The story of Scorpions

A nameless band from Hanover

The story begins in Hanover, in what was then West Germany, in January 1965. A teenage guitarist named Rudolf Schenker, born in 1948, started a band with three school friends: drummer Wolfgang Dziony, guitarist Karl Heinz Vollmer and bassist Achim Kirchoff. They had no name at first, so they played as the Nameless. On the twenty sixth of December 1965 they settled on a new one, the Scorpions. Their early sets were British Invasion covers, songs by the Beatles, the Shadows, the Everly Brothers, the Kinks and the Pretty Things. Rudolf shared the singing with the drummer, and Klaus Meine later remembered that in those days Rudolf sang with his back to the audience. In September 1966 they even played the famous Star Club in Hamburg.[1] [2] [3]

For the next few years the line up kept changing. A fifteen year old singer named Werner Hoyer came and went, and one guitarist left for military service. Meanwhile, across town, a rival band called Copernicus was playing covers of Led Zeppelin and Taste. Its singer was Klaus Meine, born in May 1948, and its lead guitarist was Rudolf's kid brother Michael, born in 1955. Michael had played his very first gig with the Scorpions at the age of eleven. Rudolf had put the two of them together, and Klaus had to promise the Schenker father that he would look after the boy. Klaus later said the two bands chased the same venues, competing over who had the biggest PA and the loudest crowd.[1] [2] [3] [4]

Around the turn of the decade, Rudolf finally persuaded both Klaus and Michael to join the Scorpions, alongside bassist Lothar Heimberg and drummer Wolfgang Dziony. Their break came through the producer Conny Plank, already known for his work with krautrock bands like Kraftwerk and Neu. The debut album, Lonesome Crow, was cut in about a week and released in February 1972. It also served as the soundtrack to a German anti drug film called Das kalte Paradies, The Cold Paradise. Michael Schenker was just sixteen when he played on it. Plank had big ideas. He suggested they rename themselves Stalingrad and storm the stage in army uniforms. The band politely stuck with the Scorpions. When they told Plank they would one day play America, he laughed at them.[1] [2] [3] [4]

In 1973 the Scorpions went on tour opening for the British band UFO. One night UFO's guitarist failed to show up after forgetting his passport, and young Michael stepped in and learned their songs on the spot. UFO were so impressed they asked to borrow him. Singer Phil Mogg later joked that Rudolf told him they had been trying to get rid of his brother for years. Rudolf insisted that was just English humour. By June 1973 Michael was in UFO for good, and the Scorpions fell apart. Their label lost interest, bassist Heimberg left, and their stand in drummer Helmut Eisenhut, who had played their shows with Rory Gallagher that January, died. Klaus later said they were left with no lead guitarist and no record deal.[1] [2] [3]

The rescue came from a local band called Dawn Road. Before leaving, Michael had pointed the Scorpions toward its guitarist, Uli Roth, a Hendrix devotee who had already turned them down once. Uli agreed to help out on an important television appearance, and it went well. Rudolf then started turning up at Dawn Road rehearsals. That band had Uli, bassist Francis Buchholz, keyboard player Achim Kirschning and drummer Jürgen Rosenthal. Uli and Francis persuaded Rudolf to bring Klaus back as singer. There were now more Dawn Road members than Scorpions, but they kept the Scorpions name because it was already known on the German hard rock scene and had an album out. On the strength of that television show, the new band signed with RCA.[1] [2] [3] [4] [5] [6]

The Uli Roth years

The new line up's first album, Fly to the Rainbow, came out on the first of November 1974. Uli Roth's fiery, Hendrix inspired playing gave songs like Speedy's Coming and the long title track a new edge, and Uli even sang a couple of numbers. As part of his leaving agreement, Michael Schenker got co writing credit on three of the songs. Uli hated the cover, a figure with a strange helmet and odd footwear, and it still turns up on lists of the ugliest metal sleeves ever made. Soon afterwards the keyboard player left, and drummer Jürgen Rosenthal was drafted into the army. He later joined the German progressive band Eloy. In 1975 a Belgian drummer, Rudy Lenners, took the stool.[1] [2] [3] [4]

The third album, In Trance, released in 1975, was a turning point. It was the first of many records made with producer Dieter Dierks at his studio complex in Stommeln, near Cologne. Dierks had first seen the band play to a thin crowd in a sports hall in Essen and was struck by how professional they were. Klaus said that with Dieter the band finally found its style, with shorter, tighter songs in place of long psychedelic suites. In Trance was also the first album to carry the famous Scorpions logo, and it sold about three times as much as anything before it. Around the same time, as a side job, the band recorded German language versions of two songs by the Sweet under the name the Hunters.[1] [2] [3] [4]

