Uli Jon Roth: Guitar Legend, Improvisation Master, Philosopher
Unlocking the Soul of Music: A Conversation with Uli Jon Roth
By Eric Frank
March 31, 2024
The Universe works in mysterious ways. Sometimes, it hits you with an opportunity that you never saw coming... A chance encounter with someone (or something) that offers insight, influence, even inspiration to do or to be.
Over the last several months, we’ve been working hard toward renovating and relaunching COjam with a broader scope while maintaining its roots in local music, artistic expression, and the art of improvisation. We are guided, however, by those that have come before us. There are lessons in history—both in ours and the collective history. There is knowledge and, far more importantly, wisdom in acquiescing to the resonant frequencies of creativity itself, where innovation intersects with tradition, and where the echoes of timeless melody inspire us to reach new heights of artistic expression.
Essentially, The Universe emailed me and said, “Hey! Have a conversation with legendary guitarist Uli Jon Roth!” And so it came to be, and I feel incredibly fortunate to have had an honest conversation with a truly masterful musician.
The guy has had a remarkable career that continues to wow to this day. From his time with German hard-rock band Scorpions (1973-1978), to his hard-hitting, psychedelic prog-rock group Electric Sun (1978-1986), to his prolific solo career that includes highly ambitious symphonic music, two concertos, the G3 Concert Tour, the founding of Sky Academy (a comprehensive methodology for creating music through lectures, advanced instructional sessions, focused exercises, and special performances), sit-ins with the likes of Joe Satriani and Smashing Pumpkins, the founding of UJR Sky Guitars and more, Uli Jon Roth is a living legend and nothing short of a brilliantly-minded guitar god. Add to his impressive résumé “aspiring author,” as his new book, In Search Of The Alpha Law (soon to be released) showcases a lifelong dedication to the philosophy of music and life itself.
It would seem that I got a taste of The Alpha Law in my conversation with Uli, which I’m thrilled to share with you, below.
ULI Jon Roth's Unique Tour Format: A Blend of Classical and Rock Performance
COjam: It looks like you’ve got a pretty busy Spring tour coming up here, huh? How do you do it?!
ULI: Uli: Yeah, it is a little daunting because we’re doing… well, it’ll be almost 40 shows when it’s fully done. But the thing is that our shows are long. And to me, the day is even longer because… well, first of all, we do a 3-hour show with intermission. We’re doing two shows in one, really. It starts off with “An Evening with Uli Jon Roth,” which is the first half. Which is mainly me on stage with a large screen and I’m playing quite a bit more of my classical stuff like some Vivaldi Four Seasons with the orchestra backing, and the orchestra on the screen.
But I’m also playing a few really new pieces that I’ve never played and haven’t been recorded and nor have they been played live in the States. So then, I’m also–in that segment, which is one half-hour segment–I’m introducing my new book, which is called, In Search of the Alpha Law. So that’ll be like a 15-minute TED Talk. So it’s quite unusual, the first half of the show. Then, we have an intermission, and then we’re doing a full-blown rock set which is made up of a lot of my earlier Scorpions, Electric Sun, even a little bit of Jimi Hendrix, you know.
So that’s 3 hours, but before then in the afternoon, I’m actually doing a guitar seminar which is called The Sky's the Limit, so I’m doing one and a half hours intense session, guitar seminar, so to speak, plus meet-and-greet and you name it, you know? I’ll be busy every day, 5 to 6 hours. So that is a little daunting because… talking about improvisation, because some things are not scripted. I always make them up according to what the inspiration tells me. And those are usually my favorite bits, but they’re also the most energy-consuming when you have to really perform from scratch and make it up as you go along.
Uli: So anyways, that’s about that tour. We’re starting in the beginning of April and it goes right until the middle of May. Before that, actually, we’re doing a 4-day Sky Academy in Long Beach, which is a teaching thing I’ve been doing. But I haven’t done this for 10 years in the States, and you know, it’s quite an intense 4-day seminar for people that are interested in becoming better musicians, but also… the aim is to go beyond just musicianship. But we need to help us grow mentally through our connection with music. It’s a little difficult to describe but once you’re there, you get the message.
Tapping into Musical Inspiration and the Art of Improvisation
COjam: I think music [has] a really deep connection with the mind-body connection and the spirit world as well. With improvisation… it comes from somewhere. Like you said, there’s a muse. There’s a connection. You’re kind of… receiving something… and that’s where I find music to be in its purest form. Do you still find that connection? Do you find that connection with older songs and stuff?
