Biography
Stolt started his career in the late 1960s playing bass guitar in local rock bands. He switched to guitar in 1973 and in the brief sojourn with Allman Brothers-influenced "Orexis". In 1974 he became the guitarist in Kaipa, a professional progressive rock band, he was 17 years old at that time, the group made three successful albums and toured more than 100 gigs a year, including national TV and radio performances in Scandinavia. These Kaipa albums are now reissued worldwide and are often regarded as the premier Scandinavian symphonic rock albums of the seventies. In 1979 he left Kaipa to form his own group Fantasia and made two albums. The group split up in 1983 and Roine started working as a solo and session musician, arranger and producer.
It was at this point I felt I had really learned to master the guitar that my career as singer started on the 1985 album "Behind The Walls", which was a melodic and romantic album more in the style of Jackson Browne or Hall & Oates. —Roine Stolt on The Flower Kings websiteIn the late 80's he started his own publishing and recording label called Foxtrot Music and was also involved in various projects including live performances and recording sessions with other artists going from symphonic rock towards more traditional rock, funk, pop, folk, blues and jazz. Under the "Stolt" project he released "The Lonely Heartbeat" in 1989, the sound is a mix of pop and complex rock.
Witnessing the progressive rock revival of the 1990s, a movement that partly originated from Sweden with bands like Landberk and Anglagard, Roine Stolt was quick to come back to his ancient love. Recruiting ex-Jonas Hellborg drummer Jaime Salazar and ex-Samla Mammas Manna percussionist Hasse Bruniusson, he released The Flower King in mid-August 1994. Stimulated by the warm response, he enlisted brother Michael Stolt (bass, vocals) and longtime friend Tomas Bodin (keyboards) and formed the Flower Kings, which would remain his principal musical project for years to come.
It was an album that tried to unleash the forces of good in the negative, violent, aggressive, competitive music business of today. Reinstate the old hippie ideals, lyrically and musically. —Roine Stolt on The Flower King, from The Flower Kings websiteIn 1998 he released his second solo album Hydrophonia which reveals major influences by early progressive musicians such as Frank Zappa and Steve Howe among others.
In the year 2000 Roine worked in two different projects, the supergroup Transatlantic, and the re-launch of Kaipa in which he was involved in three albums from 2002-2005. He re-entered the studio with Transatlantic in 2009, for an album release later in the year.
Read more about this topic: Roine Stolt
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