191 | Uli Jon Roth on Breaking Boundaries

No Guitar Is Safe

Jude Gold

Music

4.8 • 869 Ratings

🗓️ 8 November 2025

⏱️ 95 minutes

🔗️ Recording | iTunes | RSS

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Summary

With both a U.S. tour and a new session of Sky Academy booked for April/May, Uli Jon Roth is headed for an exciting Spring of 2026. It’s all part of his passion to reach (and help his Sky Academy students reach) new musical heights. “A great musician is always growing,” says the German-born, U.K.-based guitar hero. Indeed, Uli could have rested on his laurels as the lava-hot lead player of ’70s-era Scorpions hard rock. But, taking inspiration from the music of heroes such as Keith Jarrett, Jimi Hendrix, and Antonio Vivaldi, he has always strived for a much deeper level of artistic expression. In this exclusive visit to Sky Academy, we plug in with Uli and embark on some epic improvisational odysseys, gain insights into his hugely influential rock masterpiece “The Sails of Charon,” learn about his unique extended-neck Sky Guitars, and, best of all, learn why, as he says, “the fingers are the least important part of your sound.” Hosted by Jude Gold, this episode is brought to you by your online guitar instruction friends at TrueFire. TrueFire offers thousands of hours of guitar instruction from A-list players. For a free 30-day all-access membership (no credit card required!), click to truefire.com/safe.

Transcript

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0:00.0	Most musicians are craftsmen.
0:02.7	An artist is the guy who does it differently and comes up with something new.
0:07.0	That is the voice of one of the most inspiring guitar players you're likely to meet in this corner of the universe.
0:12.5	We're talking about Uli John Roth.
0:15.0	And today we have a special trip. We're going to fly the copter over to his secret musical training grounds. Of course,
0:22.9	we're talking about Sky Academy. This hang with Uli John Roth is brought to you by truefire.com.
0:30.1	From me to you, if you haven't yet, you've got to visit truefire.com.
0:34.9	No, guitar is safe. You can tell a lot about a musical hero by who their musical heroes are.
0:45.0	Like with Uli John Roth, I mean, come on, he's widely known in the guitar community,
0:49.9	and people on the surface might think of him as the lava hot guitar player from the scorpions in the
0:55.8	70s and some people would say that he really pushed the envelope on pushing lead guitar into the
1:02.4	shred realm shred not a term he's crazy about or even inventing the neoclassical guitar genre of
1:09.4	a lead guitar leading an orchestra, all that stuff.
1:12.8	But he is so much deeper than that as you're about to find out, especially when you realize
1:17.0	his biggest heroes, probably Jimmy Hendrix, Keith Jarrett, and maybe Vivaldi. And we are going
1:24.3	to get into so much of that as we head to Sky Academy at his secret location in Southern California.
1:30.7	But guess what?
1:31.3	You can go too.
1:32.2	Just head to Ulijohnroth.com.
1:34.8	Learn all about Sky Academy and everything else he's doing, including his U.S. tour, which is in April all over the country.
1:43.1	Check out those shows. He's also got four solo shows in the UK over December.
1:48.0	And there is a new Sky Academy session that you can join in April, 2026.
	...

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