SCORPIONS drummer Mikkey Dee spoke to the “RRBG Podcast”about the progress of the recording sessions of the band’s upcoming studio album. Recorded at Peppermint Park Studios in Hannover, Germany, the disc will mark the German-Polish-Swedish hard rock legends’ first release since 2017’s “Born To Touch Your Feelings – Best Of Rock Ballads”, which was an anthology of SCORPIONS‘ new and classic material.
“We’re working very hard here, wrapping up the recordings of the record,” Mikkey said (as transcribed by BLABBERMOUTH.NET). “And we are in the beginning of mixing; we started mixing the songs. We’ve been working since early fall on this album. It’s gonna be a great record. It’s all recorded live in the studio. And it’s a good vibe. It’s a harder record, and great songs. So it’s gonna be great to get this one released.”
Asked if the songs were already written before he got involved in the recording process, Deesaid: “Most of the stuff Rudolf [Schenker, guitar], Klaus [Meine, vocals] and Matthias[Jabs, guitar] have been writing, but then we’ve been putting it together in the studio together, kind of. But most of it’s been written, yes. But we worked really hard, all five [of us], on these tracks.”
Regarding when fans can expect to see the new SCORPIONS album released, Mikkey said: “I guess the release of the record is gonna have to be matched somehow to when we can actually start touring. I had the hopes up that we would release this this spring. That was the plan from the beginning, and I’ve been telling magazines about us releasing it in the spring, but it’s not gonna happen, I don’t think. Because it has to be matched to the touring — unless something completely crazy happens. But I would think in the fall or something like that, hopefully.
“It’s impossible [to predict when we will be able to tour again]; you can only hope,” he continued. “I’m done speculating in this shit, because once you get a little bit of a stream of hope, it’s been shut down immediately. One day you hear this; next day, you hear a completely opposite thing. All this fucking second wave [of COVID-19] and third wave. Now they’re talking about a fourth wave. And there’s mutations from every fucking country in the world. If we’re gonna continue adapting after that, we’re talking 15 years. So, I don’t know.
“But I’m hopeful,” Mikkey added. “And, yeah, I’m positive that we’re gonna have to get back out there soon. Because no matter what happens, I don’t think you can keep the world shut down anymore. It’s just the end.”
Dee went on to say that he knows the “seriousness of this virus,” having battled it himself in March of 2020. “I was influenza sick, thank gosh,” he explained. “But some people are not that lucky, of course, but most of the people are really the elderly people and people with underlying diseases that turn out to get really, really sick. And then, of course, you have some exceptions with young, healthy people, of course. And I realize the seriousness of it.
“The world has been shut down for one full year now,” he concluded. “And that can just not continue like that. It’s a disaster in so many other ways than the virus. That’s how I see it. It’s very, very unfortunate.”
SCORPIONS have abandoned their plans to work with producer Greg Fidelman on their new album.
The German-Polish-Swedish hard rock legends spent the last few months recording the effort at Peppermint Park Studios in Hannover, Germany. Tentatively due later this year, the disc will mark SCORPIONS‘ first release since 2017’s “Born To Touch Your Feelings – Best Of Rock Ballads”, which was an anthology of new and classic material.
SCORPIONS originally intended to record the new album in Los Angeles with Fidelman, whose previous credits include SLIPKNOT and METALLICA. However, because of the pandemic, some of the initial work was done with Greg remotely, after which SCORPIONSopted to helm the recordings themselves with the help of their engineer Hans-Martin Buff.
During an appearance on MACHINE HEAD frontman Robb Flynn‘s “No Fuckin’ Regrets With Robb Flynn” podcast, SCORPIONS drummer Mikkey Dee stated about the band’s decision to proceed without Fidelman (as transcribed by BLABBERMOUTH.NET): “Unfortunately, because of this corona, we could not come to L.A., and [Greg] could not come to Germany. So we were trying for a whole month, via Zoom, to work on songs. And then he was with us [virtually] in the early evening, and we were working together on certain songs and arrangements. But it was almost impossible for him to get our feeling and for us to understand his feeling. So we decided that it was probably better that we were trying to do this on our own. And that’s what we’ve been doing. But I’m sure Greg would have put his magic ears to this album, and it would have been fantastic too. But, unfortunately, we had to make the best out of the situation. We were even talking about breaking in the fall, maybe in October or something already. We talked about maybe breaking the record and then come back and maybe fly to L.A. in February or March. We thought it’d be open by now. But look, here we are — it’s even worse than it was in October. So if we would have been sitting here now and broke the recording October, we would have wasted six months here.”
Elaborating on the early recording sessions with Fidelman, Dee said: “He was listening and working on this with us. But it’s really hard to get that feeling, of course. And when he wanted to change some stuff, we were sitting in the studio going, ‘What does he fucking mean here?’ ‘But it sounds great here.’ So it’s very hard to communicate [virtually]. But maybe next record — who knows? [So] we decided to move forward and continue recording and do the best we could. And we have Hans-Martin as an engineer. He’s brilliant, by the way. He worked on a lot, a lot of stuff for a lot of musicians. And he’s so fast, and he has a great ear, and he feels everybody on their instrument, which is important. He knows drums, he knows bass, he knows guitars, and they speak German as well, so that helps out when they can go at it and work on some stuff. Now, with this done, I think this is the only way we have to do it, and I think we chose the right way. Because if we would have stuck to really have Greg on this, we couldn’t even have started now. So who knows? Maybe we could have started in June or July [of this year]. We captured a moment when we all were fresh and really wanted to make a new album. Who knows what the feeling would have been if we started in June?”
