Tokyo Tapes represents the swan song for Uli Roth as a member of the Scorpions. He was always a square peg in a proverbial round hole anyway, but for my tastes, he was the most creative member of the band. He was also the final link to their psychedelic past. Not surprisingly, the majority of the material comes from their RCA years, most notably Taken By Force, Virgin Killer, and In Trance, with a nod to Fly to the Rainbow and one track from Lonesome Crow (the least representative unfortunately). The album opens with the unreleased 'All Night Long' which is in the now-patented straightforward hard rock sound that Klaus Meine and Rudolf Schenker had adopted by then. Then a couple of Virgin Killer run-throughs gets us to one of the highlights of Tokyo Tapes: 'Polar Nights'. As I've said many times before, live albums are pretty useless if you play the studio versions verbatim. This is the one place that Roth gets in some improvisation - especially the opening. One wishes for it to go another 10 more minutes, it's so awesome. And he really lets loose on the solos later on in the piece. The other Roth great moment is the stinging intro (see what I did there...) to 'Dark Lady'. Other highlights includes the psychedelic oriented 'Fly to the Rainbow' and 'We'll Burn the Sky", the B-sider 'Suspender Love', and the hard rocking 'Speedy's Coming'. All one can do is imagine how awesome this live set would have been if it included other Roth penned tunes like 'Drifting Sun', 'Hell Cat', and 'Sails of Charon', with the latter omission being almost criminal since it was on the preceding Taken By Force. Honestly though, take Roth out of the mix, and this album becomes unnecessary. For their part, the Scorpions were ready for the next chapter, when they hired on guitarist Matthias Jabs to replace Roth, changed labels to Mercury, and muscled up for the oncoming heavy metal onslaught. Uli Roth went on to form the also excellent Electric Sun.
Ownership: LP: 1978 RCA (Japan). Gatefold. 2xLP. Acquired at the Denver Record Show (2021). I'd been on the lookout for the album in the wilds for the last 3 years, but no such luck. I sure never expected to get the original Japanese version! Not cheap, but below online market prices. The rose cover is much different than the US cover, and it features an embossed scorpion on the front. Also includes a 4 page insert with lyrics in English and liner notes in Japanese.
I first got into the Scorpions in early 1980 with Lovedrive (while still in my freshman year of high school), and Tokyo Tapes was my next purchase. It was the commodity US pressing on RCA. I played it to death, oftentimes on my Dad's old Japanese stereo from the late 50s, that had a heavy tonearm and (probably) destroyed needle.
1980; 6//05; 11/5/11; 12/26/21 (new entry)
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