 guitarist extraordinaire, living in the Harry Potter world, the one the only, Yuli John Roth. How are you doing again? How are you today, sir? I'm very well. Thank you. Let me just switch this off the zoom thing off. So now I'm all yours. Yeah. I mean, the last time we had the pleasure of interviewing you, I've never seen a reaction to a show here on the metal voice as strong as that one. Everybody said that should have done a 10 part series with you. You were so interesting. Nobody wanted the interview to stop. I remember we had to cut it short and I thought that's when it got interesting. That was probably happening again today. I mean, I find that a lot of these interviews, they start slowly. Like why did you leave the scorpions? So you go on and on about the same thing. And then when it gets interesting, sorry, time's up. Time's up. I mean, we can talk about your decorations from your house. I mean, that's an hour right there. It's so beautiful. Yeah. Well, yeah. Yeah. I like it like that. You know, that behind me is actually a copy, but a very good copy of a very good Rembrandt painting. And I love it. And yeah, I collect these a little bit. Yeah, that's right. You know what I like about you? You always take a lot of care in your background. Every time we do an interview, last time you were sitting on this chair. I don't remember what we did last time, but we've got lots of spots in this house. And what I tend to think is when I watch a YouTube and somebody is doing an interview and it's just like a plain white background, I think it gets a little boring after a time. Being a visual person, like coming from this world of paintings, I think it just adds to the ambience. If you have just a little bit more like a painting, as much as Zoom allows because the resolution sometimes isn't all that good. But there's not much we can do about that. Yeah. Well, the cool thing is we've talked about the scorpions so much in the past. Now we're heading off into after post-scorpions. Thank you. We know why you left. We know all that stuff. We've talked about it so many times. Close that chapter. Let's close that chapter. I've closed it a long time ago. So the cool thing is Electric Sun is being re-released on November the 17th and this is earthquake. I think it's actually November the 10th, but it doesn't really matter, you know, because I mean it's not an idea there. Nowadays it's all like postal order anyways, isn't it? No, no, no. What can people expect with the re-release? What are they getting that they haven't gotten before? Yes. Well, the reason for coming up with my own label, which is called Alpha Experium, was to tend to my entire back catalog, put it on the market as vinyl, as all singing, all dancing as it gets, you know, because they have been, a lot of them have been re-released in the past. But for instance, like my Electric Sun albums haven't been out on vinyl since the days, I think probably the 80s, you know, and there are quite a few collectors who still love vinyl. So we went to very great lengths to go back to the original master mixes and to take our master, our digital master from there and get as close as possible to the original 3D kind of sound, you know, which we heard in the studio, because what tends to happen with all these remastering efforts over the years with a lot of albums or a lot of artists, they get remastered again and again from the say or from the previous one. And in the end, you just end up with a little bit of a digital Mickey Mouse blur, you know. And so we went to great lengths to avoid that and to be as truthful as possible. Also, we dug up a couple of really nice jam sessions, which are there as bonus tracks, which were from the recordings and which I had forgotten all about, you know. Our old drummer Clive Edwards put me on to them and he said, you should listen to that. And he had them as like as an old cassette deck. And yeah, but the quality was good enough to, you know, to treat it and with our master, mastering engineers really are quite something. He's, you know, absolutely superb when it comes to these things. And I think he got the best out of it, you know. So that's there. And then the artwork, I put it into a framework that I'm happy with. I was never really happy with how the original looked, particularly the very first one. I thought it was awful and didn't do any justice whatsoever to Monica's beautiful paintings. And now I think we've also corrected that. And I've also made up some interior artwork, which is new, but in the style of the days of back then, you know, and gradually we're going to do this treatment to every single album that I've recorded. So the next one is almost finished already, which is Firewind and there will be Beyond the Astros guys, and there will be all the Sky of Avalon albums, etc. Basically, all the stuff I've done, we're going to give it the definitive treatment. And that's that, you know, that's very, very cool. I think we've all learned the past week what can be done from a cassette tape with what the Beatles were able to release based on a little cassette tape, right? That was pretty amazing, I thought. Yeah. That was pretty amazing. And I thought it was really haunting, you know, and written by John Lenn, typical John Lenn, but I think it was one of his best, actually, not quite finished. But then you have, of course, Paul McCartney, absolute genius in these things, you know, who gave it the works and you had Ringo and even a little bit of George Harrison. And I loved when Paul actually did the slide guitar, he did a George Harrison slide guitar solo, you