In November 1976 came Virgin Killer, the album that first got the Scorpions noticed outside Europe, especially in Japan. The music was praised, but the cover became notorious. It showed a naked ten year old girl behind a pane of shattered glass. It was designed by the product manager of RCA's West German office and shot by the photographer Michael von Gimbut. Many countries sold it in a black wrapper or replaced it with a photo of the band. The band always said it was the label's idea. Klaus remembered a record company man saying he would release it even if he went to jail. Rudolf said they would never do anything like it again, and Uli later said the picture made him cringe and he wished he had tried to stop it.[1] [2] [3]

The cover kept causing trouble for decades. In May 2008 an American website reported the image on Wikipedia to the FBI, which found that it broke no United States law. That December, the British Internet Watch Foundation put the Wikipedia article about the album on its blacklist, calling the image potentially illegal. Because most British internet providers used that list, the page vanished for the vast majority of UK users, and thousands of people found they could no longer edit Wikipedia at all. Wikipedia volunteers were furious that a whole encyclopedia article had been blocked. After four days of public argument, the foundation reversed its decision. In 2015 a Swedish court said it considered the cover to be child pornography.[1] [2] [3]

In 1977 drummer Rudy Lenners left. Rudolf said the stress had sent him from the studio to hospital with stomach trouble. Michael Schenker had met a German drummer named Herman Rarebell at the Speakeasy club in London and recommended him. Rarebell, born Hermann Erbel, joined and soon started writing lyrics too, because, as he put it, his English was the best in the band. That year's Taken by Force included Uli's showpiece The Sails of Charon, a solo so fast and classical that Metallica's Kirk Hammett later quoted part of it on Battery. The song We'll Burn the Sky began as a poem by Monika Dannemann, Jimi Hendrix's last girlfriend. The cover, showing children playing with guns in a military cemetery, was replaced in most markets.[1] [2] [3] [4] [5]

Tokyo and a new guitarist

Uli Roth was drifting away. He disliked the band's more commercial direction and had even opposed hiring a heavy drummer like Herman. In April 1978 the Scorpions played Tokyo's Nakano Sun Plaza, and the shows were recorded for a double live album, Tokyo Tapes. They were Uli's last performances with the band. At the Tokyo concerts they even played the Japanese national song Kimi ga yo, though it was left off the record. Tokyo Tapes came out in Japan in August 1978 and in Europe and America months later, and it became the band's first real international breakthrough. Uli left to form his own group, Electric Sun, and the Scorpions had to find a new lead guitarist once again.[1] [2] [3] [4] [5]

Finding Uli's replacement took months. By the band's count they auditioned around one hundred and forty guitarists, some accounts say more. In mid 1978 they chose Matthias Jabs, born in October 1955, a young player from the German bands Lady and Fargo. He played his first Scorpions gig that August. At the same time, the business side changed. The band left RCA and signed with Mercury in the United States and EMI's Harvest label in Europe, through a deal arranged by Dieter Dierks's company. In America they were taken on by the Leber Krebs management firm, which looked after AC/DC, Aerosmith and Ted Nugent. The door to the United States was finally opening.[1] [2] [3] [4]

Then things got messy. In late 1978 Michael Schenker walked out on UFO and came back to help his brother on the next album. The American managers liked the idea of a famous guitarist in the band, so Matthias was let go. But Michael was struggling badly with drink and drugs. Early on the following tour he collapsed on stage, and Matthias kept getting calls to fill in. At one point he went on holiday to an island with no telephones, and the local policeman cycled up with a telegram asking him to come back, with a helicopter on offer. In April 1979 Michael failed to turn up for a show in Lyon, in France, and this time Matthias returned for good.[1] [2] [3] [4] [5]

Lovedrive and the road to America

The album was Lovedrive, released in 1979, and many critics see it as the band's finest hour. It set the Scorpions formula of hard rock mixed with big melodic ballads, with songs like Loving You Sunday Morning, Always Somewhere, Holiday and the instrumental Coast to Coast. It reached number fifty five in America, the first time they had charted there, and it was their first album to chart in Britain. It later went gold in the United States. The cover was by Storm Thorgerson of Hipgnosis, the designers behind Pink Floyd's sleeves. It showed a woman in the back of a car with bubblegum stretched from her breast to a man's hand. Playboy named it the best sleeve of 1979, but American stores got a plain blue scorpion instead.[1] [2] [3] [4]

The first American tour taught the Germans a lesson in stage manners. Rudolf remembered their opening slot in Cleveland. They were allowed thirty minutes, played forty, and ran around like maniacs. Ted Nugent came down to the dressing room and told them they had to calm down. They did not. In Chicago they proved so popular that they were moved up the bill above Nugent. They also opened for AC/DC and Aerosmith. The British press was less kind, with one critic calling them the worst German import since the V2 rocket, and some papers greeted them with war jokes. Klaus said that growing up in post war Germany, being German was nothing to be proud of, and they wanted to earn respect as musicians.[1] [2]

