BIOGRAPHY
Rowan Robertson is an English rock guitarist who currently performs in the Las Vegas production show Raiding the Rock Vault and his Solo Band. Robertson is best known from his time in Dio, and also played guitar for AM Radio, Vast, and Violet's Demise. Robertson has also done work as a film composer for director Amber Moelter's Dirty Step Upstage and has filmed numerous instructional guitar videos.
Rowan was recruited to join the band Dio when he was only 17 years of age. The experience launched the young guitarist from obscurity to international fame nearly overnight. News that the band Dio had replaced departing guitarist Craig Goldy with an unusually young guitar player circulated in hard rock and heavy metal magazines such as Hit Parader, Rip, and Circus months before Robertson's first and only album with the band, Lock Up the Wolves, was released.
When Dio was put on ice due to the Ronnie James Dio-Black Sabbath reunion, Rowan began pursuing two new projects: work on an instruction video for guitar players and a new band with vocalist Oni Logan (formerly of Lynch Mob) and drummer Jimmy Paxson. They began to record an album for Atlantic Records, but it was not released by the label at that time. Atlantic Records eventually released the album – titled Revisited – in 2002 under a different band name: Logan-Robertson. After Violet's Demise, Robertson spent three years doing session work in Los Angeles, as well as some work in Japan, where he toured briefly.
Robertson then worked with the VAST (Visual Audio Sensory Theater), founded and fronted by Jon Crosby, on the tour supporting the project's first album. VAST took a theatrical approach to performances. Although Robertson played live with the band after they had released their first album and he contributed to the development of the second VAST release, Music for People, he parted ways with VAST due to creative differences. Much of the work Robertson contributed to VAST was on rhythm guitars, while Robertson is specifically known for a wide range of ability spanning strong rhythm and lead guitars.
Robertson was recruited by Kevin Ridel and Weezer's Rivers Cuomo. Having relocated to Los Angeles during his Dio years, Robertson was intimately connected to the music scene that was developing and beginning to diversity the airwaves following the heavy rotation of grunge artists that began to wane following the genre's own peak in the late 1990s. Throughout this time, Robertson continued working with Violet's Demise's Oni Logan – a collaboration that would eventually pave the way for the latent release of Violet's Demise's debut album, which had been shelved years earlier. The band's first full-length album, produced by Rivers Cuomo, Radioactive, was released on Elektra in 2003. It included the singles "Taken for a Ride" and "I Just Wanna Be Loved." "I Just Wanna Be Loved" was featured on the WB television series Smallville and released on the show's soundtrack. Also in 2003, "Taken for a Ride" was featured on the video game soundtrack for EA Sports' John Madden Football 2003. The band received more support from WB when "Taken for a Ride" was featured on an episode of One Tree Hill. The song also appeared on a television trailer for the FOX feature film The Girl Next Door that same year.
One of Robertson's more obscure projects is a band called Happy Birthday. In April 2005 Robertson embarked on a short West Coast tour with Happy Birthday, supporting Jimmy Chamberlin's band, The Jimmy Chamberlin Complex.
In 2005 Robertson also began collaboration on a project called Wicked Outlaw. "The new band, featuring guitarist Robertson and Finnish composer and bassist Marko Pukkila (formerly of Altaria)," was "writing original material" and was expected to debut and tour the United States and Europe in 2006 according to Blabbermouth.net. Initial gestures to organize Wicked Outlaw actually dated back to as early as May 2004 and was known to be looking for a singer and drummer.
DC4 originally featured Shawn Duncan (of Odin) on drums, Matt Duncan on bass, and Jeff Duncan (of Armored Saint and Odin) on vocals and guitar. DC4 released their debut album, Volume 1, with guitarist Hyland Church in 2002. Rowan joined the band in 2006 as a replacement for Church and featured on the band's second album, Explode, in 2007. Robertson also appeared on their third album, Electric Ministry in 2011.
In 2014, Rowan Robertson joined as a member of Bang Tango.
Since May 2011, Robertson has served as a columnist for Intense Guitar and Bass Magazine. He has also teamed up with longtime Black Sabbath keyboardist Geoff Nicholls, Nils Patrik Johansson, and others in a band called The Southern Cross. The band focuses on Black Sabbath and Dio material that none of the other original members of those bands are playing any more.
2025 is gearing up for Robertson’s next solo album, “Temple of the Sun” with former Steppenwolf singer Danny Wilde and others. Tour dates are forthcoming after the album drops.
BULLET POINTS
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