ULI: Absolutely. Absolutely. Absolutely! Not with every song, but the ones that, quite a few still speak to you. And those are the good ones. You know, the ones that have a long shelf-life. They have a spirit in them that makes them come alive. You know. 10, 20, 30, 50 years after the event, I’m doing Vivaldi’s Four Seasons… that’s like 350 years now or whatever, you’d have to count that out. And it’s still extremely vibrant. Because each time I play it I think to myself, wow it’s just unbelievably good and inspired and it’s so now… if you know how to make it now. You know? I mean it fits right in. If you strip away all the layers of convention and you go right to the cellular structure of the thing and it is just pure vibrant music, you know?
So improvisation is… in fact, we are devoting quite a bit of time at Sky Academy to the art of improvisation for exactly the reasons you mentioned because it is perhaps the most pure form of music making because, just like we’re having a conversation, and we’re making up things as we go because ideas enter our head and we have learned how to articulate them, put them into words… it’s exactly the same with music.
Once you have achieved a certain amount of mastery or knowledge of your instrument so your fingers don’t get in the way, so to speak, and you don’t realize that you’re playing. That’s when you’re able to do these things. And then, the improvisation is a sort of channeling those streams of inspiration that come towards you. You know? And they’re out there. They’re out there in the aether.
For me, it’s almost like plugging into a channel or plugging into… almost some electricity that’s there and getting in tune with it, and then those streams of energy, which is the music… comes out as music… just fills you and you’re just letting it flow. And of course, your mind has been trained or grown to be able to think logically, both in terms of music as well as in terms of ideas. So whatever you play makes sense because you already understand certain structure and you understand the grammar of music and you know how to apply it.
Of course you can’t play just any notes that come into your mind… you could… but once you have assembled streams of notes, they only make sense to anybody if there is an understanding of musical logic behind it. And music is 50% logic and 50% emotion, at its best. In its best form, you know. Our minds are capable of doing both things. We have antennae that completely gauge the emotional content of an idea or of an energy that comes to us; a thought or a musical sound, a musical structure, a musical sequence. We can emotionally gauge that and it translates into pure emotion. But at the same time, we’re able to understand, “Oh yes! This is actually a triad. You know, this is the root note. Here is the major third. You know, there’s the fifth and here’s your sixth, or whatever. And that’s the logic. That’s the rhythm.
So the beauty of music is that it’s such a microcosm of everything. And we are extremely blessed that we have the ability to feel music and to understand music. And when you’re improvising, all these things go hand-in-hand. Having said that, I personally think when you’re playing, the most important thing is the feeling. And to just feel it and almost become the music, you know? It’s very helpful if you understand what’s going on; when you understand “oh now I’m in that key. Now I’m in major, I’m in minor [...?...]. But, when it all comes down to it, these are just technical descriptive terms. And they help a little bit, but the greatest music is almost, it comes to you without words. It just flows through you and in the end, you have something amazing… hopefully. And where it comes from? We don’t know. I personally think it comes from higher dimensions. Yeah, the spirit-world. I think we do get inspired by spirits, possibly even by higher forces. It depends on how… what your personal tuning is like. What you’re capable of tapping into.
COjam: I couldn’t agree more with you!
ULI: That’s why some people have music that is fully inspired, and some people create music that’s more like supermarket music and just like, exchangeable.
COjam: Transactional. Yeah.
ULI: Yeah, it depends on where you’re tapping into and whether you’re able to galvanize that which you’re getting. And to actually transmit it. So, I see myself as an artist, but see myself as kind of a transformer and transmitter station. I’m getting the stuff somewhere. It’s already out there. But I do need to receive it and then, kind of translate it into something and make it audible into something that people can hear. Otherwise, it’s pretty pointless!
COjam: Yeah! You and I seem to share very similar views on—well, a lot of things—but certainly on music, on feeling, everything you just said is… I couldn’t have said it better myself! So having said all that, about those musicians acting as an antennae, so to speak, and feeling being at the forefront, in terms of guitarists, who are some of the strongest antennas you’ve ever seen or witnessed or heard?
ULI: Well, that’s an easy one! You know, I was fortunate to have seen Jimi Hendrix in concert. I was there in his hey-day. I saw him in early ‘69—and close up!—in Hamburg. I was 15 years old. And talk about inspiration, and just the musical force flowing through that man and into that room. It was so THERE.
