Scorpions were and still are one of the most important bands and performers of the twentieth century. They were worshipped in the Soviet Union. Then, in the newly independent countries, which had changed their political orientation, they were very much loved too, all in the very past tense.
As far as one can tell from the crooked post-Soviet canned music market, the love and reverence for the Scorpios has now taken partly an archival form, partly a genetic memory: a generation that was obliged to follow the stages of the Germans’ great journey with rapt attention, but chose simply to sigh nostalgically, is responsible for it.
But by and large, all this is nonsense – Scorpions had their biggest success in the period from 1984 (when “Love At First Sting” with the outstanding hits “Rock You Like A Hurricane” and “Still Loving You” was released) till 1990, which was marked by the last very strong album “Crazy World”.
Six years as a “decent world-class band” and that was it. Or almost that’s it.
But what to do? Forget and recognize the right to exist only those who measure music by the number of records sold? And allow only those who “produce results” to be respected? And so the love of our people for the band Scorpions has the same nature as fools and roads, and this love is sacred.
The unexplainable love for Scorpions music
In a sense, for our listening public Scorpions became, as psychoanalysts say, a “projection” or “sublimation”: people projected their expectations of seeing the home band in the halo of international success onto these German rockers, and, having projected, sublimated in Scorpions, as if they were that mythical “our” band, which the giants, titans and other oversized heroes of the legend would consider it an honor to play with.
It was impossible to be sublimated in the Beatles-rollers: a midget might as well imagine himself as a basketball player.
Scorpions became the first band to break through the language barrier and, leaving it behind, to cross the sound barrier as well: as soon as the foreign language became native and close, the bar, over which serious people in places with the highest concentration of serious music, ceased to seem unattainable.
This time the Germans succeeded in “conquering the whole world.”
Klaus Meine told what difficulties Scorpions had to face in his homeland, when the homeland understood, that songs in English were the repertoire of Scorpions and they would never sing in German:
Our concerts were ignored, and at the ones they didn’t, they pelted the stage with all kinds of nastiness. Germany turned away from us, and that was a bit offensive – a bit, because Germany wasn’t our target: the Scorpions had the whole world in their sights.
That’s right, if Scorpions had sung in German, only Austria and Switzerland would have sung under them, but this was a chance to fight for something more substantial in the territories, where before, seeing a living German, citizens usually didn’t calm down, until he was a bit dead.
All the books about the Scorpions say that in 1984 they conquered America – meaning that MTV started the “heavy rotation” of the video for the single “Rock You Like A Hurricane”. The single went double platinum, and Scorpions spent part of their US tour as a headliner – in all, they sold almost ten million of their 25 million CDs there.
No German band had ever closed a concert after a Kiss show before! It was a success, despite the fact that neither Kiss, nor Scorpions, nor any other Iron Division band, nor even their whole cavalcade in America had ever gathered more than a million spectators by the sum of their concert tours. With the exception of Metallica, but that is another story.
The leader of legendary band Scorpions, Klaus Meine, said, that their hour had come in the Soviet Union. In spite of the fact, that those, who forged their success, knew for sure: they would never see Scorpions band live.
Well, Soviet people in 1984 had no idea that everything would change! And here was a success, impossible in any other country, because it’s impossible to imagine any other place in the world, where a hysteria around music starts breaking out in the absence of a performer playing music!
You will say that this is exactly how hysteria around any other band in the USSR arose, but there were not many such “other” bands, or rather almost none at all. “The Beatles, Led Zeppelin, Deep Purple, Black Sabbath, and Uriah Heep were always loved, and loved with the smooth and gentle flame of a country fireplace.
Because they loved each in his or her own little den. The eternal lights in the squares with a large gathering of people began a little later, and one of the first to light the torch in honor of the Scorps. To be fair, though, it should be noted that the very first torch was lit in the name of Rainbow – not Deep Purple or Mr. Gillan and his band, but exactly Rainbow. Why? And then why Scorpions, and then Queen? That’s a question for a psychiatrist.
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