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Scorpions "Unbreakable" set for June 22nd release
By: ModernRock.com
June 2nd 2004 10:03am
It's been worth the wait for "Unbreakable". With their uncompromising rock
album the Scorpions have unequivocally sounded their return in 2004 to the
worldwide hard'n'heavy arena.
"Unbreakable" is a concept album in a very special sense. It symbolises the
indestructibility of the basic musical coordinates of the Scorpions. The
unique power triad of outstanding musical figures: singer-songwriter Klaus
Meine, guitarist and composer Rudolf Schenker and lead guitarist and
composer Matthias Jabs.
"Unbreakable", the twentieth Scorpions album, is the quintessence of
thirty-five years of Scorpions history. And at the same time it marks the
re-commitment of Germany's internationally most successful hard rock export
to their essential strengths. "First and foremost we are a rock band," says
Klaus Meine, leaving no room for doubt. "Our fans expect to really feel the
lethal sting of the Scorpions. So with "Unbreakable" we've recorded a typical
Scorpions album." Seconded by Rudolf Schenker: "After side projects like
Moment Of Glory and Acoustica we owed our fans a kick-ass, bad-to-the-bone
rock CD." Rudolf Schenker sees "Unbreakable" as building a bridge between the
Scorpions and their fans. "It's an album that brings the old and the new
generation of Scorpions fans together." Matthias Jabs sums it up: "With the
new album we've returned to what the Scorpions are really all about.
Hand-made rock music. Pick up the instruments, plug them in, play," is how
he describes the highly successful three months spent working in the studio
with producer Erwin Musper. "The band together in one room for the basic
tracks - back to the roots but in the contemporary rock sound of 2004. And
at the same time we've reshaped our live set with the new songs." Erwin
Musper, who as producer and sound engineer knows the Scorpions better than
anyone else, goes even further: "The Scorpions have set a new standard with
"Unbreakable". It's the best material the Scorpions have written in the last
five years. Any rock band setting out to record a new album, should have
"Unbreakable" as a reference in their sound library." Erwin Musper knows what
he's talking about. Born in The Netherlands, he's been working with the
Scorpions as producer and engineer since 1988. In addition, he has worked in
the USA for many years as producer for bands such as Metallica, Iron Maiden,
Van Halen, Bon Jovi and Def Leppard. Scorpions drummer, James Kottak, is up
front about it: "Unbreakable" is the best record ever from Germany's No. 1
rock machine."
With "Unbreakable" 2004 Klaus Meine, Rudolf Schenker and Matthias Jabs are
going onto the musical offensive with a typical Scorpions coup: Pawel
Maciwoda is the new bass player of Germany's globally most successful rock
act. This new band member is another signal that there's no going back for
the Scorpions. Together with drummer James Kottak, this hard rock bass
player, steeled in the New York professional scene, represents a pressure
build-up in the Scorpions' now outstanding rhythm'n'groove section.
"Unbreakable" symbolises the musical and personal identity that has
characterised the Scorpions for over thirty-five years and accounted for
their lasting worldwide success. Klaus Meine, Rudolf Schenker and Matthias
Jabs are three musical individualists, who have been time-travelling
together since 1978, without regard for the changing fashions and ethos of
the moment, on a common musical journey through their own Scorpions
universe.
The coordinates: compositional genius, unique musical identity,
irrepressible will to succeed and unbroken pioneering spirit - true to the
credo of "playing anywhere in the world where we can plug in". The Scorpions
are a live band. That's the territory in which they're most at home.
The inner strength of the Scorpions derives from the staunch friendship
between Klaus Meine, Rudolf Schenker and Matthias Jabs. On their concert
tours, which can often last for months, they spend more time together, after
all, than they do with their families. Their musical collaboration is
characterised by the dedication and unconditional effort they put into their
common goal: fighting to achieve the best at all times. True to their slogan
"Don't Stop At The Top", the Scorpions tirelessly pursue their resolution of
"always doing the unexpected". In this they are supported by their unbridled
passion for their music. The Scorpions love to push their sting out to the
limits. This surge of positive energy is the power field that holds the
multi-facetted nucleus of the Scorpions together. It's this element of
friendship existing between the musicians and extending to their fans that
remains the core strength of the Scorpions. The result is the strong fan
basis around the world, which makes the Scorpions independent of the
unpredictable and fluctuating moods of the international music market.
