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August 31st Rudy Schenker will turn 66!!! Happy Birthday Rudy and i speak for all Scorpions fans all around the world. We are looking forward to the 50th anniversary tour and new studio album in 2015.
German hard rock veterans SCORPIONS will celebrate their 50th anniversary in 2015 with a special tour and new studio album. More information will be made available soon.
German rock band Scorpions confirmed that they will celebrate their 50th anniversary next year with the launch of their 20th album and an accompanying tour. “Yes, we have started already. We have 12 songs. We found songs mainly from the early 1980s Blackout and Love At First Sting days, which many people consider our most creative and best time,” said the band’s lead guitarist Matthias Jabs in an earlier interview.
“The leftover tracks sound good, but they were never finished. They don’t have lyrics or vocals, and they’re not recorded to a click. So, we have to do everything new, but it sounds quite good so far,” he added.
Rudolf Schenker, who launched the band in 1965, said two of the new songs on MTV Unplugged, Dancing With The Moonlight and Rock & Roll Band, have been saved as bonus tracks. “We’ll put them out as electric versions. I think we have a total of 15 songs from the 70s and 80s that we want to release. In 2014, we’ll finish the places we haven’t played yet on tour, and then get back to the record,” he commented.
Interestingly, the band had announced in 2010 that they will end their career following a three-year farewell tour. In an interview, Schenker, Jabs and the band’s lead singer Klaus Meine were asked what changed their minds.
“When you start a three-year farewell tour, you know you’ve got a long time ahead of you. But that long period went by much faster than we imagined. The closer we got to the goal (Munich in December 2012), the stronger the feeling was that we hadn’t come to the end,” Meine said. “There were so many images in our minds and so many emotions in our hearts. Everything we experienced between 2010 and 2012, the 200 concerts — it was all so powerful.”
Meine epitomised the band’s sentiment when he said: “You stand on stage, look down and see so many fans including the younger generation, who are really getting into it and saying: ‘Guys, this is so cool. We’re seeing you for the first time. When will you be back?’ It’s so motivating and inspiring to play for three generations. We’re all having too much fun to put down the guitars.”
Schenker said the band had initially announced the farewell tour because they didn’t want to be standing on the stage and not able to deliver what people expected from them. “The success of the farewell tour bowled us over,” he said.
“At first, there were plenty of arguments in favor of stopping,” revealed Jabs. “But we were quickly overshadowed by the feeling of how much fun it all is. It doesn’t matter where we went, the shows were packed. So, we just thought: This can’t really be the end.” “It’s one thing to say, ‘This is going to be the end of the Scorpions’ and another to do it,” said Meine.
German hard rock veterans SCORPIONS have confirmed that their American drummer, James Kottak, arrived in the U.S. last night after spending a month in a Dubai, United Arab Emirates jail for insulting Islam. The band added in a statement posted on Facebook: “[James] will have to find the time to sort out his problems.”
Dear fans, at this point we want to hear personally from James what happened in Dubai…we let you know…Hopefully there will be better days ….. Scorpions
For SCORPIONS’ recent concerts in Germany, Swedish drummer Johan Franzon filled in for Kottak.
“Dear fans, when James Kottak arrived in Dubai on April 3th, he ran into problems at immigrations and got busted. Whatever happened is totally out of our control and we don’t know any details about it at this point. For the concerts in Germany, Johan Franzon, a Swedish drummer, will take James’ seat. Please understand, we keep you posted.”
Read more at http://www.blabbermouth.net/news/scorpions-release-statement-regarding-drummer-james-kottaks-arrest-and-conviction-in-dubai/#xXfhoHE4374wLG41.99
Here is my two cents. Even though James is a great drummer and has been with the band for 18 years. If he made those comments about Muslims. The band has no choice but let him go. The band will become a terror target at every show going forward if he stays in the band. Here is the Scorpions chance to reach out to Herman Rarebell and bring back the greatest drummer the Scorpions have ever had in their 43 year history. Anyone who has seen Herman play in the last couple years with Michael Schenker knows he can still play the drums real well live in concert. Plus the band doesn’t play anymore then 50-70 shows a year these days. So age should not matter anymore. If the band is indeed on their farewell tour. They can’t bring in a new guy to play drums. Herman has expressed the last 5 years that he would like to rejoin the Scorpions if James left. This is the perfect opportunity for the Scorpions to conclude the farewell tour with a past member who had a huge hand in their career success.
Now we know why drummer James Kottak missed the Scorpions‘ performance earlier this month at the 2014 Formula One Gulf Air Bahrain Grand Prix — he was in jail.
The 51-year-old reportedly consumed five glasses of wine on an April 3 flight to Dubai, and then allegedly began shouting derogatory remarks at other passengers once arriving at the airport. Kottak is now spending a month in a Dubai jail, after being convicted this morning of insulting Islam.
