Phoenix New Times has published a lengthy article on Swedish guitarist Yngwie Malmsteen's ex-wife Amber Dawn Landin (photo), who currently makes a living working as a dominatrix under the name Mistress Seven (photo). An excerpt from the story follows:
In May 1992, Amber, then 17, and her mom went to the Mason Jar, the old rock dive in central Phoenix. Heading the bill was Swedish guitarist Yngwie Malmsteen, then about 30 and a bit past his zenith in the States, though a recording of his that year, "Fire and Ice", sold 100,000 copies in Japan on the day it was released.
Seven says she didn't even know who Malmsteen was, and had attended the concert so she could get an autograph as a birthday present for her brother, a big fan.
Mother and daughter hung around after the show, and got their autograph. Seven also got Malmsteen's phone number, and vice versa. The pair communicated frequently over the next months, and on her 18th birthday that July, he sent for her from his adopted home in Miami. "Like a Russian mail-order bride," Seven says.
"I had all the hopes and dreams of what love was going to be. Here he was, giving me the love and attention I was craving, but then he started hitting me six weeks after I got there. It was not mutual. I did like the aggression in consensual sex situations, but not the hitting."
That Seven says she now loves to be hit, pummeled even, by trusted "playmates" is something she can't really explain.
She says she and Malmsteen regularly used cocaine and other drugs, and that the violence escalated as time passed.
(Malmsteen's management company did not respond to requests for comment for this story).
In August 1993, according to accounts in the Miami Herald and, later, in Miami New Times, Seven's mother called the Miami Shores police, alleging that Malmsteen was holding her daughter with a shotgun in another part of the house.
A SWAT team surrounded the home and, after a four-hour standoff, Malmsteen surrendered to police in his bathrobe.
Seven declined to press charges, and an aggravated assault complaint was dismissed.
The highly publicized incident didn't spell the end of the tempestuous relationship.
The two were married at a castle in Stockholm later that year, on December 26, 1993.
Wedding photos of the couple are revealing: Seven says Malmsteen wouldn't allow her family members to attend, and her bridesmaids were three women who had won a fan-club contest.
The bride was anything but blushing. In fact, she looked downright sad, which she says she was.
Seven says she went on several world tours with Malmsteen, and that he abused her in front of his bandmates and hangers-on.
As the turbulent six-year relationship wound down, Seven says she found herself fighting back — and hard — against the 6-foot, 3-inch Swede.
"I became an animal — a drugged-up, drunken animal," she says. "I was not well, and he made me even sicker."
Along the way, Seven says she wrote the lyrics to Malmsteen's tune, "Prisoner of Your Love". She's on the album credits but says she never collected royalties.
The chorus goes, "Encaptured by the beauty/I'm a prisoner of your love/Enslaved by the passion/I'm a prisoner of your love."
Seven says Malmsteen changed her original lyrics from what she calls "a song about literal imprisonment to a sappy love song."
Seven says she won a settlement totaling a few hundred thousand dollars when her marriage to Malmsteen officially ended in 1998.