MICHAEL SCHENKER: 'A Big Surprise Is Coming Up In The Near Future'

Legendary guitarist Michael Schenker (MSG, UFO, SCORPIONS) has posted the following update at his official web site:

"I really had a great tour 2003/2004. I teamed up with Dean Guitars and worked on a Michael Schenker model. It turned out great.

"In December I did a project with Bob Kulick. He is the brother of Bruce Kulick (guitarist of KISS). I was invited to do lead guitars on all songs (covers) with great musicians involved such as: Vinnie Appice, Sebastian Bach, Mike Baird, Gary Barden, Brett Chassen, Paul Di'Anno, Aynsley Dunbar, Tony Franklin, Mike Inez, Bob Kulick, Tony Levin, Marco Mendoza, Tim 'Ripper' Owens, Jeff Pilson, Rudy Sarzo, Tommy Shaw, Eric Singer, Marc Slaughter, Jeff Scott Soto, Phil Soussan, Joe Lynn Turner, Leslie West, Edgar Winter, Chuck Wright and Simon Wright. It was a great session. I had a lot of interview requests and ask Bob to send me the final CD. When I received it, I was quite shocked. I didn't know if I should laugh or cry. The CD cover had a big MSG logo on the front. MSG had become a cover song band with out my permission. It is weird how people keep sneaking around me. However, it is a great album but these creepy, greedy people do bother me. If it was Bob's or the record company Cleopatra's idea. I don't understand the desperation and how they keep thinking they can get away with these kind of actions.

"After the Bob Kulick project with the unauthorized MSG logo, I did some stuff with Siggi Schwarz. That was fun too. After that I arranged to get Jari Tiura over to Phoenix to do the vocals for the 25-year [anniversary] MSG 'Tales of Rock 'n' Roll' album. He had been preparing for a while and it was time to do the recording. He did a great job. The backing tracks were done in the Michael Schenker Recording Studio a while back and it has a great sound. Especially the drums. After Jari, I did my leads and flew Robin McAuley in to do his vocals. Great performance. Wayne was in the studio too, to record seven-string guitars and keyboards. In the meantime, Kelly Keeling was already working on his song and wrote one for Gary Barden. Graham Bonnet also started working on his vocals. It seemed like it was taking forever. I moved the session to L.A. Rick Pliester carried on engineering the album in his studio. In between I flew to Cotati near San Francisco where I did another SCHENKER/PATTISON summit album titled 'The Endless Jam Continues'. It turned out as good as the first one and straight after that I went to the NAMM show in L.A. where I signed autographs for two days. In April I went to the Music Exhibition in Frankfurt where I did more signing. Rudolf [Schenker] was there too along with his girlfriend Tanja and my mom. It was short but sweet. Than it was time to return my favor to Jeff Martin and played a solo on his new album. I recorded it in the studio where Siggi does all his recordings. They have a great engineer there (good old Romi) and I decided to have Leif [Sundin] fly in to put down his vocals. Now the only person left was Chris Logan. He managed to finally get his stuff done. Good job, Chris, and now we are almost done. I will do some more fine tuning and it's ready to rock. It seems that it is easier to build a house then getting this kind of an album done. It really was a test of patience.

"Currently, I am working on putting together a world tour and hope to see you out there soon.

"A big surprise is coming up in the near future."