Scorpions (band)

For other uses, see Scorpion

Image:Scorpions The Millennium Collection.jpg

The Scorpions Millennium Collection Album Cover

The Scorpions are a heavy metal band from Hanover, Germany.

1 History
2 Current band members
3 Line ups
4 Discography
5 See also
6 External links

History

Rudolf Schenker, the bands rhythm guitarist, set out to found a band in 1965. Things began to come together in 1969 when Schenker's younger brother Michael and vocalist Klaus Meine joined the band. After Rudolf and Klaus split with Michael and their bass-player and drummer, they joined a band called Dawn Road, which consisted of Francis Buchholz (bass), Uli Roth (guitar) and Juergen Rosenthal (drums). Together they decided to call this new band "Scorpions", a name that people would easily remember and understand not only in Germany.

They released their first studio album, Lonesome Crow, in 1972. The band released successive studio albums nearly every year through the rest of the 1970s. They backed the albums with a lot touring in Europe and came to Japan in 1978. Their first concert in America took place at a festival in Cleveland, Ohio in 1979. By the early 1980s a succession of strong singles and a predictable album schedule combined with heavy touring earned the band name recognition to heavy metal fans internationally.

In 1982, the video for the song "No One Like You" from the Blackout album secured heavy rotation on the nascent MTV exposing the band to a mainstream audience eager for more Scorpions music. The 1984 release of Love at First Sting finally secured the band massive commercial success with American audiences. Powered by the success of the single "Rock You Like A Hurricane" the Scorpions assumed a premier role in heavy metal. They were able to headline their own shows selling out large concerts. Mainstream success also meant mainstream criticism however. The American marketplace saw protest of the Love at First Sting album cover and some large chains and record clubs would not carry it - mimicking a gag from the satire movie This Is Spinal Tap that came out that same year.

The band enjoyed a high degree of success through the early 1990s thanks to the release of the Crazy World album in 1990 and the single "Wind of Change". The song muses on the socio-political changes occurring in Eastern Europe and in other parts of the world at the end of the Cold War. They were the first western group to play in the former Soviet Union. On July 21, 1990 they joined many other guests for Roger Waters' massive performance of The Wall in Berlin. Scorpions performed both versions of "In the Flesh" from The Wall.

In 1993 the album Face the Heat was published. The album opened with the heavy metal song "Alien Nation", considered by many headbangers to be the Scorpions' best work. For the following ten years, the Scorpions would experiment with their music, trying to attract fans of styles such as hard rock, grunge, alternative and others. They also experimented with pop-rock, philharmonic orchestra, and unplugged, but never equalled their success in the 1980s.

Their most recent album Unbreakable was a return to their roots featuring what many fans consider one of the best ballads they have ever written, "Maybe I, Maybe You".

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