And there were other artists that I felt were also very inspired that I’ve seen. But talking about guitar, and who had that in a different way, was Paco de Lucía. He was more, how shall I say? That was a more Flamenco, traditional way of looking at things. Hendrix wasn’t like a guitar player. He was more like some cosmic messenger, almost. He took the blues and took it to a completely different world. He painted pictures. You know? Musical pictures. But pictures of incredible force. And people who are just interested in technical aspects of the guitar will never understand what Hendrix was able to do when he was at his best. And he wasn’t always at his best. Because he was completely inspiration-driven, and on days where the inspiration was maybe less there or the circumstances weren’t so good, yeah, you could really tell the difference.
COjam: Sure. There’s a vulnerability… a sense of risk-taking that doesn’t always work out. But boy oh boy, when it does…
ULI: Well talking about improvisation of the highest order, Keith Jarrett, of course. The Köln Concert. Does it get better than that? Hardly. So, yeah some people have done it. Django Reinhardt on guitar was a great improviser, you know. There were several, but they are rather rare, because there are a lot of excellent players and great technicians nowadays, but a lot of them have a little bit of the typewriter mentality. They’re practicing very hard and they’re playing picture-perfect, but they take very little chances and they’re afraid of wrong notes. Hendrix was never afraid of wrong notes.
He did play wrong notes, but boy did he hit a homerun when he got it right. Like, listen to “Machine Gun.” Completely improvised version on Band of Gypsys. That guitar solo in the middle is just absolutely unbelievable.
So that’s what I mean—you only get these peak moments when you’re not afraid to go completely into the unknown. And people with typewriter mentality, who are like, technically perfect, find that very, very hard because they’re afraid to stray off the beaten path. Nowadays, the mentality seems to go that way. It’s rare that I hear a player who really engages me emotionally. It’s my honest opinion [but] I know what I’m talking about! I’ve been there from almost the beginning. I’ve seen the journey, so I’m entitled to that vision. And I know maybe what some younger players might say… I can relate these differences because I remember very well what it was like back then, and I can see what’s going on now. I find that there is a certain lack of deeper inspiration. There is a lot of surface glitz, incredible mechanical advances on the guitar— which are great, I’m all in favor of that—but we should not forget the purer aspects of music like creating melodies that really hit the center line, rather than just fragments of melodies that are less than perfect, you know?
COjam: Speaking of inspiration and not exactly knowing where some of these things—such as melody—come from, but if you had to try and define it… Now, this is me talking as a song-writer, myself. Is there something you’re looking for in a melody? Or, when you’re constructing a melody, you know… knowing the components that go into it or if it needs to be extended? “Yeah I’ve got this nice little bit here but maybe it’s not done, it needs to explore new territory,” etc. Is there anything about the construction of a melody that you might have to offer?
ULI: Yeah the word “construction” is a little ambivalent, maybe. In one way, you could say yes, a melody can be constructed if you know what you’re doing. However, the best melodies seem to appear out of nowhere. Like Paul McCartney waking up having dreamt “Yesterday.” Now he’s a prime example of if you want inspiration.
COjam: Oh absolutely. One of the best.
ULI: Particularly with the early Beatles. I mean, who wrote better songs than Paul McCartney? Actually, I think nobody. He probably wrote five of the greatest ever, from “Eleanor Rigby” to “Yesterday,” “Here, There and Everywhere,” “Michelle,” “Fool On The Hill” … Each one of them [is] an absolute masterpiece in terms of melody, harmony, structure, and each one of them completely different from the rest!
That always is the sign of genius, to do things that haven’t been done before. Once you hear them you think, “oh, it should have been done,” but nobody else did it! Like Jimi did “Little Wing” or “Axis: Bold as Love.” That song—there is absolutely no song—no song has ever been written like that, nor will there ever be. They’re one-offs, absolutely unique. Like “Yesterday” or like “Eleanor Rigby.” Those are like… they hit the center line, full on.
COjam: They’re perfect.
ULI: Exactly. They are perfect. That’s the word. And that is so rare, you know? They’re really inspired people. They don’t think in cliches. They will always come up with something new. Of course the phrases… the basic phrases of “Yesterday” or something, of course they existed a million times. In fact, there are classical pieces that have similar phrases. Hundreds of years ago. That’s not what I’m talking about. But when you look at the entirety of a song, they have like a face, an imprint, and they’re absolutely unique. The great ones are unique. Like Beethoven’s Fifth Symphony. Or his Ninth. Or certain Chopin pieces. They’re only there once, and they’re not to be repeated. People can maybe do something similar, but very often the similar ones are simply not on the same level, you know? They’re just copies.
So going back to your question about melody… I think perfect melodies exist. But what is a perfect melody? Well, this goes back to our most fundamental tuning in us, because we’re all tuned according to musical rules. The laws of music are eternal and they’re like the laws of the universe.
