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The debut album of Scorpions is presenting a band very different than the one we nowadays have in mind. Having their musical roots in the late 60’s to early 70’s, the Scorpions offer in their first album a very good mix of their hard rock tensions, due to the participation of Klaus Meine and the Schenker brothers, with lots of fusion and jazz rock influences, mainly coming from the rhythm section of Wolfgang Dziony (drums) and Lothar Heimberg (bass). The album went through a remarkably successful sales’ road for that period in the band’s homeland, Germany, especially for an album that had English lyrics, something unusual back then. Not unfair, one has to note, because it indeed includes some very interesting songs and with a very clear production and sound. Given through the always present psychedelic atmosphere of that time, “Lonesome Crow” definitely draws attention with songs like “I’m Going Mad”, “It All Depends”, “Inheritance” and, of course, especially the 13 minutes epic psychedelic jazzy self titled song, where Michael Schenker shows through an outstanding, a really amazing performance his incredible talent on guitar playing at just the age of 16!

The whole album is really shinning on the subject “guitar”, for it includes marvelous and very inventive guitar playing, especially on the solos. Another fact that surprises, it that Klaus Meine sings with a way you won’t hear him in any other recording (he also uses vibrato in “Fly To The Rainbow”, but in a different way). He uses a very bold and continuous vibrato and gives a generally more heavy, dark and majestic tone to his performance. There is not really much more one can comment on this album, except for the fact that it’s a very interesting and really worthwhile buy for every Scorpions fan, even though it’s far from anything they ever did in the future. Just keep in mind that various companies have released this album in the past under different covers and titles.

KJP / December 2003

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It’s 1974 and “Fly To The Rainbow”, the second Scorpions album, is ready! Michael Schenker had left the band, for he joined UFO, after Phil Mogg actually almost kidnapped him (!), fairly fascinated from his skills, during a German tour with his band, something that caused some troubles in the Scorpions camp for a while. Instead, a brand new promising and shinning star joined the Scorpions for to play the guitar: Uli Jon Roth, a musical personality that marked the band. Even from the first seconds of “Speedy’s Coming” one can realize what we have here. “Speedy’s Coming” opens the road for the band to create music on a new path, absolutely free of any fusion and jazz elements, purely and exclusively praising the clear guitar-led hard rock and Roth owns definitely a big piece of the cake because of his sharp Hendrix influences and endless inspiration. “Drifting Sun” is being mentioned by many as the most representative song he ever wrote and one can hardly argue with that. Except for that, he also owns a credit to one other song, the self-titled of the album, a song which I personally consider it to be one of the greatest songs ever recorded in the 70’s, which he wrote with Rudolf Schenker. This 10 minutes epic song really creates the illusion of flying to an astral rainbow, it’s so thrilling that gives countless shivers and can satisfy every single cell of the human body; a real monument with the full meaning of the term! The rest of the album is composed by the all-time classic Scorpions twin of Schenker/Meine and this is what gives this very special atmosphere and hard rock feeling. “Speedy’s Coming”, “They Need A Million”, “This Is My Song”: great vibe, beautiful compositions and lyrics and excellent performance by a young and talented band full of passion is what you’ll find here.

"Fly To The Rainbow” is the first step of the band towards pure hard/heavy streets, something that was achieved with absolute success. It is also the first album of their most legendary “first” period with Roth on the guitars, a period that produced albums-diamonds of guitar-hard/heavy rock, also with a considerably big commercial success, followed with worldwide tours. Overall, it’s an album filled with musical magnificence and beauty and an album that rises straight from the purest decade of hard/heavy music, something that makes it a must-have.

KJP / December 2003

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Having found their way, the mighty Scorpions strike with their fourth album! The album’s original LP version, which is a bit hard to find nowadays, was showing a little girl completely naked and this, of course, forced the company after a while to stop printing it and since then it’s been re-issued with just the band themselves on the cover. This was actually also the first time that the Scorpions were on the cover of an album of theirs. On the musical field, the album opens with a very rhythmic and powerful song, “Pictured Life”, which is the only song of their career composed by the “magnificent three” all together, meaning Schenker/Meine/Roth. These three awesome guys could do no wrong and the song kicks ass through great and fresh ideas and, of course, impressive guitar solos! One of the same goes for classic songs like “Catch Your Train”, “Backstage Queen”, “Virgin Killer” and “Polar Nights” (a song-seminar on guitar playing), songs that they one by one are simply cornerstones of crystal clear hard rock that are destined for never to get old or forgotten. On the other hand, the band presents songs like “In Your Park”, “Crying Days” and the magnificent “Yellow Raven” (one of Scorpion’s finest ballads), that go on a different direction, showing a more emotional and melancholic point of the band. We could probably say that they were slowly opening somehow, in a primal way, the path of ballads, which was meant to be one of the band’s most obvious trademarks in the future.

