THE SCORPIONS
Coming Back Home

BY NEAL "PROST" GOFORTH

No, music geek, we’re not talking about track 4 on 1984’s Love at First Sting. It’s how Klaus Meine described his feelings about another U.S. tour in a recent interview. When recently I spoke over the phone with Meine and Rudolf Schenker, one could feel the excitement in their voices regarding a new project.

After off-track efforts with the Berliner Philharmonic, and the "experimental" Eye To Eye, Meine says they are "getting back to their roots," and as Schenker says, they want to "prove they can still do it."

In 1965, Schenker founded the Scorpions, and with the addition of Meine in 1970, released their debut album, Lonesome Crow, in 1972. For the next 30 years, this band rocked us like hurricanes in English. But being that these boys grew up and still reside in Germany, why would they decide from their first album to sing in English? Klaus said he wanted to "drive the Formula 1 of rock music."

For us Americans, that means they wanted to be truly internationally recognized and respected in their craft. And if that meant sacrificing their mother tongue for success—— so be it.

Schenker claims the key to the band’s longevity is "finding great musicians with a love of music. They need to be in the band mentality." His brother Michael, while an early Scorp, obviously didn’t have his head in the game anymore, and went solo with his Michael Schenker Group.

Rudolf loves his brother dearly, and says he wished him well. And as it turns out, brother Michael wasn’t needed to continue in the band’s stellar stateside triumph. Mathias Jabs took Michael’s place, and as they say, the rest is rock and roll history. But even though the core of the band has withstood the test of time, there have been the occasional scares. A perfect example of this came in 1981.

Meine had a bad habit of going from the dressing room to the stage without warming up. Schenker says Meine would always go from "0 to 100," and ended up blowing out his vocal cords. This would have spelled the end for most bands.

Meine told the rest of the guys to go on without him, but Schenker insisted they would wait for him to recover. Soon the wait was over, but after Meine’s healing came the true test. The musical tracks had already been laid down for their legendary international smash, Blackout, and it was up to Meine to come in fill in the vocal blanks.

They knew they had something special when Meine came back better than ever with "iron vocal cords."

Touring and learning about American culture inspired the Scorpions circa the ‘80s. A similar experience led to the hit "Winds of Change." Meine recalls how it felt touring the Soviet Union for the first time. Being a German band, and having lived 100 miles from the Berlin Wall gave them the unique perspective that aided to the writing of the song that became "the anthem for the coming down of Communism and the Wall."

They had made the step from musicians to musical ambassadors. While Meine said they enjoyed the honor, the band felt quite uncomfortable in the roll of political figure: "We are a rock and roll band, not politicians." They simply drew inspiration from the moment he says, just like the rest of their music.

Having toured so extensively over the years, one would think over the course of three decades the Scorps had been everywhere. But according to Meine, the ambassadors hadn’t quite introduced their driving guitars to every last country. The band recently concluded a tour of Siberia. "We played at the edge of the world, where no one had ever seen a rock and roll band before," he says.

So after all of that, what can be left? With the recent signing of a contact with BMG Ariola (Europe), and Meine telling me about recording equipment being packed onto their tour buses for their new tour with Dokken and Whitesnake, one would hope a new album is in the works.

Both bandmates agree that a total immersion in U.S. culture, and the feedback and energy from the fans of this tour will provide the perfect atmosphere for writing and recording new material. Their creative juices started flowing on their last tour. Schenker, with remarkably boyish enthusiasm, describes how each supporting band had their own themed parties. Ronnie James Dio had a Hawaiian night complete with "the flower necklaces." Deep Purple had a Mexican night.

And of course, the Scorpions had German night, with brats, sauerkraut and beer. Rudolf mentioned how he enjoys seeing all the young new fans on that countrywide trek, and finding out that Nickelback is among the groups that lists the Scorps as an influence. "You can see the circle of rock and roll will never die," says Schenker.

One wonders: has fame spoiled these kids from Hannover, Germany? The way Schenker talks, it really hasn’t. He enjoys his fans and describes them as "very good people." He knows when he takes the time to talk to them or give an autograph it is something special. People would always ask him. "What do you plan to do when you are 30?" His answer was always, "I plan to make music." At the seasoned but far from out-to pasture age of 50, he still is.