SCORPIONS: STINGING SCORCHERS OR VIRGIN KILLERS?

If, as Jah Roth says, there's a little bit of Van Halen in everyone on a Saturday night, there's likely a whole lot of Scorpions the morning after.

"It's early morning the sun comes out/last night was shaking and pretty loud/my cat is purring and scratches my skin/so what is wrong with another sin/the bitch is hungry she needs to tell/so I give her inches and feed her well." Personally I feed mine Nine Lives but one cat's meat is another cat's Seafood Supper. Anyway, these immortal lines are from "Rock You like A Hurricane," one of the tunes on Love At First Sting, the latest greatest Scorpions LP. 700,000 of you already know that; you've bought the thing, and can't say as I blame you, the Scorpions being one of the better HM bands this miserable world has to offer. But for the rest of you heathens, it's the one with the black-and-white snapshot of the dedicated acupuncturist on the sleeve, so bent on curing a poor hysterical girl's anorexia that he rushed over without even stopping to clean his fingernails. (The latest in a series of Scorpions Helpful Hints album covers: Lovedrive: How To Remove Bubblegum From Your Date's Breast Without Alerting The Limo Driver; Virgin Killer: How To Determine The Sex Of A Young Adolescent When They're Not Wearing GenderIndicating Garments...)

It's early morning, the sun comes out, and I'm sitting with Rudolf Schenker and Klaus Meine, a couple of Scorpions (two's company, three's a kraut) and a nice couple at that, under a poolside umbrella at a Hollywood hotel. It looks like a Club Med ad and sounds like a war film. Klaus has the better command of English so he talks the most, though he seems the kind of guy who'd talk the most anyway, chatty and eager to explain effrysing about the band he and Rudy formed way back in 1971. He and Rudy both have the same sort of things to say anyway, no major disagreements popping up at least during my allotted hour.

As you already know (unless you're a Journey fan, in which case please do us all a favor and swallow three bottles of Valium), the Scorpions got together in Hanover, Germany, 100-odd miles from Hamburg, released their first album, Lonesome Crow, 13 years ago, and began a gruelling slog of the Fatherland. Half the metal bands that ever lived had the Scorpions open up for them—including UFO, who nicked their lead guitarist, Rudy's baby brother Michael Schenker (he returned off and on over the years before going loony and going solo). Rudy and Klaus picked up the pieces with new and everchanging personnel—including Ultrahippie guitarist and Hendrix emulator Ulrich Roth, and more drummers than I've had paychecks—before settling on the killer combination of Herman Rarebell, Francis Buchholz and Matthias Jabs. They joined up with producer Dieter Dierks in '75, broke out of Germany, went number one in Japan, top ten in England, and with a lot of touring and an album called Blackout finally went platinum in the States. If my memory serves me well, the only German hard rock band to have enjoyed such worldwide success.

Or maybe the only German hard rock band, at least in those days. Most of the inkraut bands then—the Cans, the Kraftwerks—took a classical or progressive (as opposed to Anglo-American) direction.

"Ve go far back to the beginning," Klaus Meine launches into one of his explanations. "In the late '50s, in Germany, the radio played all this schlage bullshit. You know schlage music? It was like middle of the road music, and it sounded just boring. And then, when the rock 'n' roll started getting big over here in America—Elvis Presley and stuff—they had some people who started doing cover versions in German. So that was the first contact ve made with rock 'n' roll. But the first real contact ve made with it came with listening to Elvis Presley and Little Richard on the radio. It was very exciting for us, even when ve didn't understand a word what they were singing about. But the feeling, the power, it was new for our ears."

"Rudolf said a very long time ago,'t knew for sure that ve make it one day top 20 best rock bands in the world.'" —Klaus Meine

"It vas amazing," Rudolf nods. "For us it was music that was not boring like the German schlage music. And that was the beginning. And then the Beatles came."

"And we were listening to BFPS," says Klaus, "the British station in Germany and they played 'Twist And Shout' and 'Can't Buy Me Love' and this stuff. And it sounded different. It wasn't influenced by classical music or electronic music, it was this very rough guitar music with strong and kind of dirty voices."

"Like ze Prettay Zings," interrupts Rudolf. Who? "Ze Pretty Zings! And Yardbirds and stuff. There was no question about it. When we came as musicians to learn guitar or be a singer, to change in a progressive direction and say 'now I am a musician, I play music against my direction, my taste'—for us it was clear, this was our favorite music, and we want to play music in a direction of our favorite music." Fair enough.