We are tuned like a triad; a major triad, a minor triad. We have tritones in us. Every organ has a key note, a root note. The whole body is like a dancing symphony, you know? It doesn’t necessarily sound maybe like a great melody, but it’s all in there.
Now, when we are listening to a major third or a minor third, this creates a certain kind of energy tension in us. It’s almost [as if] somebody’s playing a string; we are tuned in such a way that we can actually get emotionally and physically moved by what we hear.
So, a great composer, somebody like Mozart and Chopin, or yeah, take Paul McCartney—these people have, usually, something more that most people don’t have. They’re more sensitive to the feeling of these steps, you know? Because it’s like, to some people, “Oh here’s just a minor third, oh, this is just a fourth…” It doesn’t really mean that much. But if you want to create great melodies, you have to become extremely sensitive to the feeling of each one of these steps. You know… How they feel.. They create a physical sensation in you, very tangible.
The more sensitive you are, the more you will be able to feel right from wrong. And that, in combination with a feeling towards chord structures—because of course, every chord is a cluster of energies, with one (usually) one dominant note in it, which is the root note of that chord. [This] is very similar to the Sun and has the gravity and the other ones are around it. So, all these energies are directly translated into emotions with us.
And great composers, they are great at feeling these things on the deepest level. So, when they’re playing or coming up with new ideas, they will instantly gravitate to the most beautiful ones, or the most powerful ones because they're so much in tune with the laws of music. Even if they’re doing something that is maybe against the laws of music, they can fully feel that. And that’s when you use a tritone like Leonard Bernstein in “Maria” for instance, you know? Because it’s this kind of potentially ugly kind of dissonance of the tritone suddenly becomes very beautiful when it’s resolved.
[sings Maria]
COjam- It’s always about the next note, right?
ULI: Exactly! Of course, it’s a relationship. It’s like every melody is a journey. It’s a journey from the Alpha to the Omega. Some melodies are finished, some are not finished. Some half in between. But in this journey, this journey is in proportion with… all the steps in that journey… like in the little dance, our sequence are in proportion to each other. And a really good composer, or a really good improviser, will have an extremely high, finely developed sense of the meaning of these things. And their instinct will always gravitate to finding the best possible next note.
Now, most people are much more casual with that. For instance, a lot of flashy guitar players, if they’re jamming, and basically they’re just playing licks, and their fingers are controlling the improvisation. That would never happen with somebody like Keith Jarrett. Keith Jarret hears the note before he plays it and his mind and spirit controls the fingers. So, that’s a huge difference, you know?
So playing and thinking in licks is never a good idea. You should completely get away from that. Learning licks in the beginning, as part of [building] the repertoire, is a good thing. Because the more phrases you have at your disposal, the more flexible you will be when the inspiration hits you. But a lot of people will get just stuck and trapped in phrases and licks.
You find that a lot with jazz players who would think in terms of certain chord progressions and then think, “okay, here’s my G13 chord, I’m allowed to play this, I shouldn’t play this and this scale goes with that…” That’s a viable approach to improvise, but I would strongly advise against it. If you want to get to the highest level of musical expression and inspiration, don’t think about these things when you’re playing. Just let it almost like flow through you like a child would receive it—no questions, just answers. Just let it flow.
Don’t let the analytical mind get the upper hand and start interfering with the sheer flow of the inspiration. You can analyze it afterwards… and you'll be amazed at what you find! But trust your deeper instinct and go to that highest point that you can get inside of your mind and just channel it.
And while you’re doing it, don’t ever think about yourself. You shouldn’t even exist. It’s just the music fills you completely. You really have to become the music. And in order to do that—of course, you still need some control…physical control and mental control, otherwise you're like a Formula 1 driver whose car spins out of control! But use the minimum. Use the minimum necessary and leave everything else open. Just manifest it at that moment and be open to anything.
I don’t like improvising over a certain chord change. Like, when you say, “Okay we’re gonna do this now and this is our sequence.” That’s okay. But the highest form of improvising, for me, is when you have no script whatsoever. You sit at your piano and you play completely freely. You go for any key changes, whatever. Any rhythm. Anything goes. That’s, to me, the best or most desirable… pure form of inspiration. Just like the Keith Jarrett Koln Concert. That’s the perfect blueprint.
