3 Guitar Heroes Postpone Tour

As soon as this tour was announced, I was excited about it.

For real, if I were to lay down my Baker's Dozen favorite guitar players, two of them would be former members of the Scorpions: Uli Jon Roth and Michael Schenker.

And Leslie West? Well, I did Mountain enough and I absolutely adore West, Bruce and Laing's Whatever Turns You On.

So the notion that these three legendary guitarists were touring together was something I was genuinely looking forward to, particularly when an Iowa date was announced on a Friday evening.

Just as I was getting excited, I got this announcement:

Michael Schenker, a true purveyor first-class hard guitar rock, is set to release the aptly titled Temple of Rock on October 11 on CD, digital formats, and vinyl. Unfortunately, his US visit with Uli Jon Roth and Leslie West on the 3 Guitar Heroes tour has been postponed until early 2012 due to Leslie West's leg amputation. More info will be made available at a later date.

Holy shit! The dude had his leg removed!

I thought surely a story like this would get more traction, but it obviously flew completely underneath my radar.

Evidently, it was an emergency amputation that occurred last June when his leg began to swell. They rushed Leslie to the hospital and, while there, he was advised that the procedure was needed to save his life.



Total bummer.

At first, I was convinced that Michael Schenker had done something silly.

On a press released concerning Schenker's upcoming record Temple of Rock, Schenker said:

"The Temple of Rock is within me where I create since I was introduced to the amazing invention of the distorted Guitar which is for me the most enjoyable and the best possible way to express myself. The Rock Guitar Sound that I fell in love with, mostly expressed as Lead break, is what I have nurtured and treasured all of my life. Combined with the infinite spring from within and the amazing musicians around me I keep expressing an ongoing development of my Art(Being). With Temple of Rock I am entering a new stage of my life, a new level of existence enjoying life more than ever, reaping the joy of all sorts of developments from the past.

Also, it seems to me that collectively, with true expressive makers of Rock Music, we have been building the external Temple Of Rock for many years and have now come to the point of putting on the roofing and celebrating the almost completion of the Temple. All generations of this period are meeting all over the world on one stage it seems celebrating an Era of 'Hand Made Rock' which will never be the same again due to invention of new technology but of course New Temples and New Wonders will arise to enjoy expressions in new ways."

What the fuck?

So you can see why I thought the postponed tour had something to do with Michael's deep fried synapse.

Here's for a speedy recovery.

To be able to see Uli and Michael playing together would be awesome.