Animal Magnetism followed in 1980, with The Zoo and Make It Real. Herman came up with the title, and Storm Thorgerson again designed a provocative sleeve, this time a kneeling woman and a Doberman in front of a man. Francis Buchholz said he did not like it, but he liked the dog. That August the band played the very first Monsters of Rock festival at Castle Donington in England. Rudolf took a lap or two of the Donington racetrack before the show, and he admitted that when police stopped them for speeding in rental cars, they simply pretended not to speak English. But trouble was coming. After a long 1981 tour, Klaus Meine's voice began to fail.[1] [2] [3]

Blackout and the hurricane

As work began on the next album, Klaus could barely speak. A doctor looked at his vocal cords, asked what he did for a living, and told him to find another job. He saw specialists, including one in Vienna whose patients were opera singers, went through weeks of enforced silence, and had two operations on his vocal cords. Klaus told Rudolf they might have to find a new singer. Rudolf refused and said the band would wait for him, whatever it took. While he recovered, a then unknown American singer named Don Dokken came in to sing guide vocals on the demos. Plans to record in a mansion in the south of France were abandoned, and the album was finished back at Dierks's studio.[1] [2] [3] [4] [5]

Klaus's voice came back stronger than ever. Blackout was released in 1982 and became their best selling album yet. It reached the American top ten and went platinum, and No One Like You topped the American rock radio chart. The cover was a painted self portrait of the Austrian artist Gottfried Helnwein, and Rudolf played that bandaged character in the video. In May 1983 the band played the second day of the huge US Festival in San Bernardino, California, in front of more than three hundred thousand people. The show was broadcast live on MTV. Decades later Francis Buchholz said that watching that performance again was one of the proudest moments of his life.[1] [2] [3] [4] [5] [6]

The next album nearly came with a different rhythm section. In 1983 Dieter Dierks booked ABBA's Polar Studios in Stockholm. Herman Rarebell and Francis Buchholz were both unwell, and Klaus later admitted Herman had become a wild party animal. Two former Rainbow players, bassist Jimmy Bain and drummer Bobby Rondinelli, were brought in, and the band came close to replacing Herman and Francis for good. But the results did not convince anyone. They scrapped the sessions and rerecorded everything in Stommeln with the original five. Love at First Sting came out in February 1984. It reached number six in America and went double platinum within the year, and triple platinum later. The fashion photographer Helmut Newton shot the cover.[1] [2] [3]

The album's opening single, Rock You Like a Hurricane, became the band's signature song. Music by Rudolf, words by Klaus and Herman. Herman later admitted he had wanted a title so rude the record company thought he had lost his mind. It reached number twenty five on the Billboard Hot 100, and its video, directed by David Mallet, put the band inside a cage rocked by the crowd. Tipper Gore later cited it when explaining why she co founded the Parents Music Resource Center. The ballad Still Loving You had been around since about 1976, when Uli Roth rejected Rudolf's melody as too commercial. Finished in 1983, it became a huge hit across Europe, especially in France.[1] [2] [3] [4] [5]

The Love at First Sting tour made them one of the biggest live bands on earth. They played three nights at Madison Square Garden, and their opening acts on the tour included Bon Jovi, Def Leppard and Metallica. MTV called them the Ambassadors of Rock, and Rolling Stone called them the Heroes of Heavy Metal. They had their own plane. Rudolf claimed that the manager Doc McGhee told a young Bon Jovi to copy how the Scorpions worked a stage. The band said they stayed away from hard drugs even when cocaine was everywhere. Matthias remembered touring with Aerosmith when Steven Tyler greeted Francis as Tom, mistaking him for his own bassist. The live double album World Wide Live followed in 1985.[1] [2] [3]

Behind the Iron Curtain

It took four years to follow Love at First Sting, and the recording of Savage Amusement dragged on for a year. Dieter Dierks wanted a polished sound like Def Leppard's, and the band felt trapped. Klaus said Dieter had become a dictator. Rudolf called the result sterile. Dierks had been their producer, their music publisher and at times their manager, and Rudolf later said they paid heavily for that. Savage Amusement still reached number five in America and went platinum, but it was the last album with Dierks. Their contract ended in November 1988. Klaus said that when they signed with him they were young kids, and in the end they simply grew tired of each other.[1] [2] [3] [4]

In April 1988, on the Savage Amusement tour, the Scorpions played Leningrad, now Saint Petersburg. Among Western hard rock bands, only the British group Uriah Heep had played there before them, in December 1987. The Scorpions played ten sold out shows there. Soviet fans had mostly heard their music on bootleg cassettes passed from hand to hand, and the reaction stunned the band. Rudolf said they wanted to show Russians that a new generation of Germans was growing up, arriving with guitars instead of tanks. For a band raised in the shadow of the Berlin Wall, it meant a great deal. Klaus later said the change they saw between Leningrad in 1988 and Moscow a year later inspired everything that followed.[1] [2] [3] [4] [5]

