Roine Stolt
I was born
in
And started my career in the late 60's playing bass in local rock bands,
covers of Jimi Hendrix, Jeff Beck, Beatles and King
Crimson. The Psychedelic era really made an impression on me,
and groups like The Doors, Jimi Hendrix Experience,
Vanilla Fudge, Procol Harum
and the Beatles "Magical Mystery... " era
were the new exciting world of music.
I switched
to guitar in 73 and in the brief sojourn with Allman
Brothers-influenced "Orexis", I started to understand my compositional abilities. At
this time I felt a strong urge to become a part of the professional music scene
but didn't know how to get there.
In the
summer of 74 I became the guitarist in KAIPA, a hard-working, professional,
progressive rock band with daily rehearsals. It was a magical experience for a
17-year old musician. The group made three successful albums on the DECCA label
and was busy touring more than 100 gigs a year, including national TV and radio
performances in
In 1979 I
left KAIPA to form my own group FANTASIA. The group split
up in 83. I started working as a 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 and Oates.
In the late
80's I started up my own publishing and recording label - Foxtrot Music - and
was also involved in various projects including live performances and recording
sessions with other artists and my style
wandered away from symphonic rock towards more traditional rock, funk , pop,
folk, blues and jazz. In my own "Stolt"
project, on CD release The Lonely Heartbeat, the
sound is a mix of pop and complex rock.
I played
and recorded with many different artists during the 80's: Rebecka
Törnqvist, Anders Widmark,
Dana Dragomir, Zia, Moni, Åsa Jinder, Wennman,
Desert Honkers, Claes Jansson. I became the father of two sons, Johan Sebastian
and Peter Gabriel, named after two of my all-time musical mentors.
The 90's
saw the rebirth of progressive rock, and time was right for a revisit. I
released the CD The Flower King in mid-August of 94. 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.
The band The
Flower Kings is now well established, having released Back In The World Of Adventures, Retropolis, Stardust We Are, Flower Power , the highly acclaimed
live recording Alive On Planet Earth, Space Revolver and The Rainmaker. All these CD's have
received fantastic reviews, and the group's reputation is ever growing through
countless articles, interviews and air time in the progressive press and on prog radio stations around the world.
As a side
project I joined forces with Mike Portnoy of Dream Theater, Pete Trewavas of Marillion and Neal Morse of Spocks
Beard to form the progressive "supergroup" TRANSATLANTIC. Transatlantic has released two studio albums, SMPT:e (2000) and Bridge Across Forever (2001) plus the Live in America double CD. They have also
been on successful tours of the
I have also
contributed to other recording projects, the latest being a reunion of KAIPA. Kaipa released Notes From
The Past in March 2002. Other recent projects are Karmakanic-Enter the Spectra.