Uli Jon Roth On Revisiting The Scorpions And Rock’s Golden Era
For his first time in Australia, the legendary, iconic, internationally influential and multi million record-selling artist, ULI JON ROTH, on his “Best of Scorpions and more” world tour. Uli will be performing a best of the SCORPIONS set, amongst other songs from his extraordinary catalogue. More than fifty years into his amazing career, German guitar innovator ULI JON ROTH will perform three shows in Australia in September. SYDNEY, ADELAIDE, MELBOURNE, get ready for a very special night of Classic Hard Rock.
Uli, of course, was an extremely important member in the history of one of the biggest selling bands of all time, SCORPIONS. After replacing MICHAEL SCHENKER in 1973, SCORPIONS released four studio albums during ULI’s tenure as lead guitarist, main songwriter and occasional lead singer between 1974 and 1977. These albums include Fly To The Rainbow, In Trance, Virgin Killer, Taken By Force as well as their Gold selling double live album, Tokyo Tapes, in 1978. These albums are all heralded in the history of Rock and Metal, with Tokyo Tapes being touted as one of the greatest live albums of all time.
Since his time in SCORPIONS, Uli has had a very colourful career, with most of the 1980’s filled up with his band ELECTRIC SUN, followed by a long line of varied projects, from G3 at Wembley Arena with JOE SATRIANI, MICHAEL SCHENKER and BRIAN MAY, to composing four symphonies, two concertos and performing with symphony orchestras throughout Europe. Let’s not forget June 2007 in Germany, when Roth joined THE SMASHING PUMPKINS on-stage for their epic closing song Gossamer. He made another appearance with the Pumpkins upon their return to Germany on 26 February 2008, and a short documentary was made called Corgan und Uli Jon Roth. The legendary Uli Jon Roth talks to Hi Fi Way about this special run of shows.
It is really good that your heading to Australia for a special run of shows this month?
Yeah, I’m looking forward to it. I’ve never been down under.
What can Australian fans expect when you tour?
We’re coming straight from Japan playing the week before and we’re playing a completely different program in Japan. It’ll be more you know, it has string players. It’s different music mainly. But when we come to Australia we’ll do our Scorpions Revisited set, which is the early Scorpions era that I was involved with these albums In Trance, Virgin Killer, Tokyo Tapes, Taken by Force. So we’re playing mainly songs from that time, and a little bit of Hendrix Electric Sun, and also one song by my deceased brother Zeno. So it’s a mixed bag. I thought, when we’re coming to Australia for the first time we should do that which they probably best know me for.
It must be a really tough assignment, being able to jam an entire career literally into a ninety minute set?
Yeah, exactly, we’re not even attempting to do that. In America I do three-hour sets and with a lot of variations. There are songs from now, from way before and from my middle period, but here in Australia we’re mainly concentrating on that hard rock stuff. It’s basically like a kaleidoscope of going back in the time. A lot of that stuff was written when I was twenty or twenty one. I was a different person back then, but the music? It’s actually quite astonishing when you play it live, it still comes across as if it was written yesterday, at least to me, and it seems to translate to the audience as well.
What is it do you think about that particularly the early Scorpions music that keeps resonating with fans?
Maybe because it was an era in the seventies where rock music was still very young, very fresh, and a lot of those sounds that were created then were completely new as were the songs. It all started in the sixties with the Beatles, and then you had Hendrix, Cream, Led Zeppelin, all these people. It was like a vast array of new music coming out at that time, and the music from that period has a certain freshness to it, for want of a better word. It wasn’t when the eighties came in, the nineties rock became more, quote-unquote, perfect. The edges were polished off and it became maybe a little bit less intense. So the seventies stuff still has that intensity that first came from the sixties and when we’re playing it I’m always surprised how well it still works. And of course, a lot of my audience, they grew up with some of these albums, you know. So when we’re playing In Trance, or some of these songs We’ll Burn the Sky, it really brings back memories. When we’re playing them live now, very often we’re having a better reaction than what we had back then with the audience.
Are you blown away by wherever you are in the world, that the legacy keeps growing and building with these songs kind of have taken on their own lives?
