Uli Jon Roth, who is a German guitarist, was born on the 18th of December 1954. The contribution to the field of neo-classical metal music by him is immense. Roth, along with some other members, had formed a band entitled Dawn Road towards the beginning of the 1970s. In 1973 the Scorpions separated owing to Michael Schenker who had left it to join the UFO. The other existing members of Scorpions, Klaus Meine and Rudolf Schenker combined with the members of Dawn Road to form a very strong group. The name of this group was changed to Scorpions as it had become quite popular during those years. Thus Uli Jon Roth became the Scorpions guitarist.
During the years 1974 and 1977 the Scorpions released four albums in which Roth played the role of main songwriter, occasional lead singer and of course the lead guitarist. Tokyo Tapes, was recorded in 1978, in Japan and it was one of the best selling live albums of the Scorpions. Roth had however left the band before the release of the album. Electric Sun, Roth’s very own band, Electric Sun was formed and three albums were released. The initial album was released in the year 1979. Dedicated to Jimi Hendrix , it was entitled Earthquake. The other albums were Fire Wind & Beyond the Astral Skies, released in 1981 & 1985 respectively. They were dedicated to Anwar el-Sadat and Martin Luther King respectively.
Roth, later, composed two concertos and four symphonies and had even performed with some symphony orchestras all through Europe. The name ‘Uli John Roth’ was used by him for all his concerts and album releases after this. Roth had even played for Castle Donington, an outdoor rock festival, in the year 2001. Later on this got released on DVDs. Roth featured in a concert along with the Scorpions in 2006 at Wacken Open Air Festival. It had become a great success and was named as “A Night To Remember, A Journey Through Time”.
Roth happens to be the creator of the Sky Guitar and the founder of the Sky Academy. These are the best rock guitars for beginners. He had specially made custom guitars which had additional frets. Roth had five of these kinds of guitars which had been used by the guitarist of Fair Warning and were made by a person of British origin. Amongst these guitars one was made with 36 frets, the other had 42 while the third was fretless. The fretless guitar was used in the album, Beyond the Astral Skies.
