Guitar wizard Michael Schenker recently released a new album titled Temple of Rock, which features many special guests including Pete Way of UFO, Herman Rarebell of Scorpions fame, his brother Rudolf Schenker from the Scorpions, Leslie West and even Star Trek’s William Shanter. The music on the album is well written and features the classic Michael Schenker guitar tone and unique style of guitar soloing that a fan of Michael’s would hope for.

In the conversation below, Michael, in his thick German accent, explains why he named the album Temple of Rock and how he sees the type of music he plays coming to an end. Instead of being sad or bitter, Schenker believes people will continue to appreciate the temple of music that he, and his contemporaries, have built over the last forty to fifty years.

We also discuss how Michael and Rudolf were never successful at combining their talents and making history together. Instead, they had to go their separate ways and, only now that the temple is built, can they create an album together.

Michael: Those three words came to me about two years ago when I had a realization that it had been forty years since Led Zeppelin started this rock sound. Since then, we have been listening to people like Led Zeppelin and Deep Purple. It looked like, to me, as if a building had been built over all the years. It was like Led Zeppelin were the pillars and Deep Purple were the foundation. The next generation added on the windows, and the other parts of the building, and the next generation added more bricks.

I expressed that to my brother once, in a conversation. It is like we have built a temple of rock. Now, people from all generations are playing together at festivals from Led Zeppelin’s day to the modern day. We can’t really go much further; the way that we have been doing it, and it seems like maybe a particular chapter is closing. The way we are used to having done it is coming to a close. We are now placing the roof on the temple and we are now celebrating that style of music.

Now, with technology, music is taking on a new face and doing things differently. It is very much different than the way we have done things for the last forty years. Somehow, I took this idea further and I realized that what I have been doing all of these years, I have made a very conscious effort to draw ideas from within, as much as I can. I have stayed away from music as a consumer, so that I don’t get sidetracked from the amazing music that everyone else is creating. I was more concerned that I wanted to express true color and expression that comes from my spirit as much as possible. I wanted to add my own color instead of listening to existing music and using the same color and just adding a color to it, which is also a way of doing things. I was more fascinated in being as pure as possible. Since I have been doing it all of these years, I have called it a temple. The creation coming from within my spirit is the holy ground.

Michael: It’s going to be different. We don’t know how different but it will be something else. Time goes on and we have to realize that every generation does something incredible with music. Maybe we have to realize that this era of rock is closed and that you can’t recreate the same thing. Moments never repeat, so it is a unique era. It will never be the same but I am sure that something else will be created that is fascinating but that we cannot comprehend because we aren’t from that generation.

Michael: I always write the same way. When I play during the day, I bump into things that I really like that make me go, “Whoa, that was great.” When it is time to make an album then I listen to those little things that inspired me and I make them into a song.

Michael: Michael Amott, Leslie West and myself played on that. Everything on this album came step by step and wasn’t really planned. At some point, we somehow decided to have a guitar battle. From there, we went to figure out who we should have on there. It developed to where I thought it would be great to capture three generations of guitarists. We represented my guitar hero, Leslie West, and I am one of Michael’s favorite guitarists. We cover thirty years on that song. I thought it was interesting to have three generations of guitarist on that song.

Michael: I don’t know; I just do what I think I should be doing. I just do the groundwork. Where it comes from, who knows? I just do my part.

Michael: I watched the show when I was about ten years old. It was quite outrageous at the time. I love stuff about space and I was very aware of him. It happened very simultaneously. Michael [Voss] came up with the idea for the intro. I liked it immediately and I said, “It would be great to have an actor with a big voice do that intro.” I got a call about doing a song with William Shanter at the same time and I said to Michael, “This is perfect.” We asked him and we both agreed to do each other’s album.

Michael: He is in many different ways. He has great ideas and he is very focused and easy to work with.

Michael: This is part of what I think is something beyond that brings people together. I think sometimes things just have to happen.

Michael: Pete is Pete. You just have to let it be and let him be and figure out a way to get it done. There is so much history with these people. Life goes on and we all have our ups and downs at different times. There are certain things that have to happen. I think Pete will become much bigger into the picture than he currently is. He is in a transformation process. When the time is right, all of the pieces will come together that have to come together.

Michael: I don’t think it is anything different. If you live life consciously and you belief that you’re developing then you just become a part of life. You don’t just go up. You go down as you go up, some people more, some people less. As I develop and go through my life there are certain things that I have to deal with. I was very shy when I was young and I grew out of it. Other things, as you develop, you overcome difficulties. I think that is all there is to it.

Michael: It is for the moment, I don’t like to compare my now with my now from before because every now is prefect.

Michael: I would rather embrace instead of battle. We had a battle but it was with guitars!

Michael: I don’t know if Rudolf realizes this as much as I do, but we had two visions. When I was 16, he was already 21, and I knew what I wanted. He also always knew what he wanted. Our visions were slightly different. My vision was to focus on the guitar and his was to focus on the band. The funny thing is that forty years later, we have kept our direction and we have focused on what we originally focused on. That is one of the reasons that we didn’t do our journey together, which I suppose many people would have liked to see. I’m not sure he is really aware of it but I am very aware of it. We could not have fulfilled our visions as accurately as we did if we had not done it that way. It was important for both of us to go our different ways. His vision is very strong but my vision requires different surroundings and a different type of momentum; it is a different journey. It would have been very much torture if we had tried to fulfill our visions together. We would have clashed.

Michael: Yes and the reason for this is because we’ve completed, more or less, our individual visions. Now, since we’ve done what we needed to do, we can relax. We have accomplished what we needed to do and it is now time to do something like that.