The Matthias Jabs story

[Music] why did i decide to open up my own guitar store it started with the invention of my special signature guitar called master caster it's like a roughly like a striat style looking guitar with a 24 fret neck lots of pickups and all kinds of sounds i decided to like have this guitar built for me because in the studio i'm playing so many different sounds i play all the overdubs i play the basics so you know i use gibson guitars explorers list balls strats telecasters and when we go out on the road and i'm on stage i only have the two hands so i have to reproduce all the sounds that i recorded in the studio so i i tried to get boris domoji who's like my guitar maker get him to build something where i can like reproduce all the sounds with one instrument uh from all the songs of the long scorpions uh discography and therefore i came up with a guitar and as soon as i went on stage with it i had so many people asking me you know the first one was the zebra striped one with it like very fleshy look they asked me where can i get it and um they wanted to buy it from me they didn't want to order it like drag tilly from boris so after a while i thought what can i do i cannot invite everybody to my house especially not when i'm on the road so i won't be there and that's why at some point in the summer of 2007 we are playing um in augsburg which is not too far away from munich where we are right now uh and a friend of mine told me there is a music store like um like it was almost like a like a porn store where they have you buying selling trading like used instruments and the two guys wanted to retire and wanted to give up their store and i looked at it it was total chaos and i still liked it i liked the area like the street nice address parise parisien street paris street and i said okay i buy it so i bought the whole store with all the crap that was in there some of the stuff was very good some vintage instruments and then we cleaned it all out within like the first three months and then i closed the store and we renovated it you know a new wiring new everything your new carpeting especially designed with my logo and you know we made it really nice this stage behind me where bands have been playing for the opening the scorpions were here to play last year they were here again and so it's been a lot of activities and yeah that's the story of the store and that's why i had to have a neutral place where people can meet and check out my signature instruments that was the the initial thought but meanwhile you know it turned into a music store with all kinds of guitars and all the brands and and new and used and vintage and ukulele and kitties guitars and everything but we have no drums no keyboards no brass no like in the mess in frankfurt when you walk into one of the bigger rooms with save me from the percussion room i know it's like 20 people in the same room trying hyatt symbols i mean you walk in death you know you walk out with bleeding ears [Music] um yes i played at local bands in hanover and we were playing all over germany though starting out with deadlock in 1975 i went to fargo in 1976 and also in within 76 i switched to lady a band that were like consists of members from jane which was like a very popular band at the time keyboard player and drama and so we were also working a lot for television so i got like a little bit of experience how to active from the camera i forgot everything about it and and so that was a good experience for me we went to the studio we recorded something so when i joined the scorpions only months later i had at least a bit of experience regarding recording and camera work uh which was good which was helpful and um yeah at some point rudolf schenker called me and said if i wanted to join them in the rehearsal room for a jam session i said yeah let's go and we we played a few songs all scorpions material from the 70s and at some point he called me again and he said if we want to like rehearse and then meanwhile because i knew only john roth very well like his younger brother jochen and me we went to school together we grew up in the same area outside of hanover and we played guitar together so i knew that he had quit the band and the second time rudolf called me was for like a real rehearsal what i didn't know though was that before i played with them they went to london to rehearse uh with like 140 guitar players like 12 hours a day three days more or less around the clock and i think it was re recommended by hermann who had lived in our ex-drama who had lived in london and he thought that's where you find the best guitar players obviously not and uh so then i rehearsed with them and then they said yes you're under the new guy and since then i'm in the band sitting here talking about it 38 years later but it's you know as they say time flies when you're having fun it doesn't feel long at all it feels fresh and young and the memory is absolutely complete and the band sits together and talks about the old days or first time to america or whatever in 79 or to japan you know the especially those stories from the very beginning they really stuck in your mind and we know every detail about every trip and it's fun to talk about it i played the strat uh just because you know i i like stratocasters until today um [Music] i played it because you know i'm a i really love jimi hendrix a lot and you know all those greats richie blackmore listened to jeff beck and everybody played strat at the time you know in the 70s it was like either strat all this ball very few sgs very few flying vs almost no explorer so when i picked up the explorer i did it because i needed