They have, yes! We’re still playing them in the same key and the same structure. But over the years the arrangements have changed a little bit and gotten just better for a live setting. When I remember when we were playing these songs back then they were very new to us as well, and we were still feeling our ways of how to play them live. Then over the years a song goes through various transformation phases until they reach maturity and so these songs that the way we’re playing them now, they’re now in their mature phase, that’s what I would say.
It must be humbling as well to see younger fans coming along that are discovering that early Scorpions music as well?
It’s nice, I’m always enjoying it when there’s a really young audience in there. Sometimes the parents bring their kids and the kids are digging it. Normally, they might not be exposed to music like that, because it’s not on TikTok or other channels of that ilk. But once they’re there in the venue, and they get the full force of the wind, so to speak, it draws them in, and then the effect is probably very similar to what it was like for us when we were fifteen to sixteen years old back then.
With your time in the Scorpions, what are some of the moments that even now, when you look back as being significant for yourself?
It was really a very nice journey those five years that I was with them, starting from maybe when I was seventeen or eighteen. I was learning a lot of things, and every year brought other highlights. So I can’t say, oh, this was the one thing. It wasn’t like that. It was more like climbing a ladder. We started branching out to different countries. We started in Germany. Then we started going to France, Belgium, England and exploring what it’s like to be on tour in these countries. That was quite exciting, and we learned a lot that way. Musically, we were making progress every year. We recorded one album in the summer, and each album was a major new step forward because we were getting better at writing music. We were getting better at playing the stuff. When I’m looking back, I see it more as a whole, like a really nice journey actually. So I’ve got very, very fond memories of that time. Also what was very nice was that the Scorpions, when I was there, we were very much in harmony. That means we didn’t have any quarrels in the band. We never argued, even when it came to deciding which songs to play it was always smooth. Nobody said, oh, that’s my song, and that’s your song. No, we always picked what we thought was best. There was no competition, there was no rivalry. It was harmonious, and I think most bands are not like that, so that was in hindsight a very nice thing.
Was that the environment that really allowed you to flourish as a songwriter as well?
Yes it was, because at the beginning of the Scorpions when I joined, the songs were written by Rudolf, Klaus and Michael. But then, as I was in the band, gradually I started to write more and more. On the In Trance album, I think I had two or three songs. On Virgin Killer I had three or four. On Taken By Force I had maybe four or five. So it was a time of flourishing for me, and it was like a great opportunity to contribute to the overall creative process.
What do you think of rock music today compared to when you were coming through the ranks yourself?
Well, I think that rock music has in a way fragmented. In the seventies it was all very much one movement and everyone was listening to the same music, more or less. Now it’s very fragmented. There’s still some people listening to classic rock, others listening to progressive rock, others listening to death metal, others listening to punk, others listening to alternative. It’s like hundreds of different factions and so it’s much harder for one particular type of music to make a massive impact like it was back then. So, in a way I think that was maybe the golden time of rock music, in the seventies. But having said that, there are still a lot of very good bands out there. It’s just much harder for them now to really make it, to become big, because everything is so fragmented.
Do you think the adoption of AI and stuff like that is also going to impact on rock music and music more generally as well?
Oh, absolutely. AI is a big thing, it’s only just starting. But I believe it’s going to impact in a very major way. It will have advantages and disadvantages. Oone of the advantages could be, for example, that someone who has a musical vision but can’t really play very well on guitar or keyboard could use AI as a help to realise that vision. And in that way it might open doors for people who are very musical but maybe not very accomplished as musicians. But the downside is that the human element is always very important in music. The human touch, the feeling, and AI will probably never really have that. So there’s a danger that music might become more polished but more soulless and that is something that I’m hoping won’t happen.
Are you already thinking ahead to what comes next after these tours?
I’m always thinking ahead. I’ve got a lot of projects in the pipeline. I’m working on new music. I’ve got some classical music projects, I’ve got rock projects, and I’ve also got educational projects. I’m doing a lot of teaching. I’ve got my Sky Academy, where I’m trying to pass on some of the things that I’ve learned over the years to younger musicians. So there’s always something happening, and I don’t see myself stopping anytime soon. For me, music is really a lifelong journey, and I don’t think it ever really ends. As long as I’m alive there will always be something new to discover, something new to express and that’s really the beauty of music. It’s infinite. You never get to the end of it.
Interview By Rob Lyon
Catch Uli Jon Roth on the following dates, tickets HERE…
