Uli..Jon..Roth
Club..22/Athens..2005
The evening was December 11th, 2005 and the concert took place in Club 22 ( a small size venue,
where a crowd of about seven hundred was gathered).
Originally it was advertised as an appearance of the three ex-Scorpions members, but we were
pleasanlty surprised with a full five member band.
It was around nine-thirty when everyone came on stage. I was looking through my camera and
Ferdy Doernberg (standing by his keyboards) caught my attention; we both stared at eack other
for a couple of seconds, then simultanously nodded our heads and smiled with satisfaction,
confirming this way, that a great evening was about to begin and we were ready for it!
This established the audience - band relationship for his part of the stage; through out the
evening, I could see Ferdy smiling, awknowledging fans, encouraging them to clap and sing along
with the band.
Juergen Rosenthal and Francis Bucholz positioned themselves on the center of the stage, Juergen
behind his drums and Francis quite happily danced around the stage, playing his bass.
Uli Jon Roth had come on the left side of the stage and was looking great (I instantly declared
him to be the most stylish hippy of the new millenium). Wiht his Sky guitar at hand, he
promised to play songs from all eras.
He started the evening with "Sky Overture" and "Land of Dawn" (out of the "Requviem of an Angel"
album) and then handed the microphone over to Olaf Senkbeil, for the remainder of the evening.
In between songs, the audience shouted out each musician's name, creating an intimate atmosphere
and then again,shouted out the titles of their favourite songs.
Uli replied every time, promising to play them all, and by the sound of his voice, you could tell
that he was really pleased with this interaction.
He dedicated the song "Why" to Socrates, the ancient Greek philosopher and when he was about to
play songs from the Scorpions era, he thanked the Greek Scorpions fan cub for their support.
When he started playing songs from "Fly to the Moon" and "In Transe", the audience went crazy,
slam dancing and singing along with the songs.
They played for us for a total of three hours, this included two enchores of about five songs
each, fully satisfying their audience... The last song was "Fly to the Moon", the most requested
song of the evening.
When it was all over, it was obvious that Uli and his band didn't come to Athens just to perform;
they came to elevate and transport us to Uli's magical "Sky" workshop, for an exceptional
musical experience!...
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