like a humbucking sound elise paul was too heavy for me at the time for the stage and the cutaway is not good enough and also i needed to have like a counterpart to the flying v of rudolph and flying v explorer really look very fleshy those are the two most flashy guitars gibbs never made they are the originals for all the guitars that came later the heavy star shape or whatever those two guitars that's yes the futuristic ones from the late 70s i think the first prototype of the explorer i saw one one day it was from 1957 and they were like published in 1958 and built also in 1959 very few explorers super expensive today if you find an original and there's so many fakes around be careful and um flying v a few more or a lot more but still very valuable and so i picked the explorer because of that so it gave the band a look you know right away and i think for many years i was the only halfway popular guitar player with an explorer and you know until you know i extended it in the late 80s when i recommended gibson to build me guitar that has more frets but less body size so that's why the explorer 90 is the one i'm playing today [Music] yeah michael played the the flying v when he went to ufo and uh rudolph always played fine with as long as i can remember and he's got plenty so you know all he has is flying leaves um hundreds i guess and from all different uh like periods and he is also i think at least for 1958 flying these very nice and yeah i've been surrounded the first time i saw flying me and it was really like a very fleshy picture from johnny winter i had this poster in my room and a very tiny little room and i went to school you know and you know learned how to play guitar i'm self-taught and i had this poster this famous poster johnny winter with the 1958 where you see this rubber piece for a good reason even though that does work the flywheel has a problem here's the one you know with the jimi hendrix painting a hand-painted guitar flying me it's very you know looks flashy nice on stage but very good to play but to play sitting down is a problem because if you go like this as you wish then it slides down that's why the 58 in the beginning has this piece of rubber here so that's it's supposed to stop it from sliding down but obviously you know gravity is much stronger than this little piece of rubber and so that didn't work but you know to sit there i see rudolph in the studio and he sits like this it's not very comfortable and it's very hard to like you know have your body groove while you have like a shovel like this between your legs and an explorer is much more comfortable and in the studio you do sit down you know when the band plays together with drums then okay you stand up and like in a rehearsal room but we for many many decades record in the control room and everybody's sitting down you can't stand up for 12 hours you know then your energy goes into your legs and yeah but you you know you want the energy here on the fretboard and it's a very nice looking guitar this one here especially i think in this little astro thingy you know yep you got a knob here to stop it that's why the knob is there the other this is not just stopping the other way around anyway it's a great invention and um and it's it's a very good sounding guitar yeah it's it's nice to move around it's light you don't need a guitar stand you know it stands by itself very good i mean it hit the nickname flying arrow would you open the window please you know you you shoot it up to the moon you throw it around it flies very well short distance though and yes it's it's a very special simple shape very flashy you know it's right into your face and that's why it looks good for the the rock star the posing rock star you know you see some guitar players the more introvert ones uh you know you couldn't imagine jeff beck playing a flying league you know he's more into what he does at this moment some people run around and you know you know this and uh so it's it's a rock star guitar i would say for the posing rockstar and but it's a beautiful instrument it's well laid out it's well balanced and it sounds great especially when you get a good when you get a good one this one is a very good one and so i know it i've been surrounded by flying these they sound great and you know especially the ones from 58 or later on some of the mid 60s 67 also great and obviously the early 70s with the medallion the great and the new owens you know it's hard to find a very good one but it's a very good looking and unique looking guitar yeah the guitar became popular and it has to do with its look a lot you know because it's like good for posing for photos tv show you know it's just at the time it was so unusual that somebody played a flying v on stage and probably the the people around the player said great you know do that again it looks fantastic all the photographer friends yes yes yes you know so it's it's a looker yeah you know but it's a good playing a good sounding look which makes it so successful but i picked the explorer for various reasons you know to have it like a nice band look two guitar players one explorer one flying lee and also it's it's more comfortable to play for me especially when sitting down yes i mean it also depends a lot on playing if i think you know you give different guitar players the same guitar you will get a different sound to begin with and uh but it's a nice matching sound rudolf and i really created a sound that is now the typical scorpion sound you know you you can tell you know whatever album it is we created it in the late 70s early 80s especially with the release of blackout in 1982. i think that's when everybody