pop-culture pilgrimage, part one

“There comes a time in every music obsessive’s life when he knows he has to prove it. The only solution: a pilgrimage. The idea behind the proud tradition of the pop-culture pilgrimage is that, by going to the places where one of your heroes grew up, achieved notoriety, died, or was buried, you can certify your fanship. Once accomplished, you can offer up quantifiable proof to the world that you love your idol entirely.”

—John Sellers, author of Perfect From Now On: How Indie Rock Saved My Life

I pilgrimmed, once. Sophomore year of college I said ahhhhh the hell with it and hemorrhaged $1100 in total on a round-trip coach ticket from O’Hare to Stockholm (connection in Amsterdam) to visit the boyhood home of neo-classical metalist Yngwie Malmsteen (above, heavily photoshopped).

I packed light, fast. No time for superfluities. Tees. Jeans. Socks. Deoderant. Maybe a toothbrush. There were probably boxer shorts in there. I’m not a very good packer. Flight was like any other. We made it all right, no deaths. I got out of the plane and looked straight up. Stockholm! The hostels were all stuffed up like rush hour trains, people falling out the windows. The desk people shook their heads at me, one after the next. I got very irritated whenever they shook their heads. Soon I grew tired of walking and started to sweat. I wished one of them would nod at me and hand me a key, but everywhere it was the same.

Much later a very nice woman with a Bed & Breakfast offered me a decent rate, so I said, “okay.” She removed a key from a large beige envelope and told about the rules. I thought about her rules and said, “okay,” and placed my pack in a wardrobe closet in the bedroom. Then I walked. And then I walked a little further. Yngwie’s place was very far from the Bed & Breakfast. His house is back in a field behind two fences that were built to keep livestock from acting out. It's still there, see for yourself. I hopped the fences. The second one was barbed and it left a small hole in the leg of my jeans.

Closer now, so close. Yngwie! This was a trip twenty years in the making. I grew up with Yngwie (pronounced ING-VAY). My father reared me on Yngwie. There are guitar players and then there is Yngwie. Yngwie is very hard to spell if you’re not careful. Nobody is faster than Yngwie (see vid below!). The man plays very quickly. To me, that’s why he is greatest. All his albums are perfect, but the best is 1985’s Marching Out. Yngwie fuses classical and metal better than Miles Davis fused jazz and rock. I have two Yngwie posters stapled on the wall over my bed. I’m admiring both of them while typing this. They’re very extreme.

After jumping the fence that left the hole in my jeans I encountered a very little man. He was not the most handsome man I’d ever seen. He said nothing at all. He glared at me savagely. I thought this was not good. The omens were foul. “Something the matter?” I said. No reply. I pressed on, one eye peering backwards so as not to be stabbed and one trained the right way, so as not to trip.



A few moments later I made it to the childhood home of Yngwie Malmsteen, metal savior. I stood there in the dirt looking up at it. My mouth was open all the way. I nearly cried. The home is made of wood. The roof is grasses.

Now’s the point in the story where I admit I never went. I don’t know shit about Yngwie Malmsteen. This story’s funnier than the one I was going to tell, though, so that’s gotta count for something. Who travels to Sweden for something like that? And for Yngwie?

Next installment: my real life pilgrimage (no lies). Liverpool, England. Spring ’03.
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