Witnesses claimed that Kottak “started swearing and talking about ‘non-educated Muslims’ before he flashed his middle finger at passengers.” Police also said the drummer lowered his pants, exposing his rear. Another witness, who worked at the airport, added: “When he saw the Pakistani and Afghani passengers, he covered his nose and said that there was no way he will travel with them.”
Kottak, who has been in custody since April 3, denied the allegations: “I don’t remember saying these words and I did not flash my middle finger. … There is no way that I would say such a phrase about Muslims, whether I was drunk or not.” He also denied pulling down his pants. “This is not true. I just lifted my shirt up to show the tattoo on my back” as a “spontaneous act.”
In addition to his one-month sentence, Kottak was fined approximately $545 for drinking alcohol without a license. “I confess to drinking alcohol,” he said, “but I refuse the other two charges. I did not do them.”
Kottak was previously in Kingdom Come, a former opening act for the recently unretired Scorpions. Helloween’s Mark Cross filled in for Kottak during the April 5 Scorpions performance at the Formula One concert.
This Saturday February 15th Rudy and Klaus will be on “That Metal Show” where both members will skype into the show.
Klaus Meine, Rudolph Schenker Share Career Retrospective InTheStudio
Dallas, TX – February 11, 2014. North American syndicated Rock radio show and website InTheStudio: The Stories Behind History’s Greatest Rock Bands gets rocked like a hurricane by the Scorpions on the 30th anniversary of their biggest selling album Love At First Sting.
The Scorpions from Hanover Germany had been the decade-long international long shot when their 1982 album Blackout blew up Top 10 in the US, powered by the # 1 Rock radio track “No One Like You”. The Scorpions’ follow-up album Love At First Sting two years later soared to # 6 on the Billboard album chart with triple platinum sales while delivering a blitzkrieg of rock anthems including “Rock You Like A Hurricane”, “Big City Nights” and the signature power ballad “Still Loving You”. But the real story is how the Scorpions overcame unbelievable barriers of distance, language, lack of management, their lead singer’s desperate throat surgery, the notorious East German Stasi secret police, and the Berlin Wall to be key players with Soviet Premiere Mikhail Gorbachev’s dismantling of Communism in the Soviet Eastern Bloc. Lead singer/ songwriter Klaus Meine shares with InTheStudio host Redbeard how Rock’n’Roll helped them escape the uber guilt of Germany’s Nazi past and build a future.
“We were not proud of our country and our parents were not proud of our country. They just survived the (Second World) War. So rock music is the way we got out. And starting as young musicians playing English and American music, it was in a way something like an attempt to be part of the world community, to escape a place where you feel this burden.”
This week’s InTheStudio program celebrates the best of the Scorpions including the international hit “Wind of Change” which provided the soundtrack for freedom during the fall of the Berlin Wall in 1989.
Scorpions ‘Love At First Sting’ / InTheStudio interview program is available now to stream at: www.inthestudio.net/redbeards-blog/scorpions-love-sting-3
SCORPIONS guitarist Matthias Jabs revealed in an interview with Classic Rock Revisited that his band is recording a cover version of RAINBOW’s “Temple Of The King” for inclusion on the upcoming Ronnie James Dio tribute album. The collection, which is being assembled by the singer’s widow and longtime manager Wendy Dio, will also tentatively include contributions from METALLICA, ANTHRAX, JUDAS PRIEST’s Rob Halford, MOTÖRHEAD’s Lemmy Kilmister, DEEP PURPLE’s Ian Gillan, Alice Cooper, Glenn Hughes (DEEP PURPLE, BLACK SABBATH), HALESTORM, Sebastian Bach (SKID ROW), Chris Jericho (FOZZY) and Dave Grohl (NIRVANA, FOO FIGHTERS).
“I’m letting them pick what songs they wanna do in the way they wanna do it,” Wendy told Artisan News in 2011.
The Dio tribute album will see Grohl covering BLACK SABBATH’s “The Mob Rules”, Halford contributing a version of RAINBOW’s “Long Live Rock ‘N’ Roll” and HALESTORM delivering a rendition of “Straight Through The Heart”.
“We reached out to Wendy Dio about wanting to be a part of the Dio tribute that’s getting put together,” METALLICA singer James Hetfield told U.K.’s Metal Hammer magazine. “We’re very honored to be a part of that, and to be a part of a celebration of Ronnie’s life and his great contribution, man.”
In an interview with Guitar International, former ANTHRAX guitarist Rob Caggiano stated that the band’s cover version of “Neon Knights” “came out pretty smoking.”
Ronnie James Dio, best known for his work with BLACK SABBATH, RAINBOW and his own band DIO, died of stomach cancer on May 16, 2010 at the age of 67.
Matthias Jabs interview at www.classicrockrevisited.com – http://www.classicrockrevisited.com/show_interview.php?id=1029