knew this is the scorpion sound yes i played the v guitar in the studio i tried um this one here and i had i used to own a couple of medallions from the early 70s very nice sonic guitars um yes i did for a couple solos and um i remember only recently we were rehearsing and i was expecting you know the crew had set everything up and but there was none of mine guitars in the studio so we played the set and i borrowed one of rudolph so you know but we were standing up so you know if you sit down you can't play the guitar no but it's like i don't know it makes you stiff yeah because you have to also concentrate that you're holding the guitar with your legs if i have a like a good a good looking guitar for example you know this here you know it's like much more comfortable you can groove you can move you can do whatever you like it's sitting here by itself it's so well balanced because they got it got the shape yeah and it has like this here so you can rest it on your upper leg which is like now i can move both hands and with this i have to squeeze it into yeah it's like i don't know it's like now yeah what do i do it's like yeah you know don't drop it please yes not so many [Music] yes i my guitar heroes were the guitar greats from the 60s and 70s i listened to a lot of blues um learned a lot from johnny winter uh hendrix is my all-time favorite until today he's got something he's he's got some magic nobody else has no matter how good they are he's got something that's so influential it's so unique that it's uh you know he stands alone but i also listened a lot to de-purple with richie blackmore when deep up and rock came out that's when it was when i started playing guitar funny thing in 1982 we played together with rainbow in the u.s and we had this big radiohead uh no one like you who's like all my harmony lead guitars and um richie blackmore came to the dressing room and asked me how i played the harmony and that to me it was pretty good anyway he's a nice guy we met a lot of times later and yeah of course i couldn't say no and um yeah who else jeff beck like very stylish guitar player and of course i listened a lot to eric clapton with cream like white room one of my favorite songs it was basically all along the watchtower from hendrix that uh made me play guitar i heard it on the radio we only had one radio show uh once a week at the time and me and my sister we could stay up longer just to listen to sorry at 8 o'clock you know those were the days and i heard the song in the top 10 and i started crying and that was all along the watchtower and i asked a friend of mine in school i knew he played a bit of guitar he said i said what kind of instrument was this i read this song last night and he said it was an electrical guitar that's how much i knew about it so i said from then on i knew you know for my next birthday i got an acoustic guitar this is what i want to do [Music] the strat is a genius invention with everything involved leo fenner was a genius you know it's it's such a like the way it fits to your body the way it looks you can't get tired of that look the strat is the the ultimate classic looking guitar to me this ball is the counterpart it's also like basically shaped negan acoustic guitar with one cutaway so simple but so genius i mean this is also genius but it is like somebody thought about making it look flashy being inspired by what was going on in the 50s you know i'm on stage i play explorers most of the time but i learned and not only because i'm sitting in my guitar store here that guitar players which is a good thing for a guitar store owner they want basically everything they want to change they want the sound of a lisp or a flying v an explorer a telecaster have to have one and they want this and what their bass players you give them a second base just a spare instrument they don't know what to do with it you know because their strings never break they cook the strings right as we all did in the past we cook the strings yeah and you know they their strings never break and they can like transpose they don't have to have the open string for certain chords they can like play in every way and so but guitar players um and you know i'm one of them i like to have different models for different sounds for different aspects not so much on stage because there you have your own look but in the studio you like to experiment and you know have some odd instruments you know have a resonator guitar or they you know i mean we haven't even mentioned all the different acoustics there are um and you want to be able to deliver you have an idea you have a certain imagination about what it should sound like and it's nice to have a guitar store in the studio and when rudolf and i we went to austria once to record in the late 90s they'd never seen anything like it because we brought not all of the guitars but a lot like a truck full and it was like a nice you know there's no guitar store in the world that has what if we put our top guitars in one room you know all the vintage stuff flying these the explorers the the spawns the uh es 335 like 59 58 everything you know it's great that if you have too many guitars you can't play them all your house is not big enough to put them all on display and it's better for the guitars anyway to stay in the case so we have the same we have like our guitars in cases and they're in special containers and the containers in the warehouse and the warehouse is well hidden and you know and so you don't see your guitars you have a collection but you don't that's a bit of the problem you know i have a few guitars at home which when i'm in my studio i play all the time but if