Biography

Ulrich (Uli Jon) Roth, a German virtuoso guitarist, started out in the early 70's with his band Dawn Road which also had Rudolf Schenker, Klaus Meine, and Francis Buchholz. Schenker and Meine convinced Roth and Buchholz to reform the band Scorpions again [Note: Scorpions had broken up shortly after Michael Schenker, Rudolf's younger brother, left Scorpions to join the band UFO]. Ulrich Roth went on to be the lead guitarist for Scorpions from 1973 to 1978. He recorded four studio albums and one live album with Scorpions. By the time of the fourth album, Taken By Force (1977), he started to have conflicting ideas where the band should go. After the Japanese tour (chroncicled by the album Tokyo Tapes), he left the band in 1978 to form his own band Electric Sun.

Electric Sun went to make three albums, Earthquake (1979), Firewind (1981), and Beyond the Astral Skies (1984). While the first two albums were similar to his work he had done with Scorpions, the third album began to show his love for classical music by combining the soaring sounds of his new Sky guitar and classical music. After touring world wid for Beyond the Astral Skies, Uli Jon Roth virtually disappeared from the musical world for the next 10 years to focus on writing symphonies.

The first public release of his efforts was 1996's Prologue to the Symphonic Legends. The only significant appearances he made between those two albums was the Spirit of Jimi Hendrix concert in 1991 and the Symphonic Rock for Europe concert in 1993 which features many of the songs which would later appear on Prolgoue. In May and June of 1998 he played with Michael Schenker (another former Scorpions guitarist) and Joe Satriani on the European leg of the G3 tour. In 2000 he released his double album Transcendental Sky Guitar, a mixture of live, concert, and studio pieces. During the following year he toured Japan and Europe. He would continue to revisit classical themes with his next two albums, Metamorphosis (2003) and Under a Dark Sky (2008).