TIM 'RIPPER' OWENS: 'I Don't Think There Are Any Misconceptions About' YNGWIE MALMSTEEN

In a new interview with Australia's Hear 2 Zen, former JUDAS PRIEST singer Tim "Ripper" Owens, who recorded two albums with Yngwie Malmsteen — 2008's "Perpetual Flame" and 2010's "Relentless" — was asked what the "biggest misconception" is about the legendary Swedish guitarist. Tim responded in part (as transcribed by BLABBERMOUTH.NET): "Well, [Yngwie] does treat people really bad — I mean, as a whole. But… he's never treated me bad. I got along with him very well. I got along with Yngwie great. He would joke, and [he was] one of the easiest guys I've ever worked with in the studio. I think he has his moments. He doesn't like… Please don't ever put a white light on during a show or he'll stop it and yell at the light man or attack the keyboard player during the night if he did something wrong. But I'll tell you my experience with him and I… That was the only time I saw him go at somebody. But, yeah, I got along [with him] great.

"I don't think there is any misconceptions about him," Owens continued. "I think what people think about him is probably the truth. But that doesn't mean he's like that to everybody. I had a great experience with him. He was sober when I was in the band. [That said], sometimes the band wasn't allowed to even be in the dressing room; we'd have to be sitting in a closet.

"Obviously, he's kind of thrown all of the singers under the bus since I left the band, which was odd," Tim added. "I quit the band and I didn't even announce that I quit the band. I didn't even announce it. I just quit and stepped away, because I was getting busy doing solo shows and I felt like he needed to find another singer. But I don't talk bad about him. My experience was good… He could be a very, very pleasant guy and funny.

"I was just telling a story the other day — yesterday I was doing interviews — about singing in a studio [with Yngwie], and I'd be, like, 'Let me do it again.' … I would do a take, and I'd go, 'What do I you think?' I'd say, 'I think I could do it again. Let me do it better.' He goes, 'No, that's good. That's good. We don't wanna do it too many times. I think you got it. That was good enough.' … He was so easy in the studio. And it's funny [coming] from the guy that [famously] says [his philosophy about music is] 'more is more'. But it wasn't with me. He's just, like, 'Yeah, you got it. You nailed it. Let's just move on.'"

When the interviewer recounted a recent pleasant encounter with Yngwie in Australia after initially being told by the guitarist's tour manager that he couldn't talk to Malmsteen, Tim said: "There's times you might not wanna talk to people. I'm not the most talkative before [a show], but I would never in my life ever have somebody tell somebody, 'You can't talk to him.' … And I think it's 'cause there's times where Yngwie's gonna be in a zone or might not wanna talk to somebody.

"Listen, he's not a Ronnie James Dio with the fans," Owens added. "He's not gonna come out of the bus to sign something. He might not even sign it if they send it onto the bus. But that's all right."

Back in 2015, Owens told "The Jasta Show" that he quit Malmsteen's band because "he kept asking me to do shows, and I was already booked to do a solo show. I just didn't have the time to do it," Tim explained. "I thought he could get some young kid that could blow me away, pay the kid five hundred bucks a week on a tour and be happy with it and make the show better."

Tim also didn't rule out working with Yngwie again, saying: "I'd maybe do a record with him again, and maybe a quick tour, but I just couldn't fit it in."

According to Owens, he was treated well by Yngwie during his time with the guitarist. "Every time I got off stage, if I didn't have a good night, he'd be, like, 'Man, you fucking were great,'" Tim said. "I actually enjoyed my time being around him."

In 2019, Yngwie told Rock Hard that he prefers to handle the lead vocals on his albums himself nowadays because his previous "singers would always cause trouble; they would always be acting like they were special and they had something different to say or whatever… The singers always think that they're better than the keyboard player or they're better than the drummer."

In 2017, Jeff Scott Soto, who sang on Yngwie's first two albums, 1984's "Rising Force" and 1985's "Marching Out", engaged in a war of words with the Swedish guitarist over the fact that Malmsteen claimed in an interview that he "always wrote everything," including the lyrics and melodies, and simply hired various vocalists to sing his material.

In the days after Yngwie's original interview with Metal Wani was published on BLABBERMOUTH.NET, several of the guitarist's former singers — including Soto, Owens and Joe Lynn Turner — 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."