Púrpura Chess: Uli Jon Roth interview part III. Sky Of Avalon, Transcendental Sky Guitar, Sky Academy.

Uli Jon Roth interview part III. Sky Of Avalon, Transcendental Sky Guitar, Sky Academy.

“My favourite thing is to play with orchestras and to write for orchestral music in a completely free style that I call Symphonic Rock. It means working with a big orchestra but also including Rock and Classical singers”.

“I’ve never really considered myself as a Rock guitar player although I guess. I prefer to break free from all those boundaries. I call it different musical languages and I guess with the Symphonic music I develop my own language”.

“I was trying to create some new kind of world of my own musically that was the journey for me. As soon as is started to write more in symphonic terms, combining Symphony, Concerto, Oratorio, Opera and Rock guitar in one as organic as possible”.

“That’s the way I conceive the world. Pretty closed to the edge of the abyss in more ways than one and it’s not certain we will really survive as a race. I think we will probably survive, maybe because I’m a bit optimist, but may not survive because of our inborn lack of wisdom that we can call it stupidity”.

“We have a lot of possibilities and powers. We have the atomic power and electricity. We also have a lot of artificial intelligence, but in the department of wisdom, spiritual wisdom and the higher senses like Empathy or Metaphysic, we are really lack”.

“I did the most famous violin concerto with the voice of the Sky Guitar which is not a proper violin and not a normal guitar. I think treated The Four Seasons with enough respect not to destroy it, meaning I played almost all the notes as they were written”.

“Sky Academy is really a teaching philosophy, is my own personally way of looking concept of life. It means looking at life through the eyes of music. Everything we touch, we feel, is really related to music; in fact is music”.

This is the third and last part of Uli Jon Roth’s interview. Here Uli talks about his concerns about Classical Music and his musical journey through Sky Of Avalon and Transcendental Sky Guitar. He also tells us some of his perceptions about the meaning and evolution of Humanity. These are some of the opinions of an artist with a Renaissance spirit and touch. Let's celebrate the 50th Anniversary Tour 2018/19. Fifty years with the music of Uli Jon Roth.

-You announced in 1987 this “Sky Concerto” that was a work for guitar and orchestra but apparently you never finished it. I even remember the availability to purchase the score back then. Do you ever think about finishing and recording this first concert?

The available edition was later on, that was in our merchandising store and it was quite large. It was a piano and guitar score, not a full orchestra score. The spirit of the Sky Concerto was a learning curve for me, because I had never written a classic concerto and I wanted to also push the guitar into a new round at the same time. It was a long piece of music and I never finished the concerto. I finished the music, but never finished scoring it. I never recorded it because right afterwards before I started recording it other things happened in my timeline and I started doing other things, so the Sky Concerto was never recorded.

-In 1991 you worked in “Aquila Suite”, a beautiful and intense piano composition. No guitar, no vocals, no band. Could you tell us the reason for walking in that musical direction?

At the time I was interested in some aspects of developing melody, classically speaking. I had written some studies for Sky Guitar. They were very difficult arpeggio studies and I realized that I needed the two hands for some of the ideas, using the range of the piano. I transcribed a couple of these pieces for the piano and they sounded really good so I carried on writing more piano and that was “Aquila Suite”. I didn’t think about releasing it at that time, because I’m in the side of Rock and most of my usual audience doesn’t necessarily listen to piano, it would have been strange but later on it was released as a bonus. I have to say that my favourite thing for myself is to play with orchestras and to write for orchestral music in a completely free style that I call Symphonic Rock. It means working with a big orchestra but also including Rock and Classical singers. That is really my favourite, but it’s much more difficult to produce on stage and much more expensive. I made my name with the Scorpions, so people wouldn’t expect this kind of music from me. Certain part of my audience prefers Symphonic music, but at large part prefers when I play more simple music with my guitar. I’ve never really considered myself as a Rock guitar player although I guess I am but that was never really something that I found interesting. I prefer to break free from all those boundaries. I call it different musical languages and I guess with the Symphonic music I develop my own language. Musically speaking you learn some Spanish, English, Latin, Italian or Japanese, but that’s in terms of music. I love Flamenco playing. This music is from Andalusia and I find a strong influence of that in my music. If you listen to the song “Sails of Charon” you find a lot of that thinking in it although people wouldn’t necessarily associate it with that so that’s what I mean with the musical language, but at the same time bending the notes come directly from the Blues players I grew up with. There’s a mix between all this, Jimi Hendrix and classical players. You will find that on my own music. I have the originals at home and I come out with my own multilingual version. For some people maybe there’s a bit too much, they prefer when I speak just one language. I don’t like the boundaries the way they are. I prefer to unbound them, at least for myself.