On the twelfth and thirteenth of August 1989, the Scorpions played the Moscow Music Peace Festival at the Lenin Stadium, alongside Bon Jovi, Ozzy Osbourne, Mötley Crüe, Skid Row, Cinderella and the Russian band Gorky Park. It was broadcast to fifty nine countries. The festival was organised by the Russian musician Stas Namin and the American manager Doc McGhee, who by then managed the Scorpions. Its anti drug message was linked to McGhee's own past. In 1982 he had been arrested over a scheme to smuggle twenty tons of marijuana into North Carolina, and after pleading guilty he was ordered to put money and thousands of hours into an anti drug foundation. Backstage, the sobriety theme was widely ignored, and egos clashed badly.[1] [2] [3]

The Moscow weekend descended into chaos behind the scenes. Mötley Crüe felt McGhee was favouring Bon Jovi, who were allowed pyrotechnics that other bands had been told were banned. According to Skid Row's Sebastian Bach, drummer Tommy Lee downed most of a bottle of vodka and then punched McGhee in the face. Mötley Crüe fired him on the spot, and Bon Jovi dropped him soon after. The Scorpions stayed out of the fighting. Their set included Blackout, Still Loving You, Rock You Like a Hurricane and the old Russian folk tune The Song of the Volga Boatmen. For the German band, playing to a stadium of young Soviet fans was not a party. It felt like history.[1] [2]

Wind of Change

During that week, McGhee arranged a boat trip down the Moskva River to Gorky Park, with musicians, journalists and Red Army soldiers all on board. Klaus said it felt as if the whole world was on one boat, speaking the same language, music. Soon afterwards he started whistling a melody. McGhee remembered hearing Klaus whistle it on the bus back from the second show. The song was written in September 1989, about two months before the Berlin Wall fell. It was called Wind of Change, and it was Klaus's song alone, words and music. The record company wanted a heavy guitar intro. The band tried it, it did not work, and they kept the whistle over a clean guitar.[1] [2] [3] [4]

For the album, the band left Dierks behind and worked with the American producer Keith Olsen, known for Fleetwood Mac and Whitesnake. They also brought in Jim Vallance, Bryan Adams's writing partner. Crazy World came out on the sixth of November 1990. Wind of Change was released as a single in early 1991 and went to number one in Germany and several other countries, number two in Britain and number four in America. It has sold an estimated fourteen million copies, the best selling single ever by a German artist, and Crazy World became their only number one album at home. Rudolf admitted some rock fans said this was no longer their band, but the song carried them through the grunge years.[1] [2] [3] [4] [5]

Even before the single came out, the band was part of Germany's reunification story. On the twenty first of July 1990 they joined Roger Waters for his giant staging of The Wall in Berlin, near the Brandenburg Gate. Klaus remembered that the gate had been out of reach all their lives, as far away as the moon. The song was also recorded in Russian. In 1991 the band was invited to the Kremlin to meet Mikhail Gorbachev. They expected a press show, but Gorbachev sent the journalists away and sat down with them privately. They handed over a gold disc and royalties from the song, reported at around seventy thousand dollars, and Soviet media said the money would go to children's hospitals.[1] [2] [3] [4] [5]

Storms of the nineties

The glory years ended with a bitter split. After the Crazy World tour, the band fired its business manager, after what Klaus called serious tax trouble. Francis Buchholz, who had long handled the band's business affairs, sided with the manager. Klaus called it a very ugly divorce and later said Francis had betrayed them. Francis left in 1992 after eighteen years. His own account, years later, was gentler. He said there was a mutual decision after a turnover of managers, lawyers and tax advisers, that he was fed up with the internal fighting, and that with a young child and newborn twin daughters he chose his family. The two sides did not speak for many years.[1] [2] [3] [4] [5] [6]

The new bassist was Ralph Rieckermann, recommended by Herman Rarebell. Klaus said he was the first bass player to audition and the last. Face the Heat, released in 1993 with the producer Bruce Fairbairn, was heavier and darker. Alien Nation dealt with the mood in a reunified Germany, and Klaus spoke of his worries about neo Nazi violence and war in Bosnia. There was also a tongue in cheek song about German taxes, and by then Herman had become a tax exile in Monaco. The ballad Under the Same Sun could not match Wind of Change, and the album did only moderately well. In 1994 a Las Vegas newspaper wrote that the party was over for the band.[1] [2] [3] [4]

