“Well, I can’t stand the lyrics, but I think it’s a great classic rock riff.”

Uli Jon Roth said that he “can’t stand” the lyrics of the Scorpions classic “Rock You Like a Hurricane”, but praised the song’s riffs as one of the key ingredients for its greatness.As poetic as some people can make them, lyrics in rock songs don’t tend to be Nobel Prize-level literature. As Nuno Bettencourt once put it, rock songs are “nursery rhymes for adults” — which is fine, given that the lyrics are just one part of a broader spectacle and/or listening experience.

As such, it’s not exactly mind-blowing that Uli Jon Roth isn’t a fan of the lyrics for “Rock You Like a Hurricane”, released six years after the guitarist’s departure as part of the iconic 1984 LP “Love at First Sting”. He does, however, admire the song’s riff greatly, as he revealed in a recent interview with “The Card King Sports Variety Show” (transcription via Blabbermouth):

“Well, I can’t stand the lyrics, but I think it’s a great classic rock riff. I mean, that’s really quite something to write a riff like that. It’s unforgettable. So, yeah. Bravo, Rudolf [Schenker].”

Asked if there’s anything he’d change anything about the song, Roth said:

“The title, of course, is great, but I wouldn’t have liked the lyrics. But regarding the guitar lead, I think I would have played a guitar lead which supports the song. I never did anything that destroyed Rudolf’s songs. On the contrary, I think we jelled very well. Had I stayed in the band, I would have, of course, played something that supports [and] fits those songs. Absolutely.

Still, Roth is adamant that his point was not that he’d play the lead guitar “better” but rather “differently”, simply because he’s a different kind of player from his successor Matthias Jabs:

“I would have played it differently. That’s all. I would have played a different lead, because Matthias is Matthias and I’m who I am and we think differently. So, yes, I’m sure I would’ve done a different lead. But the song lives because of the riff and the vocals, not because of the guitar lead. The guitar lead in that song wouldn’t have been so important, really. I would have done my best and I’d try to do my best, but the riff, we would have played the riff just as it is, because it’s perfect. I wouldn’t change anything there.”

Although undeniably different, both players belong to the old guard of players whose philosophy shaped rock music of the ’70s and the ’80s. Uli Jon Roth recently admitted that he’s not a fan of some of the younger generation of guitarists, specifically those who tend to fall into established conventions:

“Too many things are nondescript at the moment. We need more uniqueness, we need more expression, more depth, and more message. Jimi Hendrix was not by nowadays standards a great technical player. But what he played was always good enough for what he wanted to express – that was just that time. The time of arpeggios had not yet arrived. But within what he did, every note – whether it was good or bad – had a meaning. A real meaning. Just like a sentence in a great novel has a meaning.”