know, like, perfect, you know, like, it was exactly what you would have expected from George, you know, I don't know if George came up with that idea, but whoever did, it was just pure genius. Yeah, I agree. I loved it. And the ending, you know, was so typically Beatles. Nobody else does that, you know, you, the songs developing and suddenly it shifts gear and then it's finished. They always had great endings, you know. So yeah, I thought it was marvelous and did all that from a crappy little cassette, I don't know what religion sounded like, but probably it was pretty dreadful. With all the bleed through from the piano and your buried vocals, look what they're able to do. So let me ask you, Ali, you leave the scorpions, okay. Here we go again. No, no, we've talked about that. We talked about that. We're not talking about that. Hey, I must remember to look into that camera, because I'm always looking to you. And you know, so please remind me, I have to look into that. Please look over here. Okay, you leave the scorpions as we spoke about many, many times. Now you're, were you, in the same time that the Tokyo tapes were released, you're, you know, you're coming out with this album, Earthquake, right? Were you scared? Was there a feeling of, I'm excited or I'm scared? What was that sort of sensation you were going through? You know, I've never been scared about any release. Maybe I should have. No, I wasn't. I was actually very self-confident, the self-confidence of youth. There you go. I guess. Nowadays, I may be a little more self-critical and I wouldn't maybe be quite as self-confident. But then I wouldn't put out anything that I'm really happy with, you know. That reminds me of the great Bob Seeger line. Wish I didn't know now, but I didn't know then. For me, you know, this is probably, were there songs written in your time with the scorpions and you were just kind of like writing them down and would they have been on the next scorpions album if you stayed? I mean, were these songs circulating in your head? No, not really. There is one instrumental which we just dug up for Firewind. I had forgotten all about it and it suddenly appeared on the master of the actual multitracks and my manager played it to me over the phone. He said, do you know what this is? And then, yeah, I wrote this so many years ago. All it was was two guitars, rim guitar, drums and bass, but it had a very catchy melody. That could have been a scorpions one, you know. And we are going to include it as a bonus track on the Firewind album, where it should be. But no, the electric sound material was absolutely not scorpions material. Had I stayed with one foot in the scorpions, I would have written more like Cesar Chiron and stuff like that. I would have stayed in that direction, you know. But the electric sound stuff was completely, yeah, a different universe to the scorpions were completely different bands. I love this album. This was actually one of my favorite albums by you ever. Even as a teenager when I first heard it. And then when I heard Lilac for the first time, I was like, what the heck's going on here? This poetry and actually, that's actually one of my favorites, but not everybody got a tiny flower. What is that? Is that like renewal? Is that what the Lilac is? Well, it is really about immersing yourself in the cosmos, you know, sounds very psychedelic, but you can do these things without drugs, you know, and I did without drugs. It's really how you can see all of creation, even inside of the jealous of a tiny flower, you know, how this eternal circle, a cycle of birth and rebirth, and how things grow from within from tiny seeds, they become big, they have a lifespan, they come to a climax, they go into another octave, and then gradually they start to fade and they wilt and make space for the next flower, you know, and probably even the same spot or different spot. But yeah, that's kind of what's what's behind the the text, the because it was a spoken lyric of Lilac, you know, yeah. I got go ahead, Alan, if you want to keep going just wondering with the new releases, are you finding any difference in the vinyl, the quality of the vinyl today as it was in the 80s? That's a good question, that's it's difficult to actually difficult to ascertain, you know, I don't even have access to my old vinyls, they're all in storage somewhere. Somewhere, like yeah, well, I know where, but but that storage is scary. There's too much off it. I mean, you're talking, contain us and contain us and contain us. Oh boy. Yeah, I don't even want to go there, you know, hundreds of boxes. But yeah, I'm not sure, actually, you know, we didn't do a one to one test like that, probably we should have. But then again, back then, we had there was different equipment, you know, they made great strides. And vinyl always just sounds totally different from digitally as it has its own quality, it's like a filter, you know, you either like it or you don't, you know, it's like you're okay, you have like a Rembrandt painting, you know, and what these guys used to do is they used to paint in layers. So they would do the outline first in almost black and white, you know, as an impasto underneath, and then gradually fill in the colors and then putting glazes on top and these glazes are basically a wash of say a certain see-through yellow or whatever like it like a photographic filter, you know, and this is very much the same with vinyl. And it's kind of like a glaze. And it does something to the sound and some music, I think does sound better, you know, but not all of it. And I think there's a lot to be said about