Uli Jon Roth at the Gramercy Theatre

Uli Jon Roth was born in Düsseldorf, Germany, where he began performing live in 1968 at the age of 13 as lead guitarist for Blue Infinity. While attending high school in Hanover, Uli played Dawn Road while also studying classical guitar and piano. In 1973, guitarist Michael Schenker left the Scorpions to join UFO; the two remaining Scorpions merged with the four members of Dawn Road to form a new lineup of Scorpions. In the Scorpions, Roth gained a reputation as an innovative virtuoso, as he incorporated advanced compositional elements from European classical music, such as pedal tone sequences and intricate arpeggios. Feeling increasingly stifled by the confinements of mainstream rock music, Roth left the Scorpions in 1978 and formed his own band, Electric Sun, where the classical influence dominated his playing style. After three albums with Electric Sun, Roth exited the limelight for 13 years, designing the Sky Guitar, which features an extended fingerboard, and composing four symphonies and two concertos, sometimes performing them with European symphony orchestras. Roth's fifth and most recent solo studio album is 2015's Scorpions Revisited. Roth currently resides near the English border in Powys, Wales.

Uli Jon Roth's 2019 tour was announced as a triple anniversary. The shows, which included tonight's performance at the Gramercy Theatre, celebrated his 50th anniversary of performing live, the 40-year anniversary of Tokyo Tapes, the live Scorpions album that brought him fame, and the 40th anniversary of his solo work with Electric Sun. The first set consisted mostly of Electric Sun songs, and the second set mostly of Scorpions songs; Roth had not performed the bulk of this music for over 30 years. Roth's musical journey was on full display, as he played complex melodic arpeggio sequences on both his extra-frets Sky guitar and, for a few songs, the white Fender Stratocaster he used in the Scorpions and Electric Sun in the mid-1980s. Roth's neo-classical guitar technique was dazzling, as he employed major and minor pentatonic, the blues scale, phrygian, harmonic minor, diminished, and whole tone scales. For the most diehard Roth fans, the concert was a three-hour retrospective filled with majestic guitar wizardry; the rest of the audience might have been puzzled by the musical selections and the multi-media projections.

Setlist:

Set 1:

1. Sky Overture
2. Indian Dawn (Electric Sun song)
3. Electric Sun (Electric Sun song)
4. Sun in My Hand (Scorpions song)
5. Why? (Electric Sun song)
6. Don't Tell the Wind (Zeno Roth cover)
7. Just Another Rainbow (Electric Sun song)
8. I'll Be There (Electric Sun song)
9. Icebreaker (Electric Sun song)
10. Starlight (Sky of Avalon song)
11. Enola Gay (Hiroshima Today?) (Electric Sun song)

Set 2:

1. Passage to India (Roth performed solo)
2. Apache (The Shadows cover)
3. We'll Burn the Sky (Scorpions song)
4. In Trance (Scorpions song)
5. Pictured Life (Scorpions song)
6. Catch Your Train (Scorpions song)
7. All Along the Watchtower (Bob Dylan cover)
8. Yellow Raven (Scorpions song)
9. The Sails of Charon (Scorpions song)