Talking about trademarks, Scorpions were always full of them, probably because it was the only band from the “really big ones” coming from Germany, which means a band with a totally unique and different philosophy overall and musical approach than all of the other rock legends of the UK or the USA, like Led Zeppelin, UFO, Deep Purple, Blue Öyster Cult and all these huge bands. What else could one say on this recording, since it’s 100% classical Scorpions, offering golden melodies, inventive and passionate performances and, above all, honest restless spirit of rock!

KJP / December 2003

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It’s 1977 and in their fifth album, Scorpions sound more heavy than ever, more serious and without a single doubt, a lot more mature. With a new drummer behind the kit, Herman Rarebell, who was meant to be their classic one, they deliver one of the most impressive albums of their career. In this recording you won’t meet the careless spontaneous rebel spirit of the past, but instead, you’ll see a more tight and thick face of the band. What is impressive and admirable, is that the quality level still remains just as high as before. There are lots of Scorpions’ fans that name this album as their favourite, something absolutely understandable. This is very logic, if we consider that this album contains a fistful of excellent songs, able to capture the heart of every kind of rocker from the first listens. This does not imply that their previous albums didn’t include excellent songs as well, but as aforementioned, here the commercial touch is sharper, the production is clearer and more oriented and generally you can get into the album’s philosophy very easy.

Classic hard rock tunes, like the famous “Steamrock Fever”, the magic and melancholic “We’ll Burn The Sky”, “The Riot Of Your Time”, the oriental “The Sails Of Charon” and, one of the first songs in rock history that contained power-speed metal elements ever recorded, the a-w-e-s-o-m-e “He’s A Woman – She’s A Man” are just pieces of the same marvelous puzzle called “Taken By Force”, which, by the way, was their first album that did not include a self-titled song. Things are getting more clear now concerning the way the band wants to follow, tasting more commercial streets, but without scarifying any of its quality or dignity. The album closes with a great, impressive ballad, “Born To Touch Your Feelings”, starting actually the classic period of the band that wanted every album to be ended with a nice emotional love ballad. Scorpions is a very big band that has the way to find a perfect balance between inventiveness, originality and commerciality and this album is one of the best proofs of their career on that.

KJP / December 2003

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After many successful albums and world tours, the time for a live album had arrived. It’s 1978 and where would be the best place for such an act than Japan, the country that hosted the recordings of some of the most important live albums of that decade. Scorpions couldn’t do any different and “Tokyo Tapes” was reality. The magic atmosphere of the 24th and 27th April 1978 was recorded for this live album. In the same time, these two live shows were unfortunately meant to be the very last ones with Ulrich Jon Roth on the lead guitar, because of musical differences according the commercial direction Schenker with Meine wanted to follow. Therefore, Roth left from the band under absolutely friendly circumstances, being unable to get in the rock star system. This unbroken friendship between the band’s members was probably the main reason why the band sounds so tight and electrified on stage in this recording. It was the last shows of a very big and successful band, the last shows of a company of friends who were all giving their soul in what they were doing. Something like a big party before saying goodbye! The incredible performance of the Scorpions those two nights doesn’t really leave any choices for misunderstandings anyway.

The album opens with “All Night Long”, a cool unreleased song written by Roth and Meine in the obvious quality level. “Suspender Love” is also another great unreleased song, a rhythmic tune in the classic twin’s Schenker/Meine mentality. “Pictured Life”, “Backstage Queen”, “Polar Nights”, it would have no meaning trying to analyze which song worth and which not, because each one included in here, one by one, note by note, is a pure manifest of electrified hard rock. Despite this, something that definitely impresses the listener is the out-of-this-Earth unbelievable, marvelous, divine execution of the song “Fly To The Rainbow”. I had already mentioned the magnitude of this huge epic song, but, believe it or not, the live version is even more ecstatic! I am honestly unable to say something more on this; you just have to listen on your own to understand. The second CD sounds a bit more “electric”, like the band had realized that this was their last chance to prove what they’re worth for and they gave it all! Especially in “Speedy’s Coming”, you get the impression that Roth’s guitar is ready to get a fire! The crowd is louder, one song comes after another in an indescribable atmosphere, the band gives