digital as well, particularly when it goes beyond the sound of a compact disc, which is unfortunately still at 16-bed, you know, we could do it a lot better nowadays, but the infrastructure in the business just isn't there, you know, nobody seems to be asking for it, you know, there's no demand. Let me get back to the songs from Earthquake. Still so many lives away. Is this your tribute to Bob Dylan? I mean, when I hear the song I think of Bob Dylan. Yeah, thank you. That's always a great compliment, but it isn't. No. You see, it's one of these songs. It is basically just telling a story, you know, and it is a story about reincarnation, because I happen to believe in reincarnation. I think there is such a thing as that, that we get born and reborn in cycles, but as very different people, it's not the same. The spirit is the same, but the actual, the actual manifestation is different, you know. It depends on where you're born, who are your parents, you know, with your upbringing, the social surroundings, the culture, and all this, you know. So you could have the same spirit being born in the times of Greece, or in the times of Rembrandt, like 400 years ago in Holland, and then materialize again at some other point in another life as quite a different human being, because I think the personality is quite different each time around, but the actual substance and the essence doesn't really change. That's the spirit of the soul. So our body... And still so many lives away is about that. So our body is a vessel, like you're saying, it's the spirit that carries on, but that spirit, and that spirit can be changed over generations, each time it's... The point to still so many lives away is that there's a person who keeps making the same mistakes over and over each lifetime, which is I think probably a very common thing. And, you know, if you look for a purpose of life, or, you know, what we could be, or what we should be, what we might be, I happen to think, among other things, it's... It gives us the opportunity and the possibility to actually progress as a spirit to a more elevated level, you know, because there are many different levels of spirituality, and they are inside of us as a possibility, but some people have the desire, they feel drawn towards that, and they want to, you know, have spiritual progress, meaning basically becoming better people, you know, just better persons, that those things go hand in hand, you know, and sometimes a lifetime, it seems like a long time for us, but in cosmic terms, it is... It's a blink of an eye. There is no time in the cosmic universe, right, but what is time? So, yeah, we... I mean, being incarnated on Earth as a person, we are given a great opportunity and a great chance, but also it comes, I think, with an obligation, you know, I mean, you can either say, okay, I just want to have a good life, you know, like tomorrow, like, you only live once, et cetera, you know, if you do that, you would probably have to be like, if you're very selfish and if you only do what's good for you, you will have that life maybe, you know, but is that the right kind of way to live, you know, I doubt it. Karma, karma comes back to haunt you. Yes, the idea of karma is a very powerful one, and it's the only one that really makes sense to me when I look at all the chaos that surrounds us in this world nowadays, you know. There are some eternal truths, even if they are maybe very far away for us and very hard to grasp, and they're, you know, not, they don't seem relevant, but I think they are there, you know, and they go way beyond that, watch what, you know, we learn this right or wrong in, you know, in school maybe, you know, not that they're teaching the wrong things. They sometimes do, I believe, but there are, if we really go way, way deep down inside ourselves, we all know what's right or wrong, because we've got a conscience, and that's like the divine part of us, you know, even if you're a murderer, you will still have that conscience and get very deep down, that little voice will tell you what you did was wrong, you know, and then it's up to us to just listen, you know, just sometimes not so easy, because taking the easy way is, yeah, that doesn't present many obstacles, you know, sometimes doing the right thing is very, very hard, and difficult, and inconvenient, and dangerous, and you name it, you know, so, yeah, anyways, it's a kind of long story, that's what that song is all about. That song is all about. I've never actually explained it, you're the first one, whoever. Well, I can ask you for every song, but I just want to plug this before. I want to ask you this quite, I want to say this statement, you have a UK tour coming up before we get into the next question, coming up November the 20th, right, all the way to November 29th, that's the UK tour, and then you have a North American tour coming up in 2024, so make sure to mention that. All right, now I want to ask you about Monica. Monica Danneman, who you, I'm assuming you're married to her, right, after- No, we were not married, we were together for many, many years, but not actually technically married, we should have, I guess, but we weren't. Common law, I guess, right, and what's spectacular about your relationship is, like, she had a relationship with Jimi Hendrix prior, it's kind of like this continuity of your sound, her presence, and the whole, I guess, that sort of Jimi Hendrix vibe, right? I mean, what was your relationship like with Monica? Like, if you want to answer that, I don't want to get too personal either. Well, you know, you are asking a difficult