Michael Schenker: Rock Bottom
A master shows how it is done, and a timeless tune gets right at the feels.
My desire to learn guitar traces back to listening to Strangers in the Night, the live UFO album in a friend’s bedroom one night when I was in high school.
I was absolutely entranced. Hard hitting rhythms, melodic lead breaks, solid songwriting, and it just made me smile.
I learned that the axe slinger was one Michael Schenker, brother of the Scorpions’ rhythm guitarist, Rudolf Schenker, and also a cofounder of The Scorpions with his brother in the late 1960’s.
I bought that album, and then many more. Michael Schenker left UFO to briefly rejoin The Scorpions, and then off to solo work in the Michael Schenker Group that went through several iterations.
One song though captures the magic of Michael Schenker, Rock Bottom. It is a rock anthem, eight-ish minutes of a killer jam, but in reality it was always a vehicle for the Schenker guitar solo, where even on the album version it has a solo break.
But the live versions are magical. The solo changes, but the themes remain the same, and Michael shows his versatility and adaptability, always building, always moving, and always keeping the listener invested to the music.
I must have at least 15 versions of this song in my collection, and I still come across great recordings in my YouTube travels.
Below is eight minutes, three seconds of my favorite song of all time:
The origin story that Michael tells about this, is that shortly after he joined UFO, this was his warmup jam that he would play to loosen up before practicing. The band’s jaws dropped, and worked to turn it into a song, and the rest is, as they say, history.
Bonus time, as I was writing this, YT recommended another Schenker tune, Lost Horizons, a similar song that is just epic live, and a vehicle for Schenker to showcase his chops.
I hope you enjoyed listening to these.
My grandfather gave my brother and I an old acoustic guitar each and more than 50 years later we both still play. I have no particular talent, but rock music has been a life long joy to listen and play.
A long, long time ago there was a radio station serving the Chicago area called WXFM or Triad Radio. There, late at night I heard music from bands I'd never imagined. In the same summer I was introduced to UFO, the Skorpions, David Bryne & Talking Heads, Roxy Music, Eno, Frank Zappa, the B52s', Gentle Giant... all manner of non-traditional music on radio.
Watching this UFO video brought it all back. Thanks Sweaty. Glad to be getting sweaty witcha!
Remembering Triad Radio, where the usual was unusual
Chicago Reader
https://chicagoreader.com › music › remembering-triad...
Jul 24, 2020 — Triad Radio was the brainchild of three young Lithuanian Americans who wanted to create an outlet for the vibrant music pouring out of the 1960s ...