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SCORPIONS Humanity
– Hour I A stunning surprise package is boxed and tied and ready for unwrapping: Scorpions, Germany’s most successful international music export, are poised to “sting” once again and are planning a frontal attack on the musical artery of rock fans all over the globe with their new album Humanity – Hour I. Thirty-five years after the release of their debut album, Lonesome Crow, Scorpions believe they have reached a new creative high in their impressive career. And they plan to prove it with the release of album No. 21 on August 28th. “We have achieved just about everything that a hard-rock band can only dream of. We’ve had world hits, played some of the biggest festivals in the world, even conquered America. It would be easy for us to say we were going to take it easy and just enjoy the fruits of our labor for the rest of our lives,” says singer Klaus Meine. Easy that is, if it weren’t for the blazing fire that the band’s creative forces—Klaus Meine, Rudolf Schenker and Matthias Jabs—-still feel when they work on new music projects. Even though they have already made music history with hits like “Wind Of Change,” “Rock You Like A Hurricane” and “Still Loving You,” there still is nothing more exciting than the challenge of adding another new milestone to the band’s history. “There are a lot of people who say that the classic concept album is dead. We don’t see it that way, so we are swimming against the tide again with our new CD,” explains guitarist Rudolf Schenker. Scorpions describe their musical collaboration with the legendary American producer Desmond Child as “renewing themselves.” Child has already helped shape the sound of artists like Aerosmith, Bon Jovi, Alice Cooper, Kiss and Meat Loaf and is responsible for more than 100 hits. Matthias Jabs says, “Desmond is a fabulous visionary who took us to musical levels we had never reached before.” The fruit of this extremely productive collaboration, in which James Michael was also on board as co-producer, is an album that melds the classic hard Scorpions sound with modern elements of today’s musical style. “Humanity – Hour I is a mature album, with lyrics that are often provocative and deal with the dark sides of the world we live in. “At the same time, though, we are sending our fans a positive musical message, telling them not to let the insanity going on around us every day get them down,” explains Meine, who considers Humanity – Hour I to be the most powerful album since the global success of Crazy World in 1991. “We have delivered a strong body of work over the years and are more confident than ever,” says lead-guitarist Jabs. Like the band’s other members, Jabs is convinced that Humanity – Hour I will generate an enormous surprise factor that will win over even Scorpions’ critics. “The new album will feature the great power-rock ballads, of course, but we have been and we remain a rock band, and people who go for hard but melodic songs will love this album” explains front man Meine. Scorpions worked on the
band’s new sound with songwriter/producer Desmond Child (Aerosmith,
Bon Jovi, KISS) and producer James Michael for four months in several
studios in Los Angeles. Nothing was left to chance: there was even
a private trainer on staff to keep the band in top physical form
between takes. “As exciting as it is to work on new songs
in the studio, when it comes right down to it, we are a die-hard
live performance band that really shifts into overdrive when we
hit the stage,” says Schenker. Fans all over the world seem
to agree. Above all, in Asia and Eastern Europe, Scorpions still
fill the biggest stadiums every year, performing in front of hundreds
of thousands of enthusiastic fans. In early March, the band returned
to Moscow to give a concert in the Kremlin at the invitation of
the Russian president–-an honor granted to relatively few
Western artists. But Scorpions’ power-packed live shows have
numbered among the performance events that sold out the fastest
in the USA and Canada and many European countries for decades as
well. The band is currently experiencing a real revival in Britain:
last year demand for Scorpions concert tickets reached a new high
there. “Direct contact with our fans is our biggest source
of inspiration” explains Meine. And that’s one significant
factor explaining why the band’s calendar is already quite
full for this year. Humanity World Tour 2007/2008 will take Scorpions
right through Europe, North and South America, and Asia (current
information is always available at the band’s website: www.the-scorpions.com).
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