Jeff Scott Soto has spent years quietly leaving the door open to Yngwie Malmsteen. In a new interview with Remzi "Jam Man" Yates of Rocking With Jam Man, he explained why he still bothers — and what he actually wants out of it.
The two go back forty years. Soto sang on the neoclassical metal records that made Malmsteen's name, and the relationship has been fractured for most of the time since. What renewed Soto's optimism was watching Ritchie Blackmore walk back onstage with DEEP PURPLE.
"That was an exciting moment that nobody expected that would ever happen, much less that it happened in our lifetime," Soto said. "And for everybody to see that, it just goes to show that there is hope. There is a chance that anything that's fractured or broken is fixable. There's this Krazy Glue you can put in pretty much any situation. So I will never stop extending the olive branch, telling Yngwie there's no reason, there's zero reason for us to have any animosity or any walls between us."
He was emphatic that there is no plan attached. "If it's not put aside to actually work together, I don't really care. I care more for the personality side of things. I care more for the friendship. I don't want any enemies when I leave this earth. I wanna go with a clear conscience that everybody was cool with me and I'm cool with them."
Asked about the assumption that a reconnection would have to mean a reunion tour or a payday, Soto blamed the internet. "That's the World Wide Web always trying to come up with things that don't exist just to add more to the story. When I extend that olive branch, I make it very clear that I have no agenda. I don't have any M.O. It's all about I just wanna be friends with the guy."
He was also candid about what the friendship required of him back then. "I understood who he was and how he was, and from that, I accepted my role in how I am around him. And, yeah, I might have to be a little less 'me' for us to have a peaceful hang whatsoever, but I'm good like that. I'm a chameleon."
On what is harder to forgive — the things said when they were young, or the things said decades later — he chose the latter. "That's more fresh. If something like that happened along the way, that wound is still open."
And if one song onstage were on the table, with nothing attached to it? "One hundred percent yes. I would do it in a heartbeat. It just opens that door of being friends again, of being able to call him on his birthday or say 'merry Christmas' or 'how's the family?' That kind of stuff. That's the kind of stuff I miss in our relationship."