Tuesday, 25 January 2022

Uli Jon Roth live in Athens December 2010

Up until 2010 I had seen Scorpions twice. The problem was that at both gigs they only played songs from their "recent" period (meaning from 1979 onwards). To be more precice, I can say that the carεer of Scorpions can be divided into 2 periods : The era before "Lovedrive" (until 1978) and the era after it (after 1979 when they changed both their record company and their guitarist). During their first period, their guitarist was Uli Jon Roth. He quit the band when he met (and fell in love with) Monika Dannemann, who, by the way, was Jimi Hendrix's last girlfriend (but that, as they say, is another story). Two songs from that period were extremely popular in Greece: "Pictured Life" and (mainly) "In Trance". And since Scorpions didn't play these songs neither in 2006 nor in 2010 at their "last ever" concert, Uli Roth himself came to Athens on Wednesday the 1st of December to play them himself.
 

 


The gig's flyer, which was given to me outside the Peace & Friendship stadium before the Scorpions concert, was advertising an acoustic set. But, as he told us himself on the night of the gig, he decided to get a band together and play an electric rock set.


 

He sang some of the songs himself, but he also had a singer in his band especially for the Scorpions tracks. 

And he played a lot of those as we can see from the setlist.
Support was provided by the Greek band "Leaving Tomorrow" who, among others performed a 12 minute song! 


 As for Scorpions... they would in fact return for an MTV Unplugged set in 2013. SETLIST: 

01. Pictured Life
02. Catch Your Train
03. The Sails Of Charon
04. Fire Wind
05. All Along The Watchtower
06. If 6 Was 9/Little Wing
07. I've Got To Be Free
08. Enola Gay - Hiroshima Today
09. Solo Keyboards
10. We'll Burn The Sky
11. In Trance
12. Fly To The Rainbow
13. Polar Nights
14. Dark Lady
Encore:
15. Kojo No Tsuki
16. Catch Your Train