Herman Rarebell left in 1996. Officially he wanted to set up a record label, but he also said he was sick of playing Wind of Change for the millionth time and living on the road. Pure Instinct, released that year, was the only Scorpions album without an official drummer, with the session player Curt Cress sitting in. It was heavy on ballads, and You and I became a live favourite. Their new drummer was James Kottak from Louisville, Kentucky, formerly of Kingdom Come and Warrant. Both Herman and producer Keith Olsen recommended him, and he became the first member of the Scorpions who was not German. That same year Kottak married Athena Lee, the younger sister of Mötley Crüe's Tommy Lee.[1] [2] [3] [4] [5]

In 1999 Eye II Eye mixed in pop and techno, and many fans hated it. It included Du bist so schmutzig, the band's only song sung largely in German, and the video for To Be Number One featured a Monica Lewinsky look alike. On the ninth of November 1999, the tenth anniversary of the fall of the Wall, the band played Wind of Change at the Brandenburg Gate. The next year they recorded Moment of Glory with the Berlin Philharmonic Orchestra, arranged and conducted by Christian Kolonovits, and the title song became the official song of Expo 2000 in Hanover. Critics said they were copying Metallica's orchestral album, but Klaus said the orchestra had approached them first, years earlier.[1] [2] [3] [4] [5]

In February 2001 the band recorded three unplugged concerts in a former convent in Lisbon, released as Acoustica. Alongside reworked hits and new songs, they covered the Cars' Drive, Kansas's Dust in the Wind and Queen's Love of My Life. The album went straight to number one in Portugal. The following year they briefly reunited with Dieter Dierks, for the first time in fourteen years, to record two songs for a greatest hits collection called Bad for Good. Ralph Rieckermann left the band in the early two thousands. The Scorpions were still a huge live draw around the world, but on record they were searching for a way back to the sound that had made them famous.[1] [2] [3]

The farewell that never was

The comeback started on a tour bus. Around 2002 the band had the back lounge of their bus turned into a small studio, and over two years they wrote well over a hundred songs. A plan to work with Dieter Dierks again collapsed over money. When they finally entered a studio in Hanover with producer Erwin Musper in October 2003, they still had no bass player. Rudolf's assistant suggested a Polish bassist, Paweł Mąciwoda, nicknamed Baby. He learned the parts from the demos and recorded eleven songs in three days. He became an official member in January 2004. Unbreakable, released that year, was their heaviest album in over a decade. Critics loved it, but it barely charted.[1] [2] [3]

The mid two thousands brought a wave of nostalgia. In 2006 the band played the Wacken Open Air festival in Germany with former members Uli Roth, Michael Schenker and Herman Rarebell, a three and a half hour trip through their history. Francis Buchholz was the only notable absence. The show was such a hit that old members kept guesting on later tours, though Matthias grumbled that fans do not come for a history lesson. In 2007 they released Humanity Hour One, a concept album about a war between humans and robots, produced by Desmond Child and James Michael and featuring Billy Corgan of the Smashing Pumpkins. It was their most modern sounding record in years.[1] [2] [3] [4]

On the twentieth of December 2007 the Scorpions played a concert inside the Kremlin. It turned out to be for Security Services Day, marking ninety years since the founding of the Cheka, the Soviet secret police that later became the KGB. Vladimir Putin and Dmitry Medvedev were in the audience, along with senior security chiefs, and the show was broadcast on state television. Klaus said the band had been told it was a special Christmas event, that they had not known what the holiday was, and that the floodlights were so bright they could not see who was in the audience. Asked whether they would have played if they had known, he called it a moot point.[1] [2]

In January 2010 the Scorpions made a surprise announcement. Their new album, Sting in the Tail, would be their last, and the tour behind it would be their farewell. Matthias said it was their management's idea after the record company loved the album, and that the band had never thought about stopping before. That April they put their hands in cement on Hollywood's RockWalk. The goodbye tour ran for nearly three years and ended in Munich in December 2012. But by mid 2012 Matthias was already telling reporters the Scorpions would not break up. In 2013 MTV asked them to play an unplugged show, and they recorded it that September on a hillside open air theatre in Athens.[1] [2] [3] [4]

Drummer James Kottak was having a harder time. In April 2014 he was arrested in Dubai and sentenced to a month in jail for offensive behaviour, insulting Islam and public drunkenness. In May 2014 he left the band to go into rehab. He came back to play on Return to Forever, released in February 2015 for the band's fiftieth anniversary. That anniversary had its own small story. While searching for an old tape, Rudolf found a ledger in which his mother had listed the loans his father gave him to buy equipment for the band. It was dated September 1965. Their manager said they had to celebrate. The album mixed old unfinished songs from the eighties with new material.[1] [2] [3]

