Scorpions

In 1969 guitarist and vocalist Rudolf Schenker formed the Scorpions alongside lead guitarist Karl-Heinz Folder, bassist Lothar Heimberg and drummer Wolfgang Dziony. A couple years later with little progress being made Schenker’s younger brother Michael joined the band along with good friend and frontman Klaus Meine who both recorded on their 1972 album “Lonesome Crow”. Michael Schenker soon got noticed by an early incarnation of the rock band UFO who hired him as their lead guitarist.

Uli Jon Roth replaced Schenker and contributed to the four albums “Fly to the Rainbow” in 1974, “In Trance” in 1975, “Virgin Killer” in 1976 and “Taken by Force” in 1977. By this point the band were becoming popular in Japan but by no means in the U.S. and in 1978 Roth left the group to form Electric Sun and Schenker returned after being kicked out of UFO for alcoholism.

Having signed to Mercury Records the Scorpions released “Lovedrive” in 1979 before undergoing significant line-up changes. Matthias Jabs came in on lead, Francis Buchholz came in on bass and Herman Rarebell on drums. The band’s next release “Animal Magnetism” surprised a lot of people going gold in the U.S. and represented a popularity shift in the States, with this news the Scorpions immediately returned to the studio to cash in on their newfound appeal.

In 1982, despite rumours Meine had been kick out of the group for broken vocal chords, the Scorpions released the “Blackout”. The album sold over a million copies in the U.S. alone and featured the hit single “No One Like You”. It was however the powerful follow-up “Love at First Sting” in 1984 that really gave the band their superstar status. Led by the huge MTV single “Rock You Like a Hurricane”, the album has since been certified double-platinum and increased the band’s popularity and concert scope.

After a long-winded two-year hiatus, the Scorpions returned in 1988 to release their tenth studio album “Savage Amusement” which featured the hit “Rhythm of Love”. The band subsequently released “Crazy World” in 1990 which proved the be the Scorpions’ biggest-seeing record to date led by the uber-popular “Wind of Change”.

With the influx of alternative rock to the ‘90s the Scorpions’ hard-rock appeal began to dwindle and in 1993 with the release of “Face the Heat” the band had lost a number of fans. The Scorpions followed the release up with the live album “Live Bites” in 1995, “Pure Instinct: in 1996 and the double CD greatest hits album “Deadly Sting: The Mercury Years” in 1997.

The band securely put on their experimentation hats for 1999’s “Eye II Eye” which featured pop and techno melodies, and invited the Berlin Philharmonic Orchestra to play and perform a number of Scorpion classic hits with the 2000 album “Moment of Glory”. The Scorpions have subsequently released their fifteenth studio album “Unbreakable” in 2004, “Humanity: Hour 1” in 2007, “Sting in the Tail” in 2010 and the greatest hits album “Comeblack” in 2011.