They started playing together in 1965, a year after The Beatles came to America. Bitches Brew was still five years in Miles Davis’ future. Johnny Cash had just released I Walk The Line and was still three years away from Folsom. The Grammys were in their eighth year; Petula Clark and Roger Miller took home the male and female pop awards.
1965 was a long time ago by any measure and an eternity in music.
That’s when Rudolf Schenker kicked off The Scorpions in Hanover, Germany.
You may remember them from the anthemic Wind of Change, written in the months during German reunification when The Berlin Wall was being torn down. They later joined Roger Waters for his performance of The Wall in Berlin that year. Rock Me Like A Hurricane may have been more your style.
Now The Scorpions have announced that they will no longer record and kick off a farewell tour. The band issued a statement on their website, saying in part,
We are extremely grateful for the fact that we still have the same passion for music we’ve always had since the beginning. This is why, especially now, we agree we have reached the end of the road. We finish our career with an album we consider to be one of the best we have ever recorded and with a tour that will start in our home country Germany and take us to five different continents over the next few years.
After seeing concert video in recent years, those shows promise to be special. Forty-five years is a long time for anything, and it’s amazing for a rock band. Take a look at concert video from an acoustic version of Wind of Change from Europe just a couple of years ago.