Sixty years and still standing

In April 2016 the band announced that Mikkey Dee would stand in for James Kottak on a run of American dates, including a Las Vegas residency. Dee, a Swede, had spent twenty three years as the drummer of Motörhead, until Lemmy's death in December 2015 ended that band. On the twelfth of September 2016 it was confirmed that Kottak was out and Mikkey Dee was the new permanent drummer. Kottak had been fired over his alcoholism. He had been their longest serving drummer, twenty years in the band. In 2017 the Scorpions were inducted into the Hall of Heavy Metal History for pioneering the twin guitar attack, and Los Angeles named the sixth of October Scorpions Day.[1] [2] [3] [4]

In May 2020 an eight part podcast called Wind of Change, hosted by the New Yorker writer Patrick Radden Keefe, investigated a rumour that the CIA had written the band's biggest song. It became a hit podcast. Klaus said the idea was fascinating and entertaining, but not true at all. Meanwhile the band was making a new record. Sessions began in July 2020 at Peppermint Park Studios in Hanover. They had planned to work in Los Angeles with the producer Greg Fidelman, but the pandemic forced them to work with him remotely and then drop the plan. Rock Believer, released in February 2022, was their first album with Mikkey Dee and was well received as a return to their hard rocking roots.[1] [2] [3] [4] [5]

Weeks after Rock Believer came out, Russia invaded Ukraine. On the twenty sixth of March 2022, opening a residency in Las Vegas, Klaus dedicated Wind of Change to the brave people of Ukraine. He also rewrote the opening of the song, replacing its famous Moscow references with a line about Ukraine. He explained that with such a terrible war raging, it was no time to romanticise Russia. By 2024 the band had moved to a more neutral, hopeful version of the opening. In February 2023 the song's video passed one billion views on YouTube, and in 2023 the state of Lower Saxony honoured Klaus, Rudolf and Matthias for their political stance.[1] [2] [3] [4] [5]

On the ninth of January 2024, James Kottak was found dead at his home in Louisville, Kentucky. He was sixty one. His daughter confirmed the news, and no official cause was given, though a metal news site reported a suspected cardiac arrest. He had spoken openly about his long struggle with alcohol. The Scorpions called him their brother from another mother, a wonderful human being and a loving family man. The band carried on, celebrating forty years of Love at First Sting in 2024. Then in 2025 they marked sixty years with a homecoming show on the fifth of July at the Heinz von Heiden Arena in Hanover, with guests including Judas Priest and Alice Cooper, released that December as the live album Coming Home Live.[1] [2] [3] [4]

A feature film called Wind of Change was shot in England in 2025, with Dominic West playing Doc McGhee. Asked about a new studio album, Klaus said there were a million good reasons to make one, but that these days it was not really the time for albums. Then on the twenty second of January 2026, Francis Buchholz died of cancer after a private battle. His bass had driven Rock You Like a Hurricane and Wind of Change, and whatever the old hurt, Klaus, Rudolf and Matthias paid tribute to their longtime friend. As of 2026 the band is Klaus, Rudolf, Matthias, Paweł and Mikkey, with an estimated one hundred million records sold and admirers from Metallica to Guns N' Roses.[1] [2] [3] [4] [5] [6] [7] [8] [9]

The people around Scorpions

Rudolf Schenker and Klaus Meine. The heart of the Scorpions for more than half a century. Rudolf founded the band in 1965 and courted Klaus for years before he joined. From Fly to the Rainbow on, they became the band's main songwriting team, Rudolf mostly writing the music and Klaus the words. When Klaus lost his voice in 1981, Rudolf refused to replace him. They are the only two members on every Scorpions album.[1] [2] [3] [4] [5]

Rudolf Schenker and Michael Schenker. Brothers with very different paths. Michael played his first gig with Rudolf's band at eleven and recorded their debut at sixteen, then left for UFO with Rudolf's blessing. He returned briefly in 1978 and 1979, when his drinking and drug problems made the arrangement collapse. He later complained he never got proper credit for his early songs. In 2007 he joined his brother on stage again for British reunion dates.[1] [2] [3] [4] [5]

The Scorpions and Dieter Dierks. The producer often called the sixth Scorpion. From In Trance in 1975 to Savage Amusement in 1988 he shaped their sound in his studio near Cologne, and also acted as publisher and at times manager. Rudolf said they paid heavily for that arrangement, and Klaus called him a dictator by the end. Later attempts to work together again fell apart over money.[1] [2] [3] [4]

Uli Jon Roth and Monika Dannemann. Uli Roth was in a long relationship with the artist Monika Dannemann, who had been with Jimi Hendrix on the night he died. Her poem became the Scorpions song We'll Burn the Sky, and she painted Uli's Electric Sun album covers. She was convicted of breaching a British court order in a feud with Hendrix's former girlfriend Kathy Etchingham, and days later, in 1996, she was found dead in her car. Her death was ruled a suicide.[1] [2]

