Guitarist Uli Jon Roth’s new three-hour Pictures of Destiny show is split into two parts. Th first is more of a symphonic rock experience with a string quartet, including premieres from his “Requiem for an Angel” composition, while the second act is more of a straight-forward rock show, diving into his early years with German rock band Scorpions.
“For me, the first half is more exciting because I haven’t done it as much and whenever you have new pieces of music, they take on the life of their own once you’re on stage, and that’s always a very interesting process,” Roth said. “The other songs, I’ve known them for forever so it’s not quite the same because I’ve also played them much more often on stage. But having said that, every night I’m really enjoying both sets, and the audience is usually fully with us so that makes it really just a really nice experience.”
Roth’s show, enhanced by multimedia projections, is set for April 22 at Jergel’s Rhythm Grille in Warrendale after being rescheduled from November. Roth will be marking the 50th anniversaries of two Scorpions albums, 1975’s “In Trance” and 1976’s “Virgin Killer.”
Beyond the concert, Roth will also showcase some of his original art, which one critic described as “Rembrandt meets ‘Star Wars.’”
In an October Zoom conversation from England, Roth spoke with TribLive about Pictures of Destiny, “Requiem for an Angel,” art and more. Find a transcript of the conversation, edited for clarity and length, below.
What are the origins of this Pictures of Destiny show?
I wrote a lot of new music in recent years, most of which hasn’t been published, but we just performed this show in Japan for the first time. So there were a lot of songs that were premiered there, and that’s what we’re bringing to the states now. It’s called Pictures of Destiny because I also happen to be an oil painter. I used to paint many years ago, then I stopped for some health reasons because I had an allergy against the solvents. Then in recent times I found out that they’re doing solvent-free paints, and I tried it. The result was a whole burst of painting. I painted for a whole summer and did quite a bit. These pictures, they’re all connected with my music, with my lyrics, and they’re supposed to be a visual kind of complementation or augmentation or whatever. That’s what this is all about. We’re showing the paintings as a backdrop and the music that goes with it, but that’s only half the story because the show actually comes in two completely different parts. The first half is indeed Pictures of Destiny, and it’s more, I would say, symphonic rock, very melodic, but with a strong touch of classical music.
The second half after the intermission is full-blown classic rock. It’s early Scorpions material that I was involved with, and particularly two albums which are now exactly 50 years old because the first one is “In Trance” and the second was “Virgin Killer.” They were both recorded in 1975 and 1976, so that makes them 50 years old. So the second half of our show is with a full band, and we’re basically playing a best-of of these tracks. It’s a very unusual combination, musically speaking, because it’s a very big stretch. In the first half, I’m also playing some Mozart and Vivaldi on the guitar. Big stretch to the Scorpions stuff, but for some strange reason, it works great. We’ve just seen that in Japan. It really works. The first half is more like a listening, deep experience where you’re really going on a journey, and then next set is, well, I don’t want to say fun and games, but it’s basically got more of a feel-good factor about it, I guess, particularly for all our fans who’ve known these songs for 50 years, just like myself. It brings back memories.
There’s going to be some U.S. premieres of some of the compositions from “Requiem for an Angel,” so what’s the story behind that project? It seems like it’s been in the works for a while.
Yes, “Requiem for an Angel,” I started writing it many years ago after my girlfriend Monika died. We were together for 20 years, and her death came as a big shock, and it was life-changing for me. I started writing this big requiem mass, which is like an orchestral piece, almost a symphony, or it is actually a symphony with vocals, but I worked on it for a couple of years and I think I wrote something like two or two-and-a-half hours of music, most of which I was very happy with, but I never got it to the point where I was convinced that the musical overall structure, would really be quite right. So eventually I put it aside and other things came, and then I didn’t take it up until very recently. Last year I started again with a completely new mindset and lo and behold, I wrote a completely new beginning, something like 40-45 minutes worth.
I retained several of the best pieces from back then, but now I’m happy with the structure. But having said that, it’s still not finished, it’s still in the making and it will be finished when it’s finished. I’m not setting a deadline yet, but we will play several of the best pieces.
Did it help to look at this material with fresh eyes and ears after putting it aside for a while?
Yeah, totally, totally. I knew back then that it was very good, but I also knew that something was missing and I couldn’t put my finger on it. Now, so many years later, I’ve grown in experience and I’ve become more mature as a composer and writer. So it’s easier for me now to put the missing pieces together. It seems like I’ve gone to a different kind of plateau, which back then I had most of the ingredients, but as I say, I wasn’t quite ready yet. And I think now I am ready. Now it feels right. Back then, it still felt like there were too many question marks. And if it doesn’t feel right, then I don’t put it out. It’s that simple.
