ULI JON ROTH: 'I Stopped Listening To Music A Long, Long Time Ago'

Legendary German guitarist Uli Jon Roth says that he hasn't checked out any new music for a number of years. "I was never a great listener, except for at the very beginning," he told Meltdown of Detroit's WRIF radio station in a new interview (hear audio below). "I self-taught music – like, buckets full — with THE BEATLES and [Jimi] Hendrix and CREAM and all that, and then classical music afterwards. But ever since then… I stopped listening to music a long, long time ago, because I feel like I've got enough making it myself. It seems enough music."

According to Uli, he was "very guitar driven" when he first started playing music. "The stuff that interested me were always the bands that had great guitar players in their bands," he explained. "If there wasn't a [great] guitar player, then I wasn't interested back then. I guess I wasn't mature enough yet. But that was certainly, at that moment, when I started out, I was very guitar driven."

Roth has been fairly vocal in the rock press about his lack of interest in the current state of music. He has stated there is a lack of creativity and originality in today's bands.

"Everybody has to find their own influences," he told The Southington Observer. "They should look to the past to find out what’s good in their mind and "always learn from it."

"I found my way early on and still find myself reinventing myself so I don't get bored," he said.

Roth was in the SCORPIONS for five years before leaving the group in 1978, following the release of the live double album "Tokyo Tapes".

In recent years, Roth has revisited the early music of his period with the SCORPIONS, which resulted in the "Scorpions Revisited" double CD and "Tokyo Tapes Revisited" DVD/Blu-ray releases.

The North American leg of Uli's 50th-anniversary tour kicked off on March 20 at Whisky A Go Go in Los Angeles and will run through May.