Arlen Roth
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Arlen Roth

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Arlen Roth

Arlen Roth (born October 30, 1952) is an American guitarist, teacher, and author. From 1982 to 1992, he was a columnist for Guitar Player magazine. Those ten years of columns became a book, Hot Guitar.

Arlen Roth's father, Al Ross (Abraham Roth), was a cartoonist for The New Yorker magazine and many other publications over a 75-year career. He lived to the age of 100, and was one of the four Roth Brothers: Al Ross, Irving Roir, Ben Roth and Salo, all of whom became cartoonists. Al Ross was also a great painter and fine artist, and he was the one who encouraged Arlen to become a guitarist when he saw Arlen playing along with the flamenco records he would play in the Bronx apartment.

Roth attended the High School of Music and Art in New York City as an art student from 1966 to 1969. He then studied at the Philadelphia College of Art from 1969 to 1971. His band Steel lived with him and played in Woodstock, New York, on weekends, where he was discovered. In 1970, Steel put on the first Woodstock Reunion concert to commemorate the one-year anniversary of the festival in Bethel, New York, where Roth lived every summer since he was born. Steel was the only band and played four hours each day. Soon after, he moved to Woodstock and began his career as a professional guitarist.

He began to back-up in recording and touring with Happy and Artie Traum, Eric Andersen, Tony Bird, Paul Butterfield, Art Garfunkel, John Herald, Janis Ian, Janey & Dennis (Janey Street & Dennis Pereca}, Looking Glass, Don McLean, John Prine, Helen Schneider, Pete Seeger, Phoebe Snow, Dusty Springfield, Loudon Wainwright III. He toured with the Bee Gees in 1974, Simon and Garfunkel in 1983, and Duane Eddy with Huey Lewis and the News. In 1976, he appeared in the Bob Dylan film Renaldo and Clara performing with Ramblin' Jack Elliott, Patti Smith and Phil Ochs.

He is featured performing on his 1953 Telecaster with Patti Smith in the 2019 Bob Dylan / Martin Scorsese film "Rolling Thunder." From the 1975 tour of the same name. Bob Dylan borrowed Roth's Martin 000-18 guitar that night, which Arlen bought from Ry Cooder earlier that year when Arlen was on tour with John Prine.

His first book, Slide Guitar, was published by Oak Publications when he was 21. In 2012 Thank You Les, a Les Paul tribute album and documentary, were released with Roth performing "Mr. Sandman" and his daughter Lexie Roth singing the Les Paul and Mary Ford song "Vaya Con Dios".

He released a Slide Guitar Summit album in 2015 featuring duets with guitarists Cindy Cashdollar, Sonny Landreth, David Lindley, Greg Martin, Lee Roy Parnell, Jack Pearson, Rick Vito, Jimmy Vivino, and Johnny Winter. This is said to be Winter's final recording.

Roth is a Telecaster enthusiast who wrote the book Masters of the Telecaster detailing the techniques of many famous Telecaster guitarists. He has been called "Master of the Telecaster."

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