"The only problem was that it was not our mother language, and for me as a singer," says the singer, "it was a problem because I could speak English a little but not that good to write good lyrics. (Not to mention good titles, like Love At First Sting's glorious "As Soon As The Good Times Roll" and "Bad Boys Running Wild"!) We picked it up somehow from the records, from the radio, Pretty Zings, Stones, Zeppelin, everything we played; even when I didn't understand a word I was singing, it sounded like English, it sounded good. That was the whole idea, to make it sound good. Later the lyrics became very much important, but in the beginning I used his voice like he uses his guitar."

Also in the beginning they did a Cover song of Sweet's "Fox On The Run," in German. It was called "Fox Geh' Voran." "So that explains why we don't sing in German! I still believe that for the New Wave Music the German language is fantastic, it fits perfectly, like ka-ka-ka-ka-ka-ka-ka-ka-kaka, you know. But for heavy rock, the music we play, it just does not sound good."

Indeed, one of the many sad things about Germany is that they don't speak English. But the young Scorpions didn't go to bed at night railing at an unjust Gott for not letting them be born in Baltimore or London town.

"For us it is not important where we are born," says Rudy, "what kind of nationality ve are. That's maybe why ve are musicians who travel around the world, because ve do not want to stand on one point. It is not interesting to live or be born in New York—what's important is what you are doing next, after you are born. If you make up your mind, you can go where you want to go. Ve are sometimes in New York, sometimes Mexico City, sometimes Tokyo. Ve find our places where ve want to go." Hanover's a good place to go back to, because it's where their families and friends are, "a good place," says Klaus, "to come down from the big party trip." But a bit of a handicap for new bands to start out from, with all the pro music worth listening to coming from America or England.

"So it was a funny time, you know," Klaus recalls, "All ve wanted to do was playing our music and playing live, and ve always believed in our music, even when the press put us down in the beginning, especially in Germany. They called it Kraut Rock and said it was a copy of something else, it's not your music, it's stolen. But it was our music, because ve were growing up from a child to what we are now. Ve wasn't listening to German kind of stuff. Ve were born after the Second World War and when we grew up there was nothing in the German history, all of this bloody wars and and all this surf, that we could be proud of to say 'Ve are Germans, look at us!' There was no music tradition." What about Wagner? "Of course there was a music tradition, but it was very different."

"And ve don't like it so much!" protests Rudolf.

"With the new wave of German rock in the last two years," says Klaus, "it was the first time that the Germans had their own scene and their own thing—the first time that they had this power and they said, 'here we are, the Germans,' and everybody's singing in German, and it was a great success. A few were good, many were bullshit, but they gave them the power. And when you're young and you start with a band, it's very important that you have somebody to support you, to back you up. Ve never had it. Ve were five people in the band and ve had to back up ourselves, and ve were fighting for five deutschmarks—I want to buy cigarettes and Rudolf says no, you can't buy cigarettes because ve need the money for the truck to go to the next gig, so I stopped smoking. So bands broke up; they just had not the power and it was just too much trouble." Which is why the Scor| pions lost so many members. That and the 8 army.

"Some Heavy Metal people are going in a direction that is very, very sick." —Klaus Meine

J "In Germany everyone must go to the ar¶| my, and if you build up a band then at its ^ best time you must go for one yedr and « eight months and you lose the feel for it," u says Rudolf. Did he go? "Yes, you must go. But I was only two months." Didn't want to lose any more wars?

"They didn't want me," Rudy chuckles. "But that's a big problem—most people, when they are into music then they must go to the army, when they come back they lost their contact to the scene and stuff."

"Like breaking your backbone," says Klaus. "Then you come back and you become part of the system and you have a wife and a few kids and that's it. When ve started ve had our drummer and the bass player just didn't believe that much in the band as ve did. When Rudolf said a very long time ago, 'I knew for sure that ve make it one day top 20 best rock bands in the world,' like this, he said, as bullshit, all I know is the end of the month I need my money, my family, you know. OK, it was hard times, and family for him was of course more important. So over the years many people came, many people left."

"It's like if you have corn and you want to—what's his name?—see the difference between the whole corn and the rubbish stuff you have to schhhhh," Rudy does a sieving mime, "so the bad stuff falling down and the good thing is there. That was the thing. Many people was playing with Scorpions before and we change change change until we found the right people."

OK, OK. Let's separate a bit of the old wheat from the chaff ourselves here. Scorpion's hard rock songs are as powerful and bombastic and energetic as these things come, severely brutal populist stuff. But their American hit single of yesteryear—and a couple of the songs on the new album—are, if you'll forgive the expression, ballads.

