Psychedelic Lunch

Welcome to our “Psychedelic Lunch” series where we find out how deep the rabbit hole really goes and explore music and musicians from the 60’s to today. Enjoy the trip!

The band is from Germany, but they’ve always recorded their songs in English, as their goal was always to conquer the United States.

In their early years, the band did most of the management and promotion themselves. They played gigs across Europe and in Japan because they had a deal with their record company that their albums would only be released in countries they toured.

When we spoke with Rudolf Schenker in 2010, he explained that their background in classical music and outside perspective helped them achieve success in America. Said Schenker: “In the beginning of our career, we had a problem in Germany because nobody expects a German band to play rock music. With rock music, there are more bands from England or America, which are more exotic than the Scorpions, who are from Germany. But when we went to America in ’79, we became the exotic ones. They said, ‘Hey, what kind of crazy guys are these?’ (laughs) We were already exotic, with a different view, and we also play our rock music with a little bit of an ethnic touch. You’ll notice that Americans come from the blues side, whereas we come from the classical side, which is different.”

Their song “Still Loving You” was especially popular in France, and government data shows a baby boom coinciding 9 months after the peak of the song’s popularity in that country. The Scorpions learned about this when they went on a French talk show.

When they finished making their 2010 album Sting in the Tail, the band decided it would be their last, as they were very pleased with the result and wanted to go out on top. They continued touring around the world, but stopped recording.

In 1988, they became the first hard-rock band to play in Russia, and their visit to that country the next year inspired their anthem “Wind Of Change.”

The Scorpions have released their brand-new single “Peacemaker” to whet their fans’ appetite for their upcoming album Rock Believer, scheduled to be released on February 25, 2022 — an amuse-gueule of the rock music variety straight from the metal quintet’s brand-hot kitchen.