The Biography of a Rock Legend
Founded in Hanover by Rudolf Schenker in 1964, “The Scorpions”
is nowadays one of the most famous rock bands ever, and Germany’s most successful band. Influenced by Elvis
Presley, Jimi Hendrix and the Beatles, guitarist Rudolf Schenker, along with
singer and composer Klaus Meine, guitarist Michael Schenker (Rudolf’s Brother),
drummer Wolfgang Dziony, and bassist Lothar Heimberg, released their remarkable
debut album in 1972, Lonesome Crow, produced by Conny Plank in Hamburg. Since that time, the Scorpions have shown
their unmistakable typical musical style, based on the combination of two
guitars, and that was developed all over the years.
In 1974, Lothar Heimberg was
replaced by Francis Buchholz and Michael Schenker by Ulrich Roth, and the band,
teaming up with those two new members, released a new album, called Fly To
The Rainbow , produced by the band itself, including an unexpected style
for German musicians, due to the mixture between classical guitars composed and
played by Ulrich Roth, and rock music, on which the Scorpions’ style was
initially based.
With the release of their third
album In Trance in 1975, the Scorpions began their working relationship
with well-known international producer Dieter Dierks, who had highly
contributed in making In Trance the best selling album in Japan, which
also pushed the band to start touring all over Europe, along with other
international bands.
One year later, the Scorpions achieved their
ambition to be the top German rock band, when their fourth album Virgin Killer
won the “LP of the year” in Germany, and was also their first Gold Disc in
Japan. Their follow up album Taken By Force (1977)
was recoded again with another drummer Herman Rarebell, and then, the band went
to Japan for another concert touring, where they recorded their first live
album Tokyo Tapes, released in 1978. In 1979 another guitarist Matthias
Jabs replaced Ulrich Roth, who has realized that the band was limiting him, and
consequently chose to go in a different way to be able to improve his talents
in a solo career. In 1979, with their new guitarist, they recorded another
studio album Lovedrive, and then embarked for the first time to the USA,
to be the opening acts of bands like Aerosmish, Rainbow and others. That’s the
way the Scorpions became step by step the best Western Band in the world, especially
with their albums Blackout (1982), and Love at First Sting (1984),
including their classic well-know ballad: “Still Loving You”.
After Love at First Sting,
the Scorpions released three albums successively: World Wide Live (1985),
(also released on Video) Savage Amusement (1988), and Best of Rockers
'n' Ballads (1989). On Savage Amusement tour, the Scorpions were invited to
the Kremlin to meet the last Soviet head of the State, Mikhail Gorbachev, and
to perform in front of 350,000 Soviet Fans.
In 1990, a masterpiece was
released: a new album, Crazy World (1990), including the most famous
Scorpions track “Wind Of Change” written by Klaus Meine, speaking about the
destruction of the Berlin Wall and the bursting of the USSR. In 1992 after the
Crazy World Tour, The Bass Player Francis Buccholz decided to leave the band
after serving it for 20 years. Nobody knows the reason for that, but he was immediately
replaced by another bass player Ralph Rieckermann, who has recorded with the
band as the first album for him: Face The Heat (1993), including
philosophic themes, speaking about the
Neo-Nazis of Germany, and songs about peace and love.
In 1994, the Scorpions committed themselves
to helping the United Nations and Unicef efforts on their support for the
refugees from the civil war in Rwanda, by releasing a single called White Dove.
All the benefits were donated to the refugees.
In 1995, The Band came out with a
new live album Live Bites (1995), but unfortunately, Herman Rarebell left
the band just after the release of the album. Herman Rarebell, a successful
drummer and songwriter, who has served the band for 18 years, went out for a
solo career in Monaco, as a producer for orchestras and bands.
In 1996, The band released
another new album Pure Instinct (1996) with a new drummer Curt Cress,
and they have also included another instruments in this album like Percussion
played by Pitti Hecht, and keyboard played by Luke Herzog and Koen van Bael. On
the Pure Instinct tour, Curt Cress was replaced by James Kottak, who is
now the current drummer of the band.
In
the end of the 20th Century the Scorpions released another
masterpiece album, Eye To Eye (1999), produced by Peter Wolf, and
marking a change in the image of Scorpions. The
album itself was a statement of the Scorpions awesome talents as songwriters
and instrumentalists, and showing the band at the apogee of their creativity.
After their 1999 world concert touring, the
Scorpions started the new millennium with a new musical challenge: a crossover
project with the internationally renowned classical orchestra, the Berlin
Philharmonic Orchestra, which was exploring the possibility of a project with
the Scorpions since 1995. Over the years, even this classical orchestra had
been aware of the Scorpions' success and international reputation. The album, Moment
Of Glory, of which the recording was achieved in May 2000 and released in
June, showed new and unexpected Scorpions’ capabilities. A few weeks later, the
live performance all along with the Orchestra, which took place at Expo 2000 in
Hanover, has astonished the crowd, (mostly senators, ministers, and high level
graduate musicians) owing to the fact that the Classical-Rock fusion is one of
the most difficult music genres to perform, but in spite of that, the
Scorpions-Berlin Philharmonics crossover project was extremely successful.
Just after teaming up with international Philharmonic
Orchestras all over the world, the Scorpions started working on a live acoustic
album called Acoustica, based on acoustic guitars and instruments only.
The unplugged concert was live recorded in Lisbon, Portugal, and was released on CD and DVD in April 2001. Acoustica
was another success for the Scorpions, and like Moment of Glory did,
it has showed that the Scorpions’ creativity is unlimited, since it didn’t
include any electric guitar, while the Scorpions standard style was usually
based on those instruments.
In the meantime, the band is working on a new
album to be released soon. Even though the formers Klaus Meine and Rudolf
Schenker are 54 years old now, they still have the motivation to go through a
long road in the music world, and to keep on blessing their listeners and fans
with their exceptional reflections and melodies. After 38 years of the band’s
foundation, Rudolf Schenker, Klaus Meine and Matthias Jabs can now look back
together on a spectacular career, which marked all generations. I will never
forget the day I was watching one of their concerts in Colmar, France, where
kids, youth, 40 years to 70 years old people were there, amazed by the
Scorpions’ music and performance. This moment truly showed me how good music
can be the best medium for the reunification of people of all ages.
John-Paul Jalwan,
Mansourieh el-Metn, Lebanon,
12th of June 2002.