The Scorpions proved that Britain and the US didn’t have the monopoly on hard rock and heavy metal
Given the sporting rivalry that has long existed between England and Germany, it’s ironic that Rudolf schenker would choose the year 1966 to form the Scorpions. But that’s what happened. At around the same time that two extra-time goals from Geoff Hurst broke West German hearts in the World Cup Final, the Schenker family was abuzz with music.
“I was learning the guitar and could already play rhythm, and my mother suggested I should play with my brother Michael,” explains Rudolf. “I was already about sixteen and had taken a job, and Michael was very young, maybe about nine. But he showed a lot of ability as a lead guitarist.”
Again thanks to his mother, Rudolf learned of three local rock musicians who were rehearsing in the basement of his local church. Until the intervention of Rudolph Schenker, none of them had had the confidence to organise a concert.
“It was 1965, and because we didn’t have a name we played as The Nameless,” reasons Rudolf. “It was just three songs, but it was a big success. Then I found a better drummer and guitarist, and at the start of the following year we began calling the band the Scorpions, playing all the Hannover clubs. We did songs by The Pretty Things, The Kinks and The Rolling Stones. I was splitting the vocals with the drummer, who was into more commercial bands like The Dave Clark Five. I would sing The Pretty Things’ numbers, things like LSD. I’m sure that my father still has the recordings somewhere.”
Committed to writing in English from the start, Rudolf was schooled in the work of The Yardbirds, The Animals and Spooky Tooth and was already becoming a proficient composer, but he knew that he wasn’t equipped to be his band’s permanent frontman. He had already approached Klaus Meine, from rival band Mushrooms, on several occasions to consider joining, but each time he was politely rebuffed. Gradually, the Scorpions’ live repertoire began to toughen up, absorbing material by Black Sabbath and Led Zeppelin.
“Klaus had just got out of the army, and I had the idea of putting him and Michael in a band together,” recounts Rudolf. “My brother and the band he was in at the time were all drinking like hell, and they were all about thirteen years old. Klaus had to go to my father and promise to take care of Michael. Which he did.”
The result was Copernicus, a band that Rudolf Schenker also managed. It was only a matter of time before osmosis took over, and both Michael and Klaus found themselves joining the Scorpions on New Year’s Eve of 1970. Rudolf, bassist Lothar Heimberg and drummer Wolfgang Dziony had been experiencing problems with an existing guitarist, and realised that they might as well make two line-up changes as one.
Although the new-look Scorpions had no trouble in finding live employment, gigging with Uriah Heep, Atomic Rooster, Chicken Shack and Rory Gallagher, record companies scoffed at their international ambitions. Eventually they had a lucky break in meeting Conny Plank, the producer who would eventually oversee the band’s 1972 debut Lonesome Crow for Metronome Records. They had been working on the music for an anti-narcotics film called Das Kalte Paradies (The Cold Paradise) when they bumped into Plank at a studio in Hamburg.
“We’d wanted to make an album, but for a German rock band there seemed little possibility,” Rudolf recalls. “We met Conny, and two days later we had a contract. In October 1971 we began recording. It was all done in six days, including all the mixing…”
“And probably even the cover drawing,” Meine adds with a laugh Even Plank didn’t take the band’s plans seriously. “We said to Conny: ‘Some day we will play in America’. He just laughed and said: ‘You guys have no chance,’” remembers the singer.
In the summer of 1973 the Scorpions set out on what was to be a fateful tour opening for UFO. When the headliners’ guitarist Bernie Marsden forgot his passport and failed to turn up for a gig in Regensburg, Michael Schenker was asked to deputise for the night. Although UFO bassist Pete Way hurriedly taught the young guitarist the chords to Boogie For George and C’mon Everybody in the venue’s lavatory, and the tour was eventually completed with Marsden, Michael had made an immediate impression.
“Michael was so striking with his Flying V guitar and blond hair,” UFO vocalist Phil Mogg told Classic Rock in 2000. “So we asked his older brother Rudolf if we could borrow him, and he said: ‘We’ve been trying to get rid of him for years’.”
“Ah, that’s just the English humour,” says Rudolf. “It wasn’t like that at all. When my brother told us [he was leaving] he was very drunk. He’d already said yes to UFO, but he didn’t know how to tell us. It wasn’t easy for me or the rest of the guys [to accept], but I knew he was a great guitar player and that this could be a good chance for him. At least before he went, Michael did one good thing – he spoke to [his eventual successor] Uli Roth.”
Inevitably, Michael’s departure threw the Scorpions into a state of turmoil. Metronome Records announced that they didn’t want them minus their teenage talisman, and the group almost split up. Indeed they would have done had Schenker junior not made the aforementioned approach to then Dawn Road guitarist Ulrich Roth.
“Michael left us to be a part of the famous UFO in England,” Klaus told me in 1991, failing to keep the bitterness out of his voice. “We were fucked. Left behind without a lead guitarist and a record label.”
“But we still had one very important TV show to play. And it was difficult to get Uli to agree to help us as he already had his own band,” Rudolf continues. “Eventually he agreed, it was a big success, and Uli really enjoyed it. At first Klaus didn’t think that Uli should join, but somehow I convinced him that it would work.”
Roth initially remained a member of his ex-band as well as the Scorpions, although when that arrangement proved impractical Dawn Road bassist Francis Buchholz was brought in as part of a replacement rhythm section, completed by new drummer Jürgen Rosenthal. On the strength of their televised appearance, this grouping signed a new worldwide deal with RCA Records, and co-produced the next album with the then unknown engineer Reinhart Mack, later to work with Queen, Billy Squier and Electric Light Orchestra .
“Did we think that Mack would become famous one day? Not really, but he probably thought that we wouldn’t either,” Meine admits.
However, 1974’s Fly To The Rainbow was a big improvement upon the debut. True, there were some quite nonsensical lyrics – amid the cowbell-embellished opening track Speedy’s Coming, Meine pairs up almost anything that vaguely rhymes, crooning: ‘D’you like Alice Cooper/D’you like Ringo Starr/You like David Bowie and friends/And the Royal Albert Hall’ – but Roth’s shamelessly Hendrix-inspired style gave They Need A Million, Fly People Fly and the nine-minute title track an added maturity. Uli, whose vocals were at pitiful as his instrumental prowess was inspiring, was also allowed to take to the microphone for Drifting Sun and part of Fly To The Rainbow itself.
“Uli was never a good singer,” Rudolf admits when pressurised on the subject. “Some of his singing is not so bad, because it suits the songs. Keith Richards is not a good singer either. But Uli was writing material that Klaus didn’t feel comfortable singing.”
The third album, 1975’s In Trance, took the Scorpions to new creative highs, and was their first to be produced by Dieter Dierks at his studio in Cologne. The band already knew they didn’t want to produce themselves any more, and had happened upon Dierks – whose track record with Tangerine Dream and Nektar had placed him on their wish list of collaborators – at a party.
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