A regular on the gig circuit before the pandemic, this was Uli Jon Roth’s first UK tour since, and a particularly welcome return to the stage as he has recovered from major surgery earlier this year. Coming on relatively late at 845 and without a support band, his hippie image had received a bit of a smart makeover with a fringed military jacket worthy of his hero Jimi Hendrix, and a sailor’s cap worn at a jaunty angle (is there ever any other?)

He opened with ‘Amadeus’, an instrumental with trademark classically inspired influences in which there even appeared to be the odd riff recycled from his classic ‘The Sails of Charon’, followed by an old Electric Sun number in ‘Castaway Your Chains’ where he shared vocals with bassist Niklas Turmann, who, tall and bearded, looked like a member of the all conquering West German 1970s football teams.

However for many years, his days in The Scorpions have been prominently revisited and an otherwise ordinary song in ‘Sun In My Hand’ was enlivened when his guitar partner, the left handed and impossibly youthful David Klosinski moved in, and the two played a beguiling and uplifting twin guitar break. ‘The Cry’ was a brand new instrumental, but Uli drew our attention to the message in a video backdrop that included Martin Luther King’s ‘I Have a Dream’ speech, while again his ‘Sky’ guitar managed to conjure almost violin-like sounds. He was also a musical perfectionist, with gaps between songs as he made sure the guitar was precisely in tune.

After a Scorps song, albeit far from their best, in ‘Longing For Fire’, came one of the moments of the show for me. In memory of brother Zeno, the latter’s ballad ‘Don’t Tell The Wind’ featured a big vocal arrangement and a sweet extended solo from Uli, albeit in a smoother style than his trademark (Zeno’s self titled album from which it was taken is a AOR classic despite a slating from Kerrang! at the time).

In contrast, ‘Electric Sun’s eponymous track saw the mike turned up on Uli’s vocals, unmistakably distinctive though to put it kindly not the most impressive part of his repertoire. On the other hand, some of his riffs and solos from Scorpions days were truly original and memorable, none more so than ‘The Sails of Charon’, which got the best reception yet and took off into a mesmerising, eastern-inspired jam to a backdrop of a desert scene with camels.

Yet at that point momentum was killed stone dead when, despite the hour reaching nearly 10 o’clock, the band took a break: it was a concept, much like the video backdrops, better suited to a seated theatre- like venue. Nevertheless the second half was well worth waiting for, being a canter exclusively through those wonderful, and very different, seventies Scorpions numbers.

They began with an out and out rocker in ‘All Night Long’, Niklas doing a very decent job in the impossible task of replicating Klaus Meine, and Uli singing one of his trademarks in ‘Polar Nights’ and being good enough to credit the obvious inspiration of Jimi Hendrix. The two of course even had a common muse in the late Monika Dannemann, but I was only vaguely aware she had co-written ‘We’ll Burn the Sky’ which as expected was an epic building from quiet beginnings to a guitar extravaganza.

‘In Trance’ was just as wonderful and got the best reception yet from a decent sized crowd, and I hadn’t fully appreciated quite how much twin lead guitar work those early Scorpions songs featured. The progressive and jam tendencies were given full reign on the lengthy ‘Fly To the Rainbow’, as Uli’s box of tricks included feeding a tube into his guitar and pulling back the whammy bar to coax some unique sounds.

There was then a trio of more straight down the line songs in ‘Pictured Life’, where for once the strain of Niklas matching the Meine vocals did show, a rattling ‘Catch Your Train’, and finally perhaps the Scorps song most associated with Uli in ‘Dark Lady’, his singing ending with a call and response which was the only part of the night that tipped into a more meat and potatoes blues rock.

The curfew had been reached and I edged towards the exit but a large number of people staying at the front obviously knew better than me, and we were treated to a further 20 minutes, in which he essayed a fairly faithful yet always magically interesting spin on two contrasting Hendrix classics in ‘All Along the Watchtower’ and ‘Little Wing’.

Whether paying homage to his hero, revisiting those fascinating seventies Scorpions days that the current band naturally only touch on in passing, or his own classically inspired material, this was a fascinating demonstration from a master guitarist who is one of a kind. It proved Uli Jon Roth is truly an original cult hero to be treasured.

Review and Photos by Andy Nathan

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Power Plays w/c 9 December 2024

In this sequence we play ‘The Best of 2024′ GRTR! reviewer selections

Featured Albums w/c 9 December 2024

09:00-12:00 The Best of 2024 (Melodic Rock)
12:00-13:00 The Best of 2003-2024 (Melodic Hard Rock)
14:00-16:00 The Best of 2024 (Singer Songwriter)