to make sure that everybody knows how downplayed my role was in his life and his career.”In the days after Yngwie’s original interview with Metal Wani was published on BLABBERMOUTH.NET, several of the guitarist’s other former singers — including Joe Lynn Turner and Tim “Ripper” Owens — responded on social media, with Turner describing Malmsteen’s statements as “the rantings of a megalomaniac desperately trying to justify his own insecurity.” This was followed by a retort from a member of Yngwie’s management team, who wrote on Malmsteen’s Facebook page that the three vocalists “came out enraged, spitting insults and profanities” at the guitarist because “Yngwie said something that they didn’t like.” The management representative added: ” It’s very unfortunate that these past hired vocalists must resort to mudslinging and insults to elicit any kind of media attention towards them. Such classless, puerile words are ungentlemanly at best and absolutely disgraceful at worst.”[embedded content]