In terms of their music, the Scorpions have maintained an impressive balance
between the wide-ranging musical tastes of their fans in different
continents. In the USA it's the straight rock numbers that are expected of
the Scorpions. The same in Britain, Australia and Japan. In Eastern Europe
and Russia, as well as in the countries of the South - Central and South
America, Portugal, Spain, France, Italy and Greece - it's the rock ballads
that the fans love best. In Asia, in countries like India, Malaysia,
Singapore, Thailand, Indonesia, Korea and the Philippines, the Scorpions
have scored a remarkable success with their unplugged project Acoustica.
"Unbreakable" is the payback for all the millions of loyal SCORPIONS fans
around the world, who have followed their band through decades of successive
and successful creative phases.
Looking back, the Scorpions have achieved everything that defines an
internationally successful rock band. Their hard rock hits like Rock You
Like A Hurricane, Blackout, Big City Nights, Dynamite, Coast To Coast, The Z
oo, Coming Home, Hit between The Eyes and Tease Me Please Me thrill millions
all over the world. The Scorpions virtually created a genre of modern hard
rock. Together with Led Zeppelin, the Scorpions are the inventors of the
hard rock ballad. Their power rock ballads, such as Still Loving You,
Holiday, Send Me An Angel, When You Came Into My Life and You And I, as well
as their unplugged oriented songs like Always Somewhere, A Moment In A
Million Years and When The Smoke Is Going Down, appeal even to confirmed
opponents of hard rock. In 1991 the Scorpions landed a worldwide No. 1 hit
with the rock ballad Wind Of Change composed by Klaus Meine. But Wind Of
Change was not just a hit single. The song formed the soundtrack for one of
the most significant events in world politics towards the end of the 20th
century. Wind Of Change became the anthem for the fall of the Berlin Wall
and the lifting of the Iron Curtain.
Spurred on by the undiminished enthusiasm of their fans, the Scorpions tour
the world's most important rock market, the USA, every year as headliners,
performing at over 40 concerts. They give more than a hundred concerts a
year in front of hundreds of thousands of fans in sold out halls and
stadiums right round the globe, from Los Angeles to New York, from Anchorage
to Santiago de Chile, from Glasgow to Beirut, from Helsinki to Vladivostok,
from Bangalore to Tokyo.
Since the early 1980s the Scorpions have headlined at all international rock
spectacles. In 1985 they appeared at the first Rock In Rio. In the mid-80s
they topped the bill at the legendary Monsters Of Rock festivals. They are
the only German band ever to have performed to a sold out Madison Square
Garden in New York time after time. In 1999 they took part in the Michael
Jackson & Friends benefit concert in Munich's Olympic Stadium at the
personal invitation of the King of Pop. In August 2000, 750,000 Polish rock
fans made the pilgrimage to Cracow to experience the Scorpions live. Their
many special appearances include events like the opening of the Tour de
France in 2000 and the international Masters of Endurance motorcycle world
championship in Magny-Cours, France, in 2001. Even heads-of-state get in on
the act. In May 2003 the Scorpions performed in front of an audience
including 40 international leaders at the tercentennial celebrations in St.
Petersburg. In September 2003 the Scorpions played together with the
Presidential Orchestra of the Russian Federation in Red Square in Moscow.
This mega-spectacle was accompanied by a gigantic pyrotechnical light
installation created by the world-renowned pyro-light designer Gert Hof.
