2000 marks the thirty-fifth year in the career of guitarist Jukka Tolonen. This On The Rocky Road retrospective collection aims to provide an overview as well as to highlight some of Jukka's best works.

Three things must be considered when examining Jukka's music and professional life. Firstly, there's the wide scope of his versatility. Throughout the years, Jukka has performed and recorded music of many styles and genres, often simultaneously! Rock, pop, jazz, classical, funk, blues, boogie, reggae, worldly fusions and more. As a solo performer, in duos and trios, with bands, big bands, acoustic and electric, Jukka has covered a lot of ground and he's done it all with the ease of a highly gifted professional.

Secondly, it's the combination of his astounding technical skills as a player and his melodic /compositional abilities. Together, these two elements form a powerful force that many other guitarists could only hope to match.

Thirdly, Jukka's approach to playing, his motivation and attitude, has always been that of true devotion, one of all consuming passion. During the first decade of his career, with all the praise and adulation that was bestowed upon him, Jukka might have accepted the role of "Guitar God". Instead he chose a more unassuming path, one that would lead him to many challenging adventures but would also take him through some lean times.

His first venture into the big time was as guitarist for the successful progressive jazz/blues/rock fusion band Tasavallan Presidentti, who recorded four classic albums in their six year existence. Simultaneously, Jukka worked as the unofficial guitarist for the legendary Wigwam, appearing on two of their albums. Through this exposure, Jukka built a solid reputation for himself as a distinctive and electrifying player. But it was his first four brilliant and highly imaginative solo albums, where Jukka broke through to a new level of musicianship and public acclaim, earning legions of devoted fans, blowing Finnish and Swedish audiences away on stage and on record. Even today, those four albums, Tolonen!, Summer Games, The Hook and Hysterica are considered classics in the world of progressive jazz/rock fusion. During the years of their release, Jukka's stature among musicians and fans alike became immense and he was as revered at home as Clapton, Beck and Page were in their land. His fame traveled abroad as well, albeit on more of a cult level, throughout Europe and even USA, where no less than four Tolonen albums were released to underground critical raves. The mid seventies saw the formation of the Jukka Tolonen Band, a new line-up featuring another distinguished guitarist, Sweden's Coste Apetrea (ex Samla/Zamla), American drummer Bill Carson and a slight veering off into more jazz and funk territory. They released two excellent Love albums: Passenger to Paramaribo and the live album Montreux Boogie, including all new live material. A third JTB album followed, continuing in a jazz mode, featuring keyboardist Joachim Kuhn. Jukka finished off the decade with the magnificent solo acoustic album, Mountain Stream.

The early eighties found Jukka with a slightly changed profile, starting off with the High Flyin' album, containing the stand out tracks "Punta Arabi" and "Nitchevo". The high points in this period were the classic acoustic guitar duet recordings with Sweden's Coste Apetrea, Touch Wood and Blue Rain, both brilliant works of exceptional skill, melody and sensitivity. Jukka's 1982 reggae album, In A This Year Time, was an interesting excursion and his rock vocal album Radio Romance featured some catchy numbers and his usual electrifying guitarisms. Jukka's following as a live performer remained strong, particularly in Finland and Sweden, and he continued to be active on stage, in several line-ups including Bill's Boogie Band with Swedish vocalist/percussionist Bill Öhrström. One highlight, which unfortunately very few people were able to experience, was Jukka's role in Jim Pembroke's short lived project, Filthy Rich also featuring Finnforest guitarist Pekka Tegelman. Jukka returned to finish off the eighties in spectacular form when he joined legendary world fusion pioneers, Piirpauke, for one marvelous album Zerenade in 1989.

During the nineties, Jukka has been working in more of a rock format, with Jukka Tolonen Trio releases Last Mohican in '94 and Big Time in '96. While musically these albums are a bit more conventional than his work of the seventies and eighties, the music is skillfully executed and reaffirms the enduring fact that Jukka's "chops" are as well honed as ever. The decade concludes with Jukka returning to the Piirpauke fold for a new album set for a 2000 release.

Throughout the peaks and valleys of Jukka's career, one thing remains true to this day. No matter which of his groups is on stage, regardless of the format in which he is presented, when Jukka Tolonen sets his fingers to the strings, audiences, listeners, he and his band members, all come alive. The atmosphere is electrified, the energy from the sound and sight of his playing exhilarates and transforms everyone present. This is the key to Jukka's everlasting continuity and success, as the stunning guitar player he will always be.

Text: Phillip Page