"Ve have two very strong directions in our music," explains Klaus. "The one direction, the very strong, powerful,, hot and heavy side, and the other one is very gentle, melodic ballads side. They were always two very important directions of Scorpions. If you listen back to our early stuff, we were looking for a way in music—like our first album, which ve did with his brother Michael, there was a song on it called 'In Search Of The Peace Of Mind,’ which was a beautiful ballad with acoustic guitar and you can call it today a typical Scorpions song, but there were songs like ‘Action’ with the bass going drummm drummm drummm drummm drummm, funky jazz kind of stuff that was far away. And ve were looking for a way, and I think ve found our way maybe in ’75 with In Trance a little more—but then we had Ulrich Roth as a guitar player, who was very influenced by Jimi Hendrix and it was so far away. So when we found Matthias Jabs, our guitar player, who is with us now since ’79, and we recorded Lovedrive which was the first album which was one thing, good compositions and one direction, and this is the point where ve came to America and everything exploded for us and it was getting better and better and better.

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“Ve do not sit down and try to write in a commercial way. Ve just try to write good songs, ve try that the entire album is a hit, a good album. There are too many albums around, especially on the heavy metal side, where there are maybe one or two songs on the album which are good and the rest is just bullshit. For me it’s boring; I can’t listen to most of this stuff, because I’m into melodies and good songs, and there’s too many heavy metal bands that are just boring with all their monsters and all this shit. I think when the music Is good, who needs the monsters onstage and all this blood and devil are Ve Are Satan’s People bullshit. Heavy Metal people, not all of them but at least a few, they are going in a direction that is very, very sick.”

So what about Scorpions’ album covers, eh?

“That’s different. Sex is a normal situation.” Sure, I use a tattoo pencil and my old man greases up his fingernails every night; saves getting the breast gum stuck down them.

“Of course,” nods Klaus, “but we know when we are on our edge. Virgin Killer, this was our edge.”

“When ve were starting,” says Rudolf, “ve was thinking also to do something that people must watching you, so we did Virgin Killer because to shock the people in one direction. This covet, it was a little girl, she doesn’t know about life, the bad things of life. When she grows up, all the stuff from the outside influences her—or time is a virgin killer, that was the idea of the lyrics.”

“It was confrontation,” admits Klaus. “When I look back now, for us it was on the edge, it was somehow tasteless as well. But Lovedrive, I think that that was a good cover, still is.” That cover, you might recall, got banned in the States (though it’s since been rereleased in its original sticky form). So’s the Love At First Sting cover, so best rush out and try and snap up one of the uncensored ones. “Ve think it’s good,” swears Klaus. “When you look at the guy, his leather jacket, his dirty fingers, his boots, that’s the rock and roll side, like ‘Bad Boys Running Wild.’ And when you see the girl, very classy, luxury, sophisticated Vogue model, she stands more for the melodies, ‘Still Loving You,’ the ballads. So the cover’s got everything.”

OK, I know you’ve been waiting for the answer to this question. So I’ll ask it. Someone has to. If Rudolf and Klaus were stranded on a desert island with one Scorpions record, which one would they like it to be?

“For me it would be Blackout, ” Klaus doesn’t hesitate, “because it was very special for me because of the situation I was going through where I lost my voice and all this stuff.” (Meine had surgery during the album before last, and there were fears that he’d never sing again.)

“Love At First Sting,” says Rudolf, “because it’s new, because I don’t listen to the old ones anymore. I don’t like it, because when something is done it is done, don’t look back. I want to go straight, not in a circle.”

But they’re on a desert island, where can they go? Alright, I’ll let them have one album by any other artist.

“One of the Led Zeppelin albums, Physical Graffiti or Led Zeppelin II, ” is Rudy’s choice. “Me too, or Sgt. Pepper's,” adds Klaus. OK, you’ve twisted my arm. You get one possession, other than a musical instrument, to help you pass the desert island time. “A book,” smiles Rudolf. “I don’t know the English. Autobiographic of Ein Yogi,” so he could meditate the time away. “Ach, an empty book to write in,” says clever Klaus. “I could write a book there.”

They’ll write a book one day, they assured me, telling all the gruesome tales of what it took to take them to the top. What secrets would we find out? And there you have them, wonderful fellows, good musicians too, and a live show that brings teats to your eyes and blood to your ears. “Where you hear about me pouring wine in TV sets?” says Rudolf in reply to interrogation about the legendary Scorpions road games (arrested in Texas last year for turning a Holiday Inn into a bombsite). “It’s good, we have two sides, like our music. One is very quiet and very—how you say it—shy.”

“Like Japanese,” Klaus shrinks. “OO-wooo. It’s like one day it’s bad boys running wild and the next day nice boys running nice. After a bad, bad, long-running wild party.”