The concert set against the world famous backdrop of St. Basil's Cathedral
and the Lenin Mausoleum in front of the Kremlin marks a special high point
in the Scorpions' biography. The band has very close ties to Russia and the
countries of Eastern Europe. In fact, they're bonded in a unique musical
kinship. Throughout Eastern Europe the Scorpions are superstars. In 2002 the
Scorpions became the first western rock band to stage a tour of 23 concerts
right across Russia and the former CIS states from the Baltic to the Sea of
Japan. They appeared in major cities on both sides of the Urals, which were
unknown territory even for the Russian organisers of the tour. In the once
"closed city" of Nizhni Novgorod, formerly Gorky. In historic Volgograd. In
Rostov-on-Don. In Samara, Naberezhnyye Chelny, Perm, Ufa. In Ekaterinburg,
Tcheliabinsk, Omsk, Novosibirsk, Tomsk, Krasnoyarsk, Irkutsk, Vladivostok.
The tour took the Scorpions to cities no less marked by history in Ukraine.
To Odessa on the Black Sea coast, to Dnepropetrovsk on the Dnepr and to
Charkov.
The Scorpions were the first internationally known rock band to perform
behind the Iron Curtain. That was in 1988 in St. Petersburg, the then
Leningrad, where they gave ten sold-out concerts. This was the
curtain-raiser to the legendary 1989 Moscow Music Peace Festival, the
Woodstock of the USSR. Scorpions vocalist Klaus Meine forged his experiences
into the Scorpions' smash hit Wind of Change. Written in 1989, the song
anticipated the lifting of the Iron Curtain and became the anthem of the
opening up of Eastern Europe. In 1990 the Scorpions performed in reunified
Berlin, in Potsdamer Platz, on the site of the newly cleared death strip
which had divided the city, in Roger Waters' rock spectacle The Wall. On
December 14th 1991 Michail Gorbachev, the initiator of glasnost and
perestroika and last head-of-state and party-leader of the USSR, invited the
German SCORPIONS to a rock summit in the Kremlin. Eleven years later, in
October 2002, the German Scorpions appeared in Volgograd, the former
Stalingrad, the most heavily emotive city in recent German-Russian history.
In 1999, to mark the 10th anniversary of the fall of the Berlin Wall, the
SCORPIONS were invited by the German government to appear at the Brandenburg
Gate in Berlin, where they were joined by 166 cellists in a performance of
Wind Of Change. Conducted by the legendary Russian cellist, Mstislav
Rostropovich.
The year 2000 saw the crowning musical honour. The globally celebrated
Berlin Philharmonic Orchestra, bearer of the legendary Karajan legacy,
appeared together with the Scorpions at a special event at the EXPO world
fair in Hanover. The programme: Scorpions' classics, collected in the joint
CD production Moment Of Glory. The title song, composed by Klaus Meine, was
also the official anthem of EXPO, the first world fair to be held in Germany
in the Scorpions' home city of Hanover.
The Hanover EXPO, June 22nd 2000. It was the "Night of Nights", the "Battle
of the Giants", a "musical exchange of fire" between rock band and classical
orchestra of a standard never heard before. With this crossover project, the
Scorpions achieved a remarkable bridging operation between orchestral and
rock music and accessed an audience that would otherwise never venture into
a rock arena. Through the CD and the concert the Berlin Philharmonic
achieved sales figures and audience dimensions that are truly exceptional
for classical productions. Renowned crossover arranger and conductor
Christian Kolonovits from Vienna saw the joint project as nothing less than
"an event at which Scorpions hits were used to write the history of thirty
years of rock music." Kolonovits achieved the ultimate fusion of these
musical antitheses with Crossfire and the Deadly Sting Suite. At the climax
of the concert, Kolonovits engaged the two bodies of musicians in such a
furious instrumental interchange that even inveterate classical fans among
the EXPO premiere audience were literally ripped out of their seats.
The successful collaboration with Christian Kolonovits led the Scorpons in
2001 to immediately follow the Moment Of Glory joint venture with the Berlin
Philharmonic with the unplugged album Acoustica that had long been planned
and was eagerly awaited by the band's Asian fans. The Scorpions had mastered
the technique of unplugged playing - using purely acoustic instruments -
right from the start of their career as musicians, long before the MTV era.
