Rock and roll guitarists have a certain….image. A cigarette dangling from the lips. A bottle of Jack Daniels sitting on the amp. Monosyllabic utterances that emerge when the musician occasionally rises from a state of delirium.

Uli Jon Roth is not that. Not even close. Sure, he has long hair and dresses kind of wild, but Roth is anything but the stereotypical string slinger.

This becomes evident as Roth expounds on philosophical and musical matters while chatting via Zoom in advance of his concert at the Dosey Doe on Saturday, May 18. It’s not just any concert. In fact, it’s billed as an “extravaganza,” beginning with a set of classical pieces, followed by a brief TED talk hitting the highlights from his book In Search of the Alpha Law, and concluding with a full-band rock and roll set.
This strategy neatly brings together the two halves of Roth’s career. During the early ‘70s, Roth made his mark in Germany playing blues-rock before joining the Scorpions in 1973. After five years, Roth left the band to study music, soon launching the neoclassical guitar movement, which featured Vivaldi-like melodies played molto allegro on the electric guitar.

“We’re actually doing two completely different shows in one night,” Roth explains. “Which is bordering on insanity, but somehow it works. The second half is a full-on rock show, with all my earlier stuff like Scorpions and Electric Sun, whereas the first half is new [material] and also contains some of my classical meanderings.”

So what about the Alpha Law that is described in Roth’s forthcoming book? What does this philosophical approach entail? “As much as I have tried, I haven’t found a way to explain it in two sentences,” Roth laughs. “Which is why it took me 600 pages and 1000 pictures and illustrations, and I still haven’t explained it!
“The Alpha Law is a concept that came to me, almost in an epiphany, in 1980. Since then, I’ve been a bit of a seeker, a searcher. In a flash moment, something was presented to me, that all the laws in the universe – the laws of physics, the higher laws and the laws that govern our mental processes – they can all really be brought back to one master law that comprises them all.”

Roth continues, calling to mind the manner of a genial college professor whose lectures are not necessarily bound by what is contained in the textbook.

“You can explain the world in mathematical ways, where everything is reduced to a number, which works to a degree, because I believe that everything has a frequency and, therefore, a number," Roth says. "But you can also explain it in other ways. The laws of music are almost identical to the laws of physics, as long as you understand how to correlate them. And this is what I’m doing.”

After a discussion of emotional intelligence, dictators and Jungian archetypes, the conversation turns back to music and, specifically, the guitar. Finding that, after a time, his traditional Fender Stratocaster was too limiting, Roth began to play custom-built instruments, outfitted with additional frets to allow for an extended sonic range. In 2017, Roth founded UJR Sky Guitars, which produces similar instruments of his own design.
While Deep Purple’s Ritchie Blackmore was one of the first guitarists to bring a classical influence to rock guitar, it is Roth who is generally viewed as the spiritual father of the neoclassical movement, which placed an emphasis on arpeggios played at blinding speed up and down the neck, as practiced by guitarists like Yngwie Malmsteen, Jason Becker and Vinnie Moore. Have some musicians lost the point, focusing too much on the athleticism of playing at the expense of the artistry?

“Yes,” Roth answers definitively, “Most players do miss the point. It’s the same as when the wah-wah was first invented, and Jimi Hendrix and Eric Clapton did some beautiful pieces with the wah-wah, unsurpassed to this day. And then everybody went for it, and all you heard was ‘wah-wah-wah.’ When Eddie Van Halen came with his tapping, everybody did that, you know? It became an epidemic. Or when Yngwie started the fast approach – which was similar to my playing, but he sped it up – then you had a whole generation of would-be Ingwies.

“But I think most people missed the central point," Roth continues.  "When I did an arpeggio, it was always in a melodic context. And it wasn’t just up and down as fast as you could. They take the surface glitz and spread it all over and forget about the substance underneath. That happens a lot in every genre, whenever something new is being brought forward.”

Uli Jon Roth will perform on Saturday, May 18, at 8:30 p.m., at the Dosey Doe Big Barn, 25911 Interstate 45 in the Woodlands.For more information, call 281-367-3774 or visit DoseyDoeTickets.com.  $88-$148, with dinner included in the purchase price.

For more information on Uli Jon Roth, visit ujr.info.