The Scorpions and Doc McGhee. The American manager behind Bon Jovi and Mötley Crüe, and later the Scorpions. After a 1982 marijuana smuggling case, he co organised the 1989 Moscow Music Peace Festival that inspired Wind of Change, and arranged the boat trip where Klaus found the melody. The 2020 podcast about the song made him a central character, and in the 2025 biopic he is played by Dominic West.[1] [2] [3] [4]

Klaus Meine and Francis Buchholz. Bandmates for eighteen years through the band's biggest era, then estranged after Francis sided with the fired business manager in 1992. Klaus called it an ugly divorce and said they stopped speaking. Francis was absent from the 2006 Wacken reunion. When he died in January 2026, Klaus, Rudolf and Matthias paid tribute to him as their longtime friend.[1] [2] [3] [4] [5]

Herman Rarebell and Klaus Meine. A lyric writing partnership behind some of the band's best known songs. Herman, who said his English was the best in the band, wrote or co wrote the words for Rock You Like a Hurricane, Blackout, Make It Real and Bad Boys Running Wild. Klaus admitted Herman went through a wild party phase in 1983 that nearly cost him his job. He left in 1996.[1] [2] [3] [4]

Matthias Jabs and Michael Schenker. Matthias was hired in 1978, pushed aside when Michael returned, and called back again and again as Michael's health failed on tour. After Michael missed a show in Lyon in April 1979, Matthias came back for good. He later said that since the Scorpions were not yet big, it was no great drama, but he was relieved when it was over.[1] [2] [3] [4]

James Kottak and Athena Lee. The Scorpions drummer married Athena Lee, a drummer and the younger sister of Mötley Crüe's Tommy Lee, in 1996. She also played in his own band, Kottak. They had three children, including Miles Kottak of the band Bad Suns, and divorced in 2010, followed by a bitter custody fight. She later appeared on the reality show Ex Wives of Rock.[1] [2]

The Scorpions and Mikhail Gorbachev. The Soviet leader whose reforms opened the door for the band's 1988 and 1989 shows. In 1991 he invited them to the Kremlin, sent the press away and talked with them privately. They gave him a gold disc and royalties from Wind of Change, which Soviet media said would go to children's hospitals.[1] [2] [3] [4]

Mikkey Dee and Lemmy. Mikkey Dee spent twenty three years drumming for Lemmy in Motörhead, after Lemmy repeatedly asked him to join. When Lemmy died in December 2015, Mikkey announced that Motörhead was over. Within months he was filling in for the Scorpions, and by September 2016 he was their permanent drummer.[1] [2]