it's only 10 you you don't pick all 10 every day you pick the one that is sitting there right next to you and maybe another one so and that's a shame it's a yeah but what can you do it's even worse with acoustic guitars because they need to be played more than solid body guitars in order to sound good to maintain their sound if you don't play them they sound dead after a while you have to start playing them you know for hours and hours and days and days and if you have like let's say a collection of 30 acoustic guitars none of them will sound good because you don't have time enough to play each one of them so it's better to have like two and play them yes set the owner of a guitar star erase that immediately [Music] yes i mean when i joined the scorpions there were a great band [Music] pretty popular you know for those days nothing in comparison to today of course but they already left a certain mark and they had some great albums out in the 70s four or five i don't know exactly um but style-wise oli had his own style he was a very hendrix influenced and he sang his own songs his voice okay but um and then there was the other side that the klaus and ruloff site so to speak so the band never really had the one style it was always something here and there and i think that's difficult when i joined we found our style maybe not on the first album it was the search for it my influence was obviously you know that we have a like a more compact sound we sound like one unit and not like two different units and i think we finalized the style in 1982 with blackout and from then on you could say this is the scorpion style worldwide i mean to actually to you know now i'm in the band for 38 years uli my predecessor you know and friend he was in the band four or five years and michael played on lonesome crow he was in the band for one and a half years so to me he had no influence on scorpions because lonesome crow is really very different it's the first album he was trying out to do something he doesn't have any influence only influenced the 70s until you know i joined and the rest yeah it's just me i would say many bands break up or members leave because their own eagles are in their way and it either destroys the band or you know you have a new drama again and you have a new bass player again or whatever and that is in the way with the scorpions we found a good balance and we also one of the very few bands and really can play worldwide uh we just finished the tour in asia i mean we just played in vietnam we played in australia for the first time we played in new caledonia china japan taiwan singapore malaysia everywhere and not too many bands do this after you know we just played south america all countries and us anyway europe we play everywhere where do you find the energy to that uh it's because uh we like what we are doing and you know the audience the fans they give you the energy in case you know your battery is low you go on stage and they go yeah and then i'll give you a good example years and years and years ago when we were very young and and fresh we are still fresh but not so young anymore but in 1982 we flew from california to tokyo and it was only one day off basically the travel day and so we had to play the next night and we were all really tired and we got these very nice looking backstage passes like aluminum like that give it a nice japanese design went wow that's good looking and uh i asked the tour manager what does this number mean at the bottom 182 no 180 and he said you know that's show number 182 dumbass and i don't count shows but i realized that that night being so tired i realized wow at show number 182 for us and we are tired but show number one for the fans waiting out there in the venue so let's go and kick some ass and that's what we always do we discover like um different cultures you know uh by traveling around the world so much and discovering new places we just got offers to play on the fiji islands tahiti all those places it's interesting just because we haven't been there and we play to a whole new audience you know it's also good to play berlin for the 50th time but you know to have the side effect of getting to a new country like in vietnam just weeks ago it's fantastic you know but but it got one thing in common no matter where you play in the world the audience know your songs absolutely the audience comes prepared they know the songs they're singing they're dancing they're screaming that gives you the energy that is what musicians love to do and this is like that makes you almost um addicted you know it's nice to have a break after a long tour but uh it's after a while you know body and brain want some of that stuff and you have a bad mind you have a headache you have pain in your arm or something these things just disappear they disappear because the adrenaline you know flows your system and then it's it's all you want to do and i mean you get the the response and a great response immediately instantly and that's great in the studio even though i i really love to create new things you sit there and next to a boring engineer and you know and then everybody's like you know and you have to wait until the album is finished released and then you get the first reactions before you just you're making your own music that's the problem with these guys that's why they're engineers exactly [Laughter] yeah you took a selfie right okay thank you so very much thank you [Music] you

Channel: The Flying V Documentary

Views: 163,654

Keywords: Matthias Jabs, The Scorpions, The Flying V documentary, Peter Hansen

Id: q6VHpLJ9xUk

Length: 29min 58sec (1798 seconds)

Published: Tue Feb 01 2022