Rock music is their vocation, a tenet of their absolute professionalism,
without which they could never have achieved what they have. The Scorpions
are very happy to have produced Acoustica and are proud of their unplugged
project. It was a challenge, musically, to take a song like Rock You Like A
Hurricane, give it a new and sophisticated acoustic interpretation and
perform it as an integral part of a live set. At the same time, Acoustica
provided the impetus for the Scorpions to return to their musical roots with
"Unbreakable" and recommit themselves to their strengths as a live hard rock
band.
Klaus Meine, Rudolf Schenker and Matthias Jabs were shaped by the hard rock
pioneers of the 60s, by bands and musicians like Spooky Tooth, The Pretty
Things, The Yardbirds, Eric Clapton, Cream, Jimi Hendrix, The Who, Led
Zeppelin and of course The Beatles and The Rolling Stones. And they were
also influenced by the rock'n'roll heroes of the 50s: Jerry Lee Lewis,
Little Richard and Elvis Presley.
In the 1960s music scene in Hanover, Klaus Meine and Scorpions founder
Rudolf Schenker crossed paths a number of times. It was right at the end of
1969 that the two decided to join up on the same musical path. The Schenker
/ Meine composing partnership laid the foundations for a spectacularly
successful career. In 1979 Klaus Meine and Rudolf Schenker brought Matthias
Jabs into the band as lead guitarist. His creativity and virtuosity were to
make a decisive contribution to the international success of the Scorpions.
It was with Matthias Jabs that the Scorpions made their breakthrough as an
international hard rock act. American-born James Kottak joined the Scorpions
as drummer in 1996. And the latest addition is Pawel Maciwoda, the power
rock base-player who was born in Cracow in Poland, who joined the Scorpions
in 2003. Both these musicians are proven hard rock specialists of
international experience.
Even a band like the Scorpions, which has such a long history of success in
the international music business, is bound to undergo changes. The band's
paradigmatic philosophy of friendship has stood the test of time, including
the various changes of membership that have taken place in the 35-year-plus
career of the Scorpions.
And the Scorpions have picked up on an interesting phenomenon with regard to
the audiences at their concerts around the globe. More and more younger fans
are crowding into the front rows - fans who've been inspired by the idols of
their own generation and now want to see the originals.
From the very beginning, it was the vision of Scorpions founder Rudolf
Schenker "to conquer the world through music" and "one day count among the
best heavy rock bands in the world." In musical terms, the Scorpions cover
the whole spectrum of rock-specific genres in 2004: hard'n'heavy, unplugged
and crossover. Yet right across the various arrangements the distinctive
Scorpions identity is clearly recognisable in all Scorpions hits. The
Scorpions' songs and words address global issues and reflect what people
around the globe feel about life. Musically the Scorpions' compositions span
the spectrum between driving rock riffs and deeply emotional power rock
ballads.
All this has ensured that the Scorpions are the only German band to have
unswervingly pursued an international career for over thirty-five years.
"We've often been through hell, to experience heaven. We've always had faith
in ourselves and have never accepted limitations for ourselves," is how
Rudolf Schenker sums it up. "Doing a world tour and seeing how people
respond to the music and are carried away by it," is for Rudolf Schenker
simply "the best there is." An "adventure" that he "wouldn't miss for the
world." For Scorpions vocalist Klaus Meine it's "a fascinating experience,
again and again, to contribute towards a peaceful world through the global
language of music. To show that music is a language that crosses frontiers
and overcomes differences." The outstanding date in this respect was the
concert the Scorpions - from Germany - gave in 2002 in Volgograd. For these
musicians, born in post-war Germany between 1948 and 1955, it was a deeply
felt contribution towards atonement. What's important for Matthias Jabs is
to make "music that's enduring" and that embodies the identity of the
Scorpions. Over time and up there in front of the fans. Music that satisfies
the band's own musical needs and those of their audiences. Music, above all,
that stands the test of a live concert - in the full exposure of the
spotlights, "where you can't hide anything." In 2004 Klaus Meine gives this
summary of the impressive history of the Scorpions: "There'll never be any
substitute for live concerts with real music and real feelings." It's a
statement from the heart that also looks forward into the future. And
"Unbreakable" is the musical statement of now from Germany's only global band.
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