question here because anything with Monica was not one-dimensional, you know, she was just actually totally amazing, and I was very privileged to have known her and to be able to be with her. You know, I've never met anybody like her. Talking about spiritual, she had that, like, to the highest degree, so much so that sometimes people didn't get it at all. They thought she was like completely naive and whatever, you know, because she didn't, she didn't know how to play that manipulation game with the press and all that, you know, and she took everything at face value and she really wasn't quite cut out for this world, I have to say. But in her environment, she was an artist and she was much more than an artist. In her environment at home, it was like, it was just beautiful. She created an atmosphere in the house with her paintings, which were phenomenal and of which she had like 200 altogether, I think. So there were always new ones being produced, but they were on all the walls and the house was magical because the house itself had, we lived in the thatched house in Seaford, right, you know, you could see the cliffs of the white cliffs in the distance from my studio. And she and her mother, Rosemary, created a magical garden, but the house was difficult to describe whenever people came into it. So often they said, wow, this feels like time warp, but time warp, not in the sense of, you know, just stepping back in time. No, it was, you were in a different time continuum. It was a different world altogether. And that was what she stood for. That was what she represented. She was a really good person. To me, it's, I found it always fascinating that connection, you know, the Jimi Hendrix, the Monica and the you. And it's just, I think it was destiny. How did you meet her? How did you meet her? Yeah, well, I saw her once when we were with the Scorpions. We were at a concert in Düsseldorf and she happened to be at the same concert. So I saw her from the distance and I didn't really know what she looked like. But she had this huge aura from the distance. I could see there was something going on in there. She was shining. She was radiant in a very strong way. And then somebody said, that's Monica Daneman, you know, so I knew that. But we didn't get to talk that day. That was in 1975. Now in early 1976, we happened to be in the Speak Easy, which we used to hang out there. The Scorpions and UFO, Michael Schenker and Dieter Dirks. We were there one evening. Not the not UFO, but Michael Schenker was there and Rudolf and Dieter Dirks. I don't know why we had some discussion. It was, oh, actually, I think, yeah, now I know why. Because we had that we had recorded a video in Water Street, just a promo video of like an early song, you know, like, what was it? I think it was speed is coming, actually. And yeah, so I was sitting there and suddenly I saw her sitting there, you know, with her girlfriend, you know, having a dinner at the other table. And I thought, you know, I didn't know what to do. You know, I was very shy and I was much younger than she was. She was like nine years older. She was like this big, glamorous lady. So I didn't know what to do. And then Rudolf said, come on, just go over there. Talk to her, you know. So I asked her if she would like to talk about Jimmy. And she said, sure. And this is how it all started. You know, I gave her the next day we met again at the Speak Easy. I gave her our Entrance album. Then she came to see us at the Marquis Club. And that was that, you know, I mean, you know. Well, it's a good thing you didn't give her a virgin killer cover. Yeah, but although that was already recorded, but the album hadn't been out yet, you know. But it ruined the date. Yes. Yes. Yeah. So these tours that are coming up, you know, let's talk about that a little bit. How's that going to work? Is there a band attached to that? Is there opening acts? Is it a band attached? An evening with. We're not doing evening when, but we're doing lots of others. There is a band attached. That's a nice way of putting it. We're starting in the UK in Cardiff. We're doing 10 shows in the UK. Nine or 10, I'm not sure. Starting on the 20th. We're doing a full rock show that evening. But I will also do some, you know, some solo stuff with my nine string flamenco sky guitar. And the American program and the North American program, because we will also come to Canada, will be a little more extensive because there will be two programs in one. We're starting off the evening with an evening with an evening. I do the John Roth meaning I will talk about my new book for about like a TED talk, you know, then I will do some stuff solo and just with the screen and the orchestra, maybe a little Vivaldi, maybe some of my classical pieces. Then we do an intermission and then we do the full rock show. So it's going to be a hybrid. I think this is going to really work. If you need two guys to TED talk, ask you questions. We can do that for you in Montreal. Okay, great. That would make my job so much easier. Could ask you the questions, me and Alan. And we could also translate in French. Pretty easy interview, I mean. Yeah, exactly. So that's that's basically it in the nutshell. You know, I mean, it came about this hybrid idea came about because we had to already postpone the tour twice because of COVID. We had booked 970, that's 7-0 North American shows for 2020, I believe. You know, solo shows where, which was called Interstellar Sky Guitar, where I was just with the screen and pretty ambitious program with lots of new music also. And yeah, then thanks to COVID that never