Rare facts about Scorpions

• Their first producer, Conny Plank, wanted to rename the band Stalingrad and dress them in army uniforms. Plank, famous for krautrock records, felt Scorpions sounded too simple. Klaus Meine said the idea was for a theatrical, military style show. The band kept its name.[1]
• Their debut album doubled as the soundtrack to a German anti drug film. Lonesome Crow, released in February 1972, served as the soundtrack to a film called Das kalte Paradies, meaning The Cold Paradise.[1] [2]
• In the mid seventies the band secretly released German covers of the Sweet under the name the Hunters. At Dieter Dierks's suggestion they cut German versions of Action and Fox on the Run. Rudolf said the fee of seven thousand marks was money they badly needed.[1] [2]
• Dieter Dierks was reportedly not the band's first choice of producer. Classic Rock reported that Dierks, later nicknamed the sixth Scorpion, was second choice to Chas Chandler, the former Animals bassist who managed Jimi Hendrix.[1]
• Herman Rarebell got into the band after meeting Michael Schenker in a London nightclub. Rarebell had moved to Britain for studio work and was a regular at the Speakeasy club, where Michael told him to check out his brother's band.[1] [2]
• Metallica's Kirk Hammett quoted an Uli Roth solo on Battery. Part of Roth's solo from The Sails of Charon, on the 1977 album Taken by Force, appears in Hammett's playing on the opening song of Master of Puppets.[1]
• The Lovedrive cover was shot by the designers behind Pink Floyd's album sleeves. Storm Thorgerson of Hipgnosis created the bubblegum image. Playboy named it the best album sleeve of 1979, but American stores sold it with a plain blue scorpion.[1] [2]
• On their first American tour, Ted Nugent told them to calm down. In Cleveland the band overran their thirty minute slot by ten minutes and went wild on stage. Nugent came to their dressing room to tell them off.[1]
• Matthias Jabs was once tracked down on holiday by a policeman on a bicycle. He had gone somewhere with no telephones. The island's only policeman brought a telegram asking him to rejoin, and the band offered to send a helicopter.[1]
• Klaus Meine has played guitar on only two Scorpions songs. He played on the instrumental Coast to Coast from Lovedrive and on the later song Follow Your Heart.[1]
• The Blackout album cover is a self portrait by the painter Gottfried Helnwein. Rudolf Schenker played the bandaged character from the painting in the video for No One Like You.[1]
• Rudolf could not choose between two guitar solos on China White, so America and Europe got different versions. He told Kerrang that he could not decide, so the American and European releases of Blackout differ on that detail.[1]
• Love at First Sting was first recorded at ABBA's studio in Stockholm, then scrapped. The 1983 sessions at Polar Studios used two former Rainbow players in place of the sick rhythm section. Nothing from them made the finished album.[1] [2]
• The Love at First Sting cover was photographed by Helmut Newton. After a complaint from Walmart, the label issued a clean alternative cover showing the band for some American chain stores.[1]
• Herman Rarebell's first idea for Rock You Like a Hurricane was an unprintable title. He wanted lyrics that should be forbidden, and suggested a far ruder verb in the title. The record company told him he was out of his mind.[1]
• Tipper Gore singled out the Rock You Like a Hurricane video. Explaining why she co founded the Parents Music Resource Center, she cited its images of women rounded up and caged by the band.[1]
• The racetrack on the Rock You Like a Hurricane single sleeve is the Jerez circuit in Spain. The sleeve's track corresponds to the Circuito de Jerez. The song also became the entrance music of the NHL's Carolina Hurricanes.[1]
• Uli Roth rejected Still Loving You as too commercial. Rudolf had parts of the melody around 1976. The song was not finished until 1983, when Klaus added the lyrics, and it became a European smash.[1] [2]
• Steven Tyler once greeted Scorpions bassist Francis Buchholz as Tom. Matthias Jabs recalled that, while touring with Aerosmith, Tyler mistook Francis for his own band's bassist, Tom Hamilton.[1]
• Wind of Change is the best selling single ever by a German artist. It has sold an estimated fourteen million copies and hit number one in Germany and several other countries, and number four in America.[1] [2]
• The record company did not want Wind of Change to open with whistling. They wanted a heavy guitar intro. The band tried it, it did not work, and they kept Klaus's whistle over clean guitar.[1]
• In 2005, viewers of German broadcaster ZDF voted Wind of Change the song of the century. The song also passed one billion YouTube views in 2023 and one billion Spotify streams in November 2025.[1] [2]
• Crazy World is the Scorpions' only number one album in Germany. It was also their first album without Dieter Dierks since 1974, produced by Keith Olsen in about three months.[1] [2]
• At Roger Waters's The Wall concert in Berlin, Klaus and Matthias stood on opposite sides of the old border. Klaus recalled singing in what had been West Berlin while Matthias played in the East, near the Brandenburg Gate.[1] [2]
• Their replacement bassist in 1992 was the first and only person to audition. Ralph Rieckermann came recommended by Herman Rarebell, and one jam session was enough. Klaus said it was like he came from heaven.[1]
• Du bist so schmutzig is the only Scorpions song sung largely in German. It appears on the 1999 album Eye II Eye, with a few English lines from drummer James Kottak.[1]
• The video for To Be Number One featured a Monica Lewinsky look alike. The 1999 single from Eye II Eye did little to win over fans, who were already unhappy with the album's pop sound.[1] [2]
• Pure Instinct is the only Scorpions album recorded without an official drummer. After Herman Rarebell left, session drummer Curt Cress played on the 1996 album before James Kottak joined.[1]
• James Kottak was the first Scorpions member who was not German. The Kentucky born drummer joined in 1996, recommended by both Herman Rarebell and producer Keith Olsen.[1]
• Bassist Paweł Mąciwoda learned eleven songs from demos and recorded them in three days. He was suggested by Rudolf's assistant in 2003. His surname roughly means stir water, which inspired his side project Stirwater.[1] [2]
• A Scorpions song was inspired by a terrifying plane ride on Klaus Meine's birthday. On a 2009 tour of Russia's Far East with Alice Cooper, their plane hit thunderstorms and dropped. Klaus wrote Dancing with the Moonlight about it.[1]
• Rudolf found proof of the band's start in his mother's handwriting. Searching for an old tape, he found her ledger of loans from his father for band equipment, dated September 1965, which prompted the fiftieth anniversary.[1]
• Francis Buchholz started a PA rental company partly to give roadies work between tours. He founded Rocksound in 1978 to sell loudspeaker cabinets he had designed and to employ the Scorpions crew when the band was off the road.[1] [2]
• In 2010 Brazil issued a special postage stamp for the Scorpions' tour. It was one of many honours that year, along with a star on the Munich Walk of Stars and handprints on Hollywood's RockWalk.[1]
• In November 2024, Mikkey Dee had to tell fans he was not dead. He posted on social media to deny false online reports of his death.[1]
• Rudolf once drove laps of the Donington racetrack before the band's set at the first Monsters of Rock. In 1980 he took a lap or two of the circuit, and admitted the band dodged speeding trouble by pretending not to speak English.[1]

Disputed stories

These stories are told often but the accounts don't agree. Here are the versions and who says what.