Michael Schenker

Born in Sarstedt, West Germany, in 1955, Michael Schenker established himself as a figure in German hard rock while still a teenager by contributing to the Scorpions’ debut album Lonesome Crow (1972), before joining UFO in the early 1970s. With the British band he played a central role on a string of albums that became landmarks of melodic hard rock — from Phenomenon (1974) to Obsession (1978) — and on the live album Strangers in the Night (1979). His guitar style, clean and incisive, combines a strong sense of melody, concise phrasing and a heavy‑metal tension without losing the 1970s rock grounding. After a brief return to the Scorpions for Lovedrive (1979), he formed the Michael Schenker Group, a lineup with varying personnel that passed through several phases: the taut hard rock of The Michael Schenker Group (1980), MSG (1981), Assault Attack (1982) and Built to Destroy (1983), and the more melodic register of the McAuley Schenker Group with Perfect Timing (1987), Save Yourself (1989) and M.S.G. (1991). His subsequent career alternated between returns to UFO — notably for Walk on Water (1995), Covenant (2000) and Sharks (2002) — projects under his own name, Temple of Rock in the 2010s, and a revival of the MSG name with Immortal (2021) and Universal (2022). In 2024 Michael Schenker published My Years with UFO, devoted to the repertoire of his first period with UFO.