With this show, you mentioned about the paintings and there’s visuals that go along with the show. How do you think that helps the music? Do you feel like it adds another dimension to the show?
It really does. We’ve seen it in Japan again, because that was the acid test, so to speak. We didn’t know whether it would work, but it totally worked. We had big screens behind us, particularly in Tokyo. The screen was so big, I’ve never seen anything like it, and it was fantastic. We were standing there with our orchestra, looking almost like midgets and these gigantic figures in space were above. (laughs) It was really nice, because it gave another dimension to the music. There’s so much in music anyway, and sometimes if you connect the right visuals or appropriate visuals with the right kind of music, the impact can be very powerful, just like you see with certain types of film music.
“Star Wars” without John Williams — I love “Star Wars,” but it was the score of John Williams, which really then put it over the edge for me when I first saw that. Or “Pirates of the Caribbean” without the Hans Zimmer kind of stuff, it wouldn’t be quite the same. The combination between visuals and music is extremely powerful and can be very powerful, which is why I’m doing a similar thing.
There’s a string quartet that’s performing too. Is that just the first half or is that the whole show?
Half and half. Some of the second set is also with strings, although it’s much more rock-oriented. But i.e. in the past, for instance, there’s this epic Scorpions track, early Scorpions track, ‘We’ll Burn the Sky,” and I wrote an orchestra arrangement for it some years ago, which we performed with a large orchestra in Athens at the Acropolis amphitheater. And so we’re using that string arrangement, and some others have it, too. But in the first half, there’s always strings, and that’s the way I like it.
You mentioned about this being the 50th anniversary of “In Trance,” and you’ll be playing some of those songs. What stands out about that album all these years later?
I was 20 years old when we wrote that stuff and performed it, and it’s been part of my life ever since. So I guess the one thing that still strikes me more these days than it used to is whenever we play it in a concert, whether that’s in a rock club or in the hall or in the theater or on the big festival stage, the audience always gets excited when we play “In Trance,” and they start singing along and much more so than they did when we played it in the Scorpions. I don’t know why that is. First of all, I think we’re now playing it very, very well because we always have multiple guitar parts with the Scorpions we were not quite able to reproduce it in the same way. But also I think it’s simply the fact that the nostalgia factor, a lot of the audience heard that song when they’re young and they connected with it. And then when you hear it well played, suddenly then it strikes you.
So you’re playing it more faithfully?
We’re playing that one as well because I love it. We’re playing the Jimi Hendrix version. It’s always one of my encores, and it’s usually a highlight of the show because I think by now we’ve really got it down, we’ve done it so often. Also it’s different every night. I pride myself on playing it differently every night. The structure is always the same. Chords are the same, lyrics are the same, but then there is a lot of improvisation and other changes. When we were in Japan, I had the whole orchestra jam on that song to play without cheating, and it’s so really cool. It’s not like a mighty challenge, but to them it was certain ultimate freedom.
I’m sure you have a little bit more experience, so that must have been tougher for them to have to figure it out.
It was quite a challenge, absolutely. Because for most classical musicians, that’s the absolute horror scenario: now you have to improvise. Most of the best ones cannot even do it because they’re scared of playing wrong notes. I’m not scared of playing wrong notes. I grew up in the ‘60s and I know about free flow. It’s all part and parcel. You go into the danger zone and sometimes the best things happen when you’re going all out into no man’s land. It doesn’t always work. To me, improvisation is like life. You don’t know what’s around the next corner. You just go for it and spur of the moment. Very often it works. Very often it’s one of the most exciting moments in the whole show when you’re coming up with stuff like that. But not always.
With those original oil paintings that you have on display, how do you approach the limitations of painting versus what you can do with music? Do you see them as both limitless or is it just your imagination?
They’re just totally two different mediums, but the essential things of creativity are the same. It’s all about energies flowing from plus to minus and minus to plus. It’s a constant yin and yang. With the painting, it’s light and shadow, small against large, hot color against cold color. Red is a very hot color. Very often you need very little of that because it’s essentially big. It’s the same with the music. I work a lot in colors in my music. In my mind, I see things when I play. I see things when I write music. It’s very, very visual, and it’s three-dimensional. When I play a note, I can see the note. Inside of my mind, I become the note, and I forget about myself. Transport the inspiration of the moment.