Guitar legend MICHAEL SCHENKER is featured in a new interview with Jeb Wright at Classic Rock Revisited discussing his latest album, Bridge The Gap and his history with the SCORPIONS. An excerpt is available below:

Michael: "The thing with Lovedrive (Scorpions), it was like my brother found out that I split from UFO and it was a perfect opportunity for them to ask if I would help out. Matthias (Jabs) had just joined and wasn’t ready. I was kind of in limbo land not knowing what my next step was going to be. When I did the Lovedrive album everyone was so impressed and they really persuaded me to join the band and they got rid of Matthias, basically. I did a little bit of the tour and I realized that I could not do this. I had done this, and I had been there, but there was something else that I needed to do but I couldn’t figure out yet what it was. I was invited to audition for AEROSMITH and stuff like that. I kind of disappeared from the tour because I couldn’t talk to them as I knew they would try to persuade me to stay. I just couldn’t. Matthias freaked out and he left again and they asked me again and I said, 'I can’t do this, honestly, I can’t do this.' They said, 'Please, please, please.' I tried again but I just couldn’t do it. I couldn’t stand on stage, night after night, copying other people’s lead breaks.

Eventually, in 1980, I understood what was happening. My brother’s vision was to make it all the way to the top with a band. It was his dream, but it wasn’t my dream. I am a lead guitarist who needs musical freedom. Matthias eventually joined for good and they found somebody who was pulling on the same string and that was important. I always tell my brother that he would have never been able to experience what he experienced because I would not have been pulling on the same string, as I have a totally different dream than he has. It would not have really matched, anyway."

Go to this location for the complete interview.

In the clip below, Michael Schenker tells BraveWords correspondent and Metal Mayhem host Matthew O'Shaughnessy about creating his new album, Bridge The Gap, which was produced by Schenker and Michael Voss, his very beginning days in Germany, the music that inspired him at a young age, charging ever forward for more than forty years as a guitar pioneer, his acceptance of The Lifetime Achievement In Rock And Roll Award and much more as the candid interview progresses.

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