Currently we are experiencing a flurry of Scorpions related new music. Impending releases from Michael Schenker and his Temple of Rock new album, UFO and the Scorpions themselves have all enforced the belief that the classic rock genre is very much alive and kicking. The recent introduction of a new UK based festival to the summer calender Ramblin Man Fair to be headlined by the legendary German Rock band the Scorpions offered the opportunity to discuss both this and the band  history who are now  in their 50^th year of existence with frontman Klaus Meine.

Germany’s most successfully rock band, The Scorpions. These guys have been trend setters for that genre from the country that is known for Beer and their world class Oktoberfest Festival. Through Rock’s history we’ve had quite a few legendary bands that are known for their longevity in the scene, The Scorpions fit right up there when it comes to a definitive long career. But as with tenure bands, at some point they like to call it quits, so it happened in 2012 at the end of another successful world tour, the band threw the anvil down and decided to step way.

Truth be told, when there is a high demand, you supply more. In this case they guys realized that stepping away wasn’t all that easy as their popularity is still at a constant level. Klaus Meine himself admittedly said so.

Their long time running vocalist now at the senior age of 66, instead decided to mix some downtime in between studio albums instead of the constant grind of life on the road ( A bit like Judas Priest decided to do). So with a new studio album this year titled “Return to Forever” the upcoming eighteenth studio album, the band catapults their way back into the scene, line up another world tour and The Scorpions are back in business, stinging their poising to all their longtime army of fans.

We we’re very fortunate to have a chat with Klaus Meine himself tackling new album, world tour, their past success and the future… Full interview at the below link:

http://myglobalmind.com/2015/02/14/exclusive-interview-legendary-frontman-klaus-meine-scorpions/

Planetmosh spoke to Rudolf Schenker, founder of legendary rock band The Scorpions, to talk about their new album “Return to forever” and their live shows including their first UK date in 8 years at this year’s Ramblin’ Man festival.

http://planetmosh.com/rudolf-schenker-scorpions-interview-february-2015/

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=0t_b17rGu14

Vocalist Klaus Meine and guitarist Rudolf Schenker of German hard rock veterans SCORPIONS took part in a press conference on February 9 in Paris, France. You can now watch video footage of the question-and-answer session below.

Speaking about SCORPIONS‘ decision to scrap their retirement plans and record a new studio album, “Return To Forever”, Meine said: “When we decided [to do a] farewell tour back in 2010, we thought we had a great album with ‘Sting In The Nail’, and especially whenever we were thinking we would go out on the road again for two or three years around the world, and coming back from that tour, we would definitely be in our sixties, saying, ‘How can we keep going at this pace, this tempo, with this energy and power and still deliver a really great show night after night after night? [How can we] do a hundred shows, year after year, in twenty, thirty countries around the world? So that was a huge question mark up in the air for the two of us. And then we realized during the farewell tour, it’s easier to say than to do, and it was so emotional in many ways, and to see that we had a whole new audience of SCORPIONS fans out there, and [we were playing in front] of three generations.”

He continued: “So coming towards the end of that tour, the end of 2012 in Munich, we realized we don’t split up. We might take the foot off the gas a bit and take it easy, play a few concerts, maybe [take part in] a nice project, not knowing that only a few weeks later ‘MTV Unplugged’  would knock at the door and say, ‘SCORPIONS, how about an ‘MTV Unplugged’?’ Normally, we should have said, ‘We’re sorry. You’re too late. We just split up.’ But nobody would do that, right?! So we kept going, [and] we recorded ‘MTV Unplugged’. We prepared for that one and wrote some new songs, because we thought it would be nice to make the show more attractive to also use some new material. And in a way we opened the creative gates. At the same time, we started already going back to the ’80s, we’d been to the studio with our Swedish producers — I think we started in 2011 or 2012 — recording songs from the ’80s, calling the project ‘Outtakes’ as a working title. And we knew we had some great material sitting there. And at the time, we weren’t thinking about making a new record. Our mood was to [release something] as a bonus album at some point. We did ‘Comeblack’, yes, with cover versions, but we knew we had a great one sitting there, with songs never released, never finished, with some working lyrics, and we had to come up with a new chorus or something. So this was the situation. And we had started already some years back.”

Meine added: “After ‘MTV Unplugged’ and after some very successful shows we did in Germany last summer, we went back into the studio, and in the meantime, there were new songs. Everybody had written new songs, and so at the end of last year, it was a good balance between ’80s stuff and also brand new songs. So this album, ‘Return To Forever’, was building up over the last couple of years — not so much in the sense, ‘Now we make a new record.’ So it was building up. In between, we played some shows, we went back with the Swedish guys and did some recordings, and we were in a comfortable situation at the end of last year, having twenty songs and thinking about, ‘So, guys, we do a double record now or what?’ [Laughs] So it was a lucky situation. At the same time, when this 50th-anniversary tour project came up, we thought it would be nice to focus it all on 2015, bring out a new album and celebrate this very special anniversary, not only with a new record but with a movie. We just did the world premiere in Berlin last week [for] the movie called ‘Forever And A Day’, and we know we will have a movie premiere here in Paris as well very soon. So it’s a long story, but here we are in 2015, all psyched up and excited. And we feel it’s a privilege, after all these years and after this experience called ‘farewell tour,’ it’s a privilege we’re still around and it’s privilege we still can play this global stage out there. And to have so many fans, and also so many young fans from the new rock audience, that come to see us wherever we go, it’s just fanstastic and very inspiring and motivating.”