-Under the moniker Sky Of Avalon you've written and composed part of the “Symphonic Legends Of Avalon”. It introduces the listener to a world of new music and philosophical concepts. Even began to work in a book series of it. Could you tell us something more about this new concept? What would be the right interpretation of Avalon?

It really all started with the Sky Concerto when I become really free with my compositions working with no boundaries. Although there are always boundaries, if there isn’t there’s no shape and everything has to have a shape. It’s set if you find yourself new boundaries. Then I started to write small pieces like “Aquila Suite” or big pieces like my “Europa” symphony, each one of them was pushing the boundaries in its own way. I was trying to create some new kind of world of my own musically, more or less successfully, that was the journey for me. As soon as is started to write more in symphonic terms, combining Symphony, Concerto, Oratorio, Opera and Rock guitar in one as organic as possible. When I started doing that had the idea of bigger concepts. Sky of Avalon was basically a series of music that I wanted to call Symphonic Legends and I started to write a symphony in its own right, but not exactly a symphony because there are certain rules in the classical music at least. I broke a lot of these rules and tried to go beyond these confinements. I was fully aware of the previous traditions. I just wanted to have music like a big cinema on my mind I guess, very visual and almost like cinema music without the film.

-The booklet of Sky of Avalon “Prologue To the Symphonic Legends” was a kind of cinemascope thing.

I tried to develop a new format for the cd. I couldn’t stand the visual concept of the cds. It’s nice to have a little disc and put it in the cd player, but the visual this tiny little square box is just a joke, you can’t read the lyrics and if you look at the photos everything is so small. So I made a booklet and designed the picture in a cinema format. It was a struggle with the record company. The company guy said its way too expensive and we done it in a way to fold it. To get in time I had a dinner with the boss of the record company and when I showed him all the printing of my cinemascope design he said: “come on, we go for it”. Those were the first days of photoshop when the technique was not so advanced. What we did there was really cutting edge, but compare to nowadays it was not really like quite the ticket. What we got to do for the next year when we were touring when I took my triple anniversary tour we were exactly reproducing “Metamorphosis”, but we’re going to print it on vinyl as a special edition with all the artwork included. That’ll be big, no more Mickey Mouse (laughs).

-Could you tell us something more about these “Symphonic Legends Of Avalon”: “Europa Ex Favilla”, “Soldiers Of Grace” and “Hiroshima De Profundis”?

The first one was called “Soldiers Of Grace”. It was a story of good and evil, a story of mankind, a story of the spiritual origin of our species. It’s a little bit like “Starwars” mixed with a touch of “King Arthur” in a galaxy far away. I had the concept worked out and I started but never finished it, I might someday still finish it. There are a lot of things that I sometimes had to have putting away for ten years and suddenly then see the light of day. I don’t know why that is but sometimes I have things which aren’t finished, put away like in a mental haven and when I look at it again then I see the missing answers and I finish it. The first one was finished in 1993 and that was “Europa Ex Favilla”. We performed it in a city in Belgium and it was shown on German television but it was never recorded for an album. I recorded the show and the audio but I wasn’t satisfied enough so I didn’t release it. I was satisfied with the music but not with the sound so I have planned to play this symphony next year and to record it live. That’s already under preparation so fingers crossed that it going to happen. I think it’s one of the best things I have written so far and it’s high time that we’re actually perform it after all these years.

-I’ve seen the television recordings for this concert maybe in Liege where you played “Europa Ex Favilla” among other pieces. The WDR TV recorded what would be the general rehearsal. Is it right? Why not the premiere concert?

We played only a part of that symphony. It was the premiere but it looked like the rehearsal. That evening was a bit of a mess up. The orchestra came all along from Brazil and as we were also rock musicians the producer told them to wear street casual clothes. I didn’t know that but knowing that I would have though. It was completely ridiculous, because we didn’t want it to look like a rehearsal. While the musicians arrived in everyday clothes the other looks like gentlemen. The Rock musicians looked like classical, wearing black jackets etc. It was comical but at that time I didn’t think it was because it broke the image of the show. That’s why we didn’t release it as a dvd. It was not visually perfect. We got a big screen in the back and we got a beautiful projections but the way the orchestra looked was unusually disorganized, though they played very well. Also when the producer sent me the tape I thought there was no way this is going to be on television but he said that it must be played so we couldn’t stop.