happened. But we started some of that in Europe and I really liked it. We only did 13 shows and then, you know, Last time you were in Montreal, you did the three-year anniversary or three anniversaries. You did, you got on stage, you did a meet and greet and then you went on stage and you did just you into backing tracks. Oh, I did the Vivaldi Four Seasons. Yeah, but that was the VIP event. Yeah, you know, what we got a lot of work. You did a lot of work on my lord. Yeah, I was like five hours a day easily on on that stage and different configurations. We're going to do for the North American tour as a VIP event. We're going to do a guitar masterclass before each show or like a one and a half hour event where I'm going to delve deeply into the sky guitar and it'll be different from my normal sky academies because it's not going to be esoteric. It's going to be more about guitar playing and music only. And I will utilize my, you know, my catalog, my best guitar solos and use those and maybe take them apart and explain certain ways of doing it. You know, so that's what we're going to do. It hasn't been advertised yet, but it'll become very shorting. What about the set list? What's a Scorpions mixed in with? Big set list, big set list. And the first half I'm playing quite a few unknowns, almost all unknowns. We're also playing several new ones in the English tour now coming in up, but in America the set list is going to be even more extensive, you know. And yeah, we will have the regular stalwarts from the Scorpion days, meaning we'll burn the sky in trance and Cerdo Chiron will be there. But we will also go into the electric Sundays and I've really reworked those tracks. And I think they've benefited a lot, you know. Just like when we did the Scorpions songs like we'll burn the sky, etc. When we're playing them live now, they're slightly different to what they were like with the Scorpions, because in the Scorpions we didn't have that many guitars, etc., etc. We were still finding our way with some of the material was very new. Now we're really on top of it and, you know, and the interpretation, I prefer it now, you know. And I'm going to give the same treatment to my electric sun catalog. Basically keep what's good and get rid of some of the weaker things, you know, including my weakest vocals. Yeah, that's also improvement there on the horizon. Would you believe it? Go ahead. Go ahead, Jim. I was going to say electric sun, the meaning of it all. You know, was it just a cool phrase or was it just? I mean, you know, this is again about the sun is the symbol of the beginning of life in the entire universe, you know. Wherever there's a solar system, you have a sun at the center and that sun is like the power house, which creates the light and eventually also all the higher elements in the spectrum, maybe not our sun, but you know, you have a supernova and that will give you like all the higher elements that we need for life. It's all about light and electricity, you know, those two things, the electricity is basically the flowing of the life force and if you look at it in metaphysical terms, so electric sun means that, you know, that's what it is. And it is a symbol of enlightenment, meaning it's, yeah, it's not only life, but it shines in the dark, you know, and wherever things shine in the dark, that's usually a good thing, you know, maybe not always. Well, looking forward to the tour, our time's almost up. I mean, Uli, it's always a pleasure to talk to you. Anything we can do to help promote the shows, just let us know because. Let's go for it, you know, just go for it, yeah. Is there anything you'd like to mention before we let you go? Oh, I don't know, no, not necessarily. Oh, your book, are you bringing your book on tour with you? It's like a 600 page book. Exactly, if we can carry it. You're going to need a container just to carry the book. Yes, yes. No, we'll have the book, but, yeah, the tour is going to be colorful and multifaceted, so please come and join us. So people can buy the book on tour, that's what I want to come up with. I really hope so. We're trying to finance it at the moment and it's looking good, but it costs a fortune to print it in that quantity at that quality, you know. And I don't want to go through a standard publisher because then it becomes just commercialized. And this book is completely free from any commercial aspects as we know it. It's pure and from the heart. I don't want to keep it that way, you know. All right, well said. Willie John Roth getting the tour trail November 20th and the book and the, sorry, the re-release November 10th. November 10th, yeah. And your new album is coming out when? A new album? When's that coming out? No, you know, you're putting me on the spot. Wow, that's what we do. You don't ask a lady her age. You don't ask a lady. But you can ask a man. The album's coming out. So there is one coming. That's what? The truth is I've been recording a lot, particularly recently in Cologne at the Dirk Studios, where we did our Scorpions albums, all of them in my time, and made really good progress. So there are quite a few tracks in the making. Rather than a complete album, it'll probably be chunks of three at a time that come up, you know. We're already playing three of those tracks on the next tour, on the English tour. So you'll get them achieved. So 2024, we can expect some new music. That's what you're saying? Yeah, plenty. Yeah, yeah, yeah. Way to go. On that note, thank you so much for joining us. We'll look forward to seeing you on the tour in Montreal. All the best and much success on the tour.