INTERVIEW: Michael Schenker goes ‘Universal’ in more ways than one
Photo: The Michael Schenker Group recently released the album Universal. Photo courtesy of Matthias Rethmann / Provided by Earsplit PR with permission.
Legendary guitarist Michael Schenker is currently touring the United States, bringing tunes off his latest album to fans who have been yearning for live gigs ever since the beginning of the COVID-19 pandemic. The new recording of the Michael Schenker Group, or MSG, is called Universal, which is an apt name because the band is touring the world and has no plans of stopping. By the time their global trek is complete, they will have visited multiple continents and countless countries.
Fans can check out MSG tonight, Oct. 23, at the Newton Theater in Newton, New Jersey. Then, upcoming dates are scheduled for Glenside, Pennsylvania; Leesburg, Virginia; Stroudsburg, Pennsylvania; Cincinnati; and Nashville. Audience members can expect not only tunes off Universal, but also MSG’s recent album Immortal, plus some of the classic songs from UFO.
“I do things based on what happens in the moment and the circumstances,” Schenker said in a phone interview earlier this year. “It was the pandemic that I did the first album with [vocalist] Ronnie Romero. That was Immortal, and we had tours that were postponed, canceled, postponed, canceled and so on. That album, Immortal … was very successful, but there was no touring happening. So I decided to make another album. The timing between Immortal and Universal was a year, but that’s normal for me anyway. Sometimes I make two albums a year, but I used that time to actually record two great albums. And now we make up for touring.”
That return to the road has been wonderful for Schenker and his band. They played four shows in the United Kingdom in October 2021, and then earlier in 2022, they toured around Europe. He’s finding that the fans are singing along to the tunes and pounding their heads to the guitar riffs.
“Then we do Japan with Ronnie,” the guitarist said about the upcoming touring plans. “Then we do Australia and South America, and then hopefully with the album being released, if it’s doing really well, then we probably end up doing a lot of shows again or different shows in the same country, etc. … I love to tour. I’m still 16-18 years in my head, but my body isn’t, you know.”
The new album begins with the track “Emergency,” which was selected by Atomic Fire Records to be song #1.
“They immediately went, ‘That song is going to be the opener,'” Schenker remembers. “The good thing about that song is it’s catchy, and it’s kind of messing around with timing, which is interesting craftsmanship. And so it’s unusual for us, unusual for me and for my fans, and so they wonder, oh wow, what is the album going to be like? Then we came up with ‘A King Is Gone,’ which is completely opposite, so, again, that makes the people go, wow, what is the album going to be like?”
Although Schenker loves touring with his band, which also includes Steve Mann, Barend Courbois and Bodo Schopf, when it comes to the recording studio, he prefers to be by himself.
“I love to be by myself when I play, when I do my recording,” he said. “When all the others do their recording, they need to be by themselves, and I leave it up to Michael Voss because he is the engineer. We are co-producing the album. I bring in the songs, brand new with music, and Michael Voss he usually doesn’t know what I’m bringing in. When we hit the record button, he gets to learn the song. He immediately starts writing lyrics and vocal melodies, etc., and then we make a blueprint and put down drums, bass, keyboards and get as ready for all the other musicians to understand what this is about. And then what Michael and I do, once my music has been written, and I record my backing tracks, from then on, we just go step by step, day by day, brick by brick. We never know what the album is going to be at the end of the day.”
By John Soltes / Publisher / John@HollywoodSoapbox.com
Michael Schenker Group’s new album is called Universal, and they have several United States concerts scheduled for the coming weeks. Click here for more informations and tickets.
