Uli Jon Roth

Though his profile remains lower than that of Deep Purple’s Ritchie Blackmore, Uli Jon Roth established foundational elements of neo-classical metal through his lead-guitar contributions to the Scorpions throughout the 1970s. While his style clearly reflected Jimi Hendrix, the refined architecture of his solos, the seamless motion of his phrasing, and the incorporation of scales drawn from classical study elevated his work beyond conventional hard-rock boundaries. After departing the Scorpions in 1978, Roth pursued an unpredictable solo path that allowed fuller expression of his psychedelic and neo-classical inclinations than the band had permitted.

Ulrich Roth entered the world on December 18, 1954, in Düsseldorf, Germany. He took up the guitar at thirteen and was already appearing onstage by fifteen. In the early 1970s he joined Dawn Road, whose vocalist was Klaus Meine. When the Scorpions, temporarily sidelined after Michael Schenker’s departure for UFO, heard the original songs largely written by Roth, they re-formed in 1973 with Roth installed as lead guitarist. Their first joint effort, Fly to the Rainbow, appeared in 1974; momentum built with In Trance in 1975 and Virgin Killer in 1976, records that carried the group to international audiences and spotlighted Roth’s solo work. Musical friction surfaced on Taken by Force in 1977 as Roth’s expansive ambitions diverged from the band’s straightforward hard-rock approach. Following an exhausting global trek, he exited after the live double album Tokyo Tapes in 1978.

Independent once more, Roth assembled the power-trio Electric Sun and handled both lead vocals and guitar. The group’s debut, Earthquake, arrived in 1979, retaining traces of his Scorpions sound yet displaying stronger Hendrix references, extended compositions, and a gently psychedelic atmosphere. Fire Wind, released in 1981, pursued those directions further. The next Electric Sun album shifted dramatically toward symphonic neo-classical territory, broadening Roth’s compositional scope and introducing his six-octave Sky Guitar invention; Beyond the Astral Skies emerged in 1984 and marked his final recording for an extended period while he prepared a more ambitious undertaking.

Between the mid-1980s and mid-1990s Roth concentrated on classical composition, setting rock aside. One result was the 1991 “Aquila Suite,” later included in the three-disc From Here to Eternity collection, a sequence of twelve solo-piano etudes modeled on the Romantic era. That same year German television enlisted him to direct the tribute program A Different Side of Jimi Hendrix, which included bassist Jack Bruce and drummer Simon Phillips among its participants. In 1993 he returned to German television with Symphonic Rock for Europe, conducting his initial rock symphony, “Europa Ex Favilla,” together with additional pieces, accompanied by the Brussels Symphony Orchestra. Several of those works resurfaced on Sky of Avalon: Prologue to the Symphonic Legends, issued in 1996 with Roth’s new ensemble Sky of Avalon; the album inaugurated a planned quartet of symphonic recordings centered on the Sky Guitar. In 1998 Roth resumed straight-ahead rock performances on the European dates of the G3 guitar-virtuoso tour alongside Michael Schenker and Joe Satriani. Two years later he released Transcendental Sky Guitar, a two-CD collection of recent live and studio recordings—among them excerpts from a 1999 Vienna concert—divided into classical and rock-oriented sections.

Metamorphosis of Vivaldi’s Four Seasons followed in 2003, transplanting Antonio Vivaldi’s celebrated cycle into a rock-classical hybrid, while Under a Dark Sky in 2008 revived the Sky of Avalon enterprise. Scorpions Revisited, a double LP containing nineteen newly recorded personal selections from the band’s early catalog, appeared in 2015. The DVD/Blu-ray Tokyo Tapes Revisited: Live in Japan was issued the following year.