We’re back at the excellent KK’s Steel Mill in Wolverhampton tonight for what was to be a night of musical virtuosity from one of the often overlooked guitar geniuses of our age. Uli Jon Roth (10) is probably best known for his tenure with Scorpions back in the ‘70s but he has far more in his repertoire than that. The German maestro has taken his band on the road to celebrate a life in music, spanning his many decades of making music by his rules.
When not out playing shows he lives a reclusive and quiet life here in the UK, a small village on the Welsh Borders is where he calls home now and gives him the solitude to create his music and his signature Sky guitars.
He strolls out onto stage, a quiet gentle man with a soft smile, looking every part the reclusive hippy who is in his happy space. What then transpires for the next 2 hours or so at times brings this writer to tears with a display of such beauty and brilliance. And it’s not just Roth, the band he has built around him are some of the best musicians I’ve seen in a long time, David Klosinski on guitar, Nikolas Turmann on bass and vocals, and what vocals they were, incredible range and power. On drums was a local lad from just up the road in Walsall, Richard Kirk, a real powerhouse and on keyboards was Uli’s daughter Akasha Dawn.
The set was split into two parts, the first having a more classical mood to it and included the song Don’t Tell The Wind, a song written by Uli’s brother Zeno who passed away a few years ago. The big screen projected an image of Zeno throughout the song, a beautiful track that elicited the first lot of tears.
We didn’t have to wait long for the tears to flow again when they performed the haunting opus, Enola Gay - Hiroshima Today? Turman stepped forward and without accompaniment sang the intro, this was one of those goosebump moments, the crowd was silent and in awe of this sublime vocalist. The song continued with Roth’s incredible display of guitar wizardry with powerful images displayed on the big screen. It gives me goosebumps just writing about it, a moment that will stay with me for a long time.
The second half of the set was more rocky, with a number of early Scorpions songs with The Sails Of Charonbeing yet another highlight. For an encore we were treated to a stunning rendition of All Along The Watchtower, then to further cement his reputation, Uli had to quickly jump onto Klosinski’s pedal board and amp as his stopped working, but it didn’t faze him too much and finished the set off with a classic Scorpions track Yellow Raven
Tonight we were in the presence of rock royalty and this easily takes over from the Glenn Hughes and Avatar gigs to be my favourite gig of the year!
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