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.”

Rock Talk With Mitch Lafon… and Alan Niven present the Scorpions’ Mikkey Dee (October 2020 interview). Alan and I sat down with the Scorpions Mikkey Dee to discuss the band’s upcoming new album, the Motörhead 40th anniversary deluxe edition Ace Of Spades box set, hockey and Alan explains to Mikkey why he wasn’t considered for the drummer position in Guns N’ Roses after Steve Adler left.