COjam: I agree with you, 100%. Sometimes the hardest part about being in a band is finding the right people with that same mindset and mentality. Because it doesn’t work if not everyone is on board. I think it’s been a struggle for a lot of young musicians–and myself, over the years– that I’ve approached music with everything you just discussed and articulated so well, [but] if not everyone’s on board, if one person’s on the ship and another still has a foot on the pier, you’re not going anywhere…
ULI: Yeah, it’s true. Of course, this is only possible with like-minded people. However, it’s rare that you’ve got a room full of people who have got the fully-developed talent to improvise. My experience is that most people are not really yet at that point. And there are quite a few of really good guitar players who are lousy at improvising and who get very, very uptight when they’re called to play anything that’s not in their normal vocabulary.
And I’ve seen some people who can barely play guitar but have a great talent to improvise. Who, with the barest means, actually create music with quite a deep meaning. I’ve seen both things, you know?
There are, very often, a lot of the people who are technically almost over-qualified, are not so good at free improvisation. They tend to rely on rigid… more of the same. But when you are in a band, not everybody needs to be a great improviser. Sometimes it’s okay if you have one guy leading the charge, and… some of the other instruments, if they flow along, as long as they don’t disturb the general flow, it should be fine, you know? Of course, too many cooks may also spoil it! So if you have a room of really skilled improvisers, they may not make it to the finish line because everybody may want to take it somewhere else.
COjam: They might be running in different directions!
ULI: Yeah, but of course, that is also a sign of immaturity because somebody who is really, really good will always gauge what’s in the room and deal with what’s on the table.
So, say you’re highly accomplished at what you do and you have to play with a beginner. What do you do? You kind of have to make do with it, you know? Or, somebody comes up with an idea [during] an improvisation and maybe it’s not the greatest idea. But, a really good improviser will then take that and somehow make it into a great idea by changing a couple of little things.
COjam: Yeah, I think a lot of improvised music gets stuck… won’t go anywhere if you refuse to accept a new idea. If you’re saying ‘no’ to somebody else’s idea, then the whole construct... the whole piece is probably going to fall apart. So you have to be willing to say ‘yeah!’
ULI: Exactly! And there are a few caveats. A lot of people… you said it rightly… a lot of people get stuck. And they say, “okay, here we are… an improvisation in E. And then they play in E forever!
It’s like that’s the kiss of death, you know? Yes, you can play in E forever, but there are eleven other colors you could also bring in to create a journey. Why don’t we start transposing this or modulating into a different key? Or suddenly it went to 3/4 instead of 4/4 or even 5/4 whatever. You know? Don’t be afraid to look at different landscapes and to enter new rooms and new arenas with new experiences. Just be open. As an improviser, you also need to be an explorer. You need to be an expeditionist, if that word even exists!
COjam: Yes! And you know, everything you’ve just mentioned, and everything we’ve talked about [today] and really, music in the most general sense, mirrors life in so, so many ways.
ULI: Absolutely!
COjam: You have to be willing to explore. You have to be open to new things. You can’t be rigid. You can’t say ‘no’ to things. And that’s why music is the language of life that everybody understands and everybody should strive toward.
ULI: That’s a very good saying, yeah, “music is the language of life.” And that’s very true. Well, this was good, Eric! Finally—somebody who asked me some different questions! It’s usually, “why did you leave The Scorpions?”
Uli Jon Roth - North American Spring Tour 2024
4/2 Mesa, AZ The Venue at The Canyon
4/3 Hollywood, CA at The Whisky
4/4 Ramona, CA at Ramona Mainstage
4/5 San Juan Capistrano, CA at The Coach House
4/6 Concord, CA at Vinnies
4/7 Santa Rosa, CA at The Flamingo Resort
4/9 Santa Cruz, CA at Moe’s Alley
4/10 Sacramento, CA at Goldfield Trading Co
4/12 Seattle, WA at Tractor Tavern
4/13 Portland, OR at Bossonova Ballroom
4/16 Minneapolis, MN at Granada Theater
4/17 Eau Claire, WI at JAMF at The Pablo
4/18 Hobart, IN at Hobart Arts Center
4/19 St. Charles, IL at Arcada Theater
4/20 Chicago, IL at Reggies
4/21 Detroit, MI at Token Lounge
4/24 Sellersville, PA at Sellersvile Theater
4/25 Fall River, MA at Narrows Center for The Arts
4/26 Derry, NH at Tupelo Music Hall
4/27 New York, NY at Iridium
4/28 New York, NY at Iridium
5/1 West Yarmouth, MA at The Music Room
5/7 Quebec, CAN at Imperial Bell
5/8 Montreal, CAN at Fairmount Theatre
5/9 Ottawa, CAN at Overflow Brewery
5/10 Toronto, CAN at Lee’s Palace
5/16 Lubbock, TX at Cactus Theater
5/17 Arlington, TX at Arlington Music Hall
5/18 Houston, TX at Dosey Doe