According to Mikkey, the other members of the SCORPIONS should be completed with all the recordings in about two weeks, after which the album will be mixed by Michael Ilbert at the legendary Hansa Studios in Berlin, Germany.
Our Sin City Nights Vegas Residency dates May 8 – 30, 2021 at Zappos Theater have been rescheduled to March 26 – April 16, 2022. We can’t wait to be reunited with all of you then!
Fans who have purchased tickets to an affected performance will have their tickets automatically transferred to a new date with the exact same seats, including VIP packages where applicable. If you are unable to attend that date, please visit your original point of purchase for a refund. Those interested in purchasing tickets for the new dates can do so at https://www.ticketmaster.com/scorpionsvegas.
Former MOTÖRHEAD and current SCORPIONS drummer Mikkey Dee was recently interiewed on “Drum For The Song”, the podcast hosted by Dane Campbell, son of ex-MOTÖRHEADguitarist Phil Campbell. You can now watch the chat below.
Asked what the main difference is between playing with MOTÖRHEAD and touring withSCORPIONS in terms of how he paces himself for each individual band’s setlist, Dee said: “A lot of people say, ‘Hey, listen, Mikkey, you’re probably sleeping through the [SCORPIONS] set.’ And I’m telling you, this is so much more demanding than MOTÖRHEADever was, physically. Because, as you know, if I was starting to lose my breath here and there withMOTÖRHEAD, I could just shout at your dad or Lemmy and go, ‘Hang on, boys. Have a drink,’ and pretend to tune up the snare a little bit. And Lemmy and Phil, they were not very hard to [convince] to get a break. They went around their stacks and took a drink, and we said, ‘Cheers,’ and you could even actually have a chat on stage for a while. But with theSCORPIONS, it’s all on a click track, because of our screens — the production. And I do play around the click, but it has to work with the lyrics and stuff on the screens and what’s going on with the production, which we never had with MOTÖRHEAD.
He continued: “So every show [with the SCORPIONS] is exactly the same length — on the fucking second or minute… Klaus [Meine, SCORPIONS singer] cues whatever he says. So it could be one or two minutes difference between the sets, on two-and-a-half-hour sets. So it’s very demanding. It goes up and down, the set, and there’s a part in the set after we’ve done the acoustic medley, and then we come up and do ‘Wind Of Change’ — I’m actually freezing on stage. And then it’s about 40 minutes, 45 minutes of non-stop… We do heavy, heavy songs, and a drum solo, straight into ‘Blackout’, straight into ‘Big City Nights’. I mean, there’s 45 minutes where I don’t even have a chance to change drum sticks. So that is very, very demanding for me. But it’s great — it’s a challenge, and I love it. But the more tired I get on stage, the better I play.”
Mikkey added: “We usually did 90 minutes, with MOTÖRHEAD, and when we played with other bands, it could be 60 or 70 minutes. But MOTÖRHEAD, we controlled the set ourselves, and here and there, Phil ran outside and changed his guitar or took a piss, orLemmy disappeared off stage and no one knew what he was doing. We could run it ourselves more in a different way.”
In a new interview with Melodic, SCORPIONS singer Klaus Meine was asked how he keeps his voice in shape after all these years. He responded (hear audio below): “When we’re on the road, I do my exercises. And also, right now, being in the studio and singing every other day, recording [the new SCORPIONS album], I do my warm-ups and my vocal exercises. And so far, it got me through this pandemic times pretty good. We spent a lot of time this year working on songwriting and working on new songs in the studio.
“When we made the decision to make a new album, it’s such a challenge after all these years — from many perspectives,” he explained. “The voice — how you keep your voice going on this level; it’s a challenge for the songwriting; and for the whole process. And so far, I must say I’m very happy especially that my voice, when I need it, like just the other day in the studio, when it comes to a song with these high-pitched vocals, and you wanna hit the tones like you get there very easy; this is what you try to do. And when that works out fine, I drive home every night going, ‘Yeah. What a great day.’ I enjoyed myself so much singing a new song, recording a new song, and knowing my voice is there. I mean, we’re all getting older, but it looks like right now, my voice is still in a very good place, and that makes me feel really good.
“But it’s quite a challenge after all these years,” he admitted. “And it comes down to, once you make a decision, and we made the decision to make a new album last year — early in 2019 — but if we do it, then you wanna do it right. So in a way, we were lucky that we planned for 2020 to go into the studio. Except for a residency in Las Vegas in July, there were no other shows planned for 2020, because we said, if we wanna make a record, after all these years of touring like crazy all over the world, we have to take some time out and go into the studio and make a new album in 2020. In that way, we were lucky.
“I tell you, in these strange times we all go through, it’s such a privilege when you can work, when you can take a deep dive in your own creativity and come up with hopefully something brilliant,” Meine laughed and added. “You never know. But it feels really good. And we started last year writing, and we stopped around June last year when we picked up a tour… We knew this was now the time to write new songs and make a new record and then hopefully go back out on the road again with a new production and with a fresh setlist. So it was a good plan.”