-And what about “Hiroshima De Profundis”?

“Hiroshima de Profundis” had a similar fade. It was a piece that was almost finished and I was supposed to perform it at the city of Hiroshima. At some point before the project was finished there was a sponsor before the project. Unfortunately that sponsor had a fatal car accident so everything stopped and we never did “Hiroshima de Profundis” with orchestra. If you want to hear the beginning of that piece you can hear it on “Trascendental Sky Guitar” singing the intro, because we combined it with a version of “Enola Gay”.

- While working in your symphonies Monika Dannemann sad and unfortunately died (RIP.). April 1996. Then you started to work in a personal tribute to her: “Requiem For An Angel”. Could you tell us something about this big project?

“Soldiers Of Grace” was also finished, but it’s only recorded in bits because my girlfriend Monika Dannemann died at that time. That was a big shock so I stopped working on it and I started writing a personal tribute to her. It was called “Requiem For An Angel” and that took me three years. It was a two hours piece of music with many, many pieces. I recorded very large parts of it, including orchestra, guitars, band and vocals, The problem with that one was that it was so big that I didn’t fully finished it and by the end I wasn’t totally satisfied with the structure, meaning that when you have such a song piece with so many different components it has to flow perfectly from the beginning to the end, like a big movie, and it’s not easy to do this. I was happy with most, but not with all of it. So the bottom line is that I still have to do it. Recently there has been movement in that direction. We’ve copied it to a new system, I’ve looked at the old scores and I intend to do more of the Sky Of Avalon after the Electric Sun project. So this is really my big future projects. I guess I’ll have to do it. It’s not easy for me because it’s a high mountain to climb. I will have to look at the old scores and will have to do some edit, write something new and finish the old thing. At the moment I don’t want to make a prognosis of what it will be, but I’ll have to do it in the next twenty years.

Monika Dannemann.

-In 1996 Zero Japan released “Prologue To The Symphonic Legends” an extract from these symphonies. It really blows my mind when I first listened to it. Here it is a touch of your new musical language.

It was recorded in 1995 and released in 1996. I’m really to it because for me playing with orchestra is the big thrill and playing tribute to a lot of musicians in that field that’s important. We always do the same thing and that’s not so exciting. It’s good. The classical musicians do it well to re-interpret the old music, but it’s much more exciting to push it forward into the future.

-It contains “Until the end of time” one of my all time favourites. What do you think about this composition?

It’s also one of my favourites. It’s the most beautiful melody of that entire piece.

Sky Of Avalon: "Until the end of time".

-The last Uli Jon Roth/Sky Of Avalon disc was “Under A Dark Sky”. Could we consider this cd under the Sky Of Avalon moniker, just Uli Jon Roth or both as well?

“Under A Dark Sky” was Sky Of Avalon, but it was not a Symphony Legend. It was more a collection of larger pieces of songs that was written in that kind of vein. It was written ten years ago.

-”Benediction” and “Lights & shadows” represent one of my favorite moments from that cd. What are your feelings about these songs?

These are two of the nicest songs from the album. “Benediction” is a starting point for “Light & shadows”. There’s a point in between where they flow into each other like a river flows into another larger river and that moment is maybe my favourite of the whole album just when the guitar starts. It’s also my favourite lyrics. By the time we were finishing the album, this song arose when we were already mixing the cd. It just suddenly appeared so I run to finish it. First it was quite an improvisation and very differently. It’s a song that we’ve never done live and I want to do it. It’s one of the best things I’ve ever written.

Uli Jon Roth: "Beneditcion".

Uli Jon Roth: "Light & shadows".

-The cd cover is really amazing. It represents elements like Eiffel Tower or Big Ben. What would you like to express with this cover?

That is certainly an outstanding cover. It was computer generated, basically photoshop. It was many different photos with a touch of photoshop. The concept is all the cities in the world next to each other in a gigantic valley under a very dark sky and there’s a rainbow over it. That’s the way I conceive the world. Pretty closed to the edge of the abyss in more ways than one and it’s not certain we will really survive as a race. I think we will probably survive, maybe because I’m a bit optimist, but may not survive because of our inborn lack of wisdom that we can call it stupidity and a stage of puberty where we are. We have a lot of possibilities and powers. We have the atomic power and electricity. We also have a lot of artificial intelligence, but in the department of wisdom, spiritual wisdom and the higher senses like Empathy or Metaphysic, we are really lack. It’s worrying when I look at the world of today the politics and the system, the way our generations have developed. It’s a fascinating picture but is far from a purely positive picture. There’s a lot of light and shadows but sometimes there’s a lot more shadow than light. I think is very much up to us to turn this around and provide a way into the future and make sure that our children, our future generation, enjoy all that beautiful planet without blowing it to pieces or making it inhabitable. It was a concept album and the cover tries to express that.

The way that cover came was the very day I was going to sign the contract of the album. Strangely that was the day I played the Wacken Festival and at the moment I was going to the concert. It was a big field north of Hannover. There was a very dark cloud sky at the side of the road but there was also this double rainbow at the right side. I already knew the album was going to be called “Under A Dark Sky” but that was the moment I had the idea of the cover and the cities of the world underneath.

-In 1998 Joe Satriani invited Michael Schenker and yourself to the G3 tour. Did you feel that G3 was the right way to touring again?

It was not the first time I played in those thirteen years I was not touring. I did the orchestra in Brussels, I did TV show with Jack Bruce and others in Germany called “A Different Side Of Jimi Hendrix” and maybe a couple of other concerts, but it was the first time on tour. I was surprised when I got the invitation and said yes. It was also the first tour I did with large instrumentals because G3 was all instrumental so I wrote a piece called “G3 overture”, but he said it needs grand and more inspirational name and I came out with “Sky overture”. Everything sky, it sounds like an obsession. Please don’t take it to seriously (laughs). The “Sky overture” was the opening piece for that tour.

G3: Joe Satriani, Michael Schenker and Uli Jon Roth.

Transcendental Sky Guitar: "Sky overture".

-You announced a live show in Vienna 1999 to supposedly record a live album. Finally it was released Transcendental Sky Guitar, “The Phoenix Vol I” and “The Dragon Vol II” as a double disc. What happened with the Vienna concert? What would you like to express with these two cds?

When we did the concert in Vienna it was a good show, but I didn’t like all the songs. So we use some of them and then I had the idea to stretch the whole concert a little bit further. At that time I had a little big house in Wales with the studio and rehearsal room. Very often we played and recorded there. My friend Don Airey, who’s now the keyboard player of Deep Purple, and I had the idea to record all pieces for the guitar more than the things live so we played and improvised a lot while the tape was rolling on. Some of the things of “Transcendental Sky Guitar” are basically just those improvisations and spare ideas of the moment and some is also just Don and me which are keyboards and guitar. For ours we would improvise for hours, just the two of us. Some pieces were classical things like “Rondo alla turca” or “Air de Aranjuez”. I had the idea to transcript these pieces for “Transcendental Sky Guitar” so I showed him the script and, of course, Don can perfectly read difficult music like other people read a book and play it immediately. He’s one of the few people who can do it, particularly in Rock music. Basically Transcendental Sky Guitar is a concept that is dedicated to Sky Guitar and what you can do in different shapes with it. And then we followed it up with “Metamorphosis”.

-“Metamorphosis of Vivaldi’s Four Seasons” was your third Transcendental Sky Guitar opus. What do you think about this Vivaldi composition? Please give us your reasons for doing this personal rendition.

The people were surprised, basically in classical circus had a great perception. At least from what I perceived it was a breath of fresh air to the Vivaldi piece completely different almost with a swing to it and with a romantic kind of time travelling more than a sober touch. But also in my Rock audience there were people who didn’t like it because they prefer me to Rock out with the guitar over Scorpions or Electric Sun, so I got a mix perception from my own fans and that’s fine. In English we say “horses for courses”, some horses are race horses, some you put them to carry, some are good for jumping and some are great in the wind. This is the same with music, you can’t please everybody but for me it was a great step because it was something never done on the electric guitar. Really visit a genuine violin concerto and I did the most famous violin concerto with the voice of the Sky Guitar which is not a proper violin and not a normal guitar. I think treated The Four Seasons with enough respect not to destroy it, meaning I played almost all the notes as they were written except a couple of passages which are not possible to play on the guitar due to different tuning. To do all The Four Seasons respecting all the pitch and the tuning isn’t possible with the usual electric guitar. Then you would have to transpose the notes one octave down and it destroys the whole thing of all the other instruments, because it’s very carefully orchestrated by Vivaldi. So as soon as you start touching it thing start going wrong. However I took the liberty to include a percussion score, sometimes even using drums and on at least one piece I added a basic line completely different and gave it a free moving. That was on “The triumph of spring”, which in the original this is more with obstinate held notes, but other than that I stuck to the old one.

