Guitar legend Yngwie Malmsteen recently shared a funny story about how KISS once reached out to him in the early 1980s to possibly join the band — but a misunderstanding about his height may have stopped it from going anywhere.
Back in 1982, before he moved to the U.S., Malmsteen sent a demo to Guitar Player magazine. The tape caught the attention of big names in the American music scene. Soon after arriving in the U.S., he started his career with Steeler, then joined Alcatrazz, and eventually released his first solo album Rising Force in 1984.
During this time, many well-known bands showed interest in him, including KISS. In a recent interview with Eddie Trunk, Malmsteen said:
“I got all these phone calls… I got a phone call from KISS! The funny thing was, people were saying, ‘You’re hot, you’re hot!’ I didn’t even understand what they meant — I thought they were sneezing!” [laughs]
He said KISS asked about his height:
“They said, ‘We want to try you out. Are you six feet tall?’ But I didn’t understand feet — in Sweden, we use the metric system. I told them I was 1.92 meters, which is about 6’3″, but I didn’t know how to explain that… and they never called back.”
He also mentioned talking to David Lee Roth around the same time, when Roth was starting his solo career.
