uli jon rothmichael schenkerscorpionsriff notes
14:00 Thursday, 12 January 2023
Guitar legend Uli Jon Roth, who has been called "an anti-hero shredder in the proto-metal age", is featured in a new career-spanning interview with Guitar World. An excerpt is available below.
Throughout four albums with the Scorpions – Fly To The Rainbow (1974), In Trance (1975), Virgin Killer (1976), and Taken by Force (1977) – Roth upended the guitar scene by injecting Mozart and Bach where others might substitute B.B. King or Muddy Waters. With each successive record, Roth pushed the boundaries of exploration to regions unknown, deconstructing all that his peers thought they once knew.
Guitar World: The Scorpions' first record, Lonesome Crow, is more in line with prog-rock. What was your vision for Fly To The Rainbow?
Roth: "I honestly tried not to think about what Michael Schenker did before me. I didn't think about any of that. At that time, my plan was to play what I felt was right for the music on the table. Our version of the Scorpions felt like a new beginning, so I threw out what Michael did and looked forward from day one. But honestly, there wasn't much of a long term vision, it was very instinctual, and the things I played on Fly To The Rainbow came to me in the moment. An inner voice guided me through the music, and I just played what I felt.
I suppose that I might have looked toward the future at some point, and eventually, I had certain aspirations of what I wanted to do on the guitar, but not at that point. You have to remember, those were very early days, and I had only just picked up the guitar again after not seriously playing it for a long time. So, for me, it was a new beginning in several ways. Looking back on it, that album did send me down an exploratory road, but maybe that is not very evident on Fly To The Rainbow. But I will say that once I got my feet wet, I was consciously pushing the envelope of the electric guitar in various directions."
Read the complete interview here.