-You added your personal piece called “Metamorphosis”. Could you explain us why did you do that?

At the end I added my own concerto which is the true metamorphosis. It’s a piece based on the Vivaldi. I took the original and made a completely different thing based on excerpts. Again pushing Sky Guitar to a place where it had never been before. I didn’t even think it was possible. When I looked at the Vivaldi score I thought it was impossible for the guitar so I sit down in my quiet study and I realized there was a way to do it, but I would have to completely come up with new things and new techniques to match the violin. It’s something much easier to play with the violin but on the guitar it’s like you’re driving a big track up the hill.

Uli Jon Roth & Sky Orchestra: "Cry of the nihgt". Official video.

-I saw you performing live the Legends Of Rock 2002 UK tour with Frank Marino, Jack Bruce, Glenn Hughes and yourself. I remember that you played “Metamorphosis” and something from “West Side Story”.

You are right. We did “Maria” and we also did “America”. It was in 2002.

Uli Jon Roth and Frank Marino.

-Could you tell the readers of HUSH-Púrpura Chess how was the beginning of the Sky Academy?

Sky Academy is very important stage in my life. We’re not doing any Sky Academy last year 2017 except something in Sweden later on but we did many in certain years. We started in Los Angeles in 2006 at the U.C.L.A. For five days people came from all over the world and this included three concerts in the same hall with many special guests. It was one of the nicest things I did and there will be more Sky Academy, that’s for sure.

-You usually teach Sky seminars. What can you tell us about them?

Sky Academy is really a teaching philosophy, is my own personally way of looking concept of life. It means looking at life through the eyes of music. Everything we touch, we feel, is really related to music; in fact is music. The principles that govern the Universe are eternal laws of music. They are the laws of creation. I have always been fascinated by these laws, finding and understanding them, so over the years subjects philosophically and spiritually speaking. Ever since I was a teenager I was fascinated by the meaning of music, why is it that certain notes touch us in a different way than others, certain chords, rhythms or tone combinations have that effects. Like a certain note always has the same colour. Music can teach us a lot about ourselves and other people. Music is like an aspect of force of God, the entire creative force that’s underlined. The Universe is built according to musical principles.

In Sky Academy I try to bring some of that sense to the students. There are a lot of philosophical and physical aspects. Sometimes we talk about practical aspects, not only about playing guitar. It’s a part of it but sometimes we had other instruments: singers or violinists. The instrument at the Sky Academy is really a bridge to understand music. Mastering the tool is also important, in fact a lot of musicians are mainly interested in that aspect and we are also spending time to that in our seminars. The thing in Sky Academy is certainly to awake a spark of inspiration in the students and that spark hopefully leads to them getting more into deep touch with the heart and soul of music. Basically it’s like a process of music and personal awakening so these are very big words, but I think that it’s possible to achieve a deep communication with music in that way. That’s certainly not for everyone. A lot of musicians are perfectly to sit in front of the television and catch a couple of chords with a bottle of beer. I think there’s nothing wrong with it but Sky Academy is about something else, is about progressing, about becoming better. Become a better musician, a better instrumentalist and hopefully a better person.

The Jimi Hendrix concerts.

-You talk about “A Different Side Of Jimi Hendrix” before. What do you think about that kind of concerts?

There was a time when I was invited to do this and sometimes we played concerts with just Jimi Hendrix material. It was with people like Steve Vai or Steve Morse in Geneva at the Guitare en Scene, that day Deep Purple also played and I played the set before. That was recorded but never released. The evening with Steve Vai and Steve Morse it’s on Youtube, we played Jimi Hendrix music.

-Is there another concert or festival that has been special for you or remains exceptionally good for whatever reason?

The “Legends Of Rock: Live at Castle Donnington” with Michael Schenker, Jack Bruce and UFO was outstanding and the video resulting from that I was very happy with it. There were other great ones. Unfortunately quite a few most of them were not recorded.

-Many, many thanks for this great an amazing interview. This is the last question to you. What does Jimi Hendrix music and figure means to you, musically and as a human being?

I think for me Jimi Hendrix was a great genius. He changed the face of music only in four years. He had no musical training what so ever. He was self taught just with spirit and inspiration and he created a completely new language of music, a Hendrix musical language. So in one or two hundred years people will not have forgotten him. On the personal level I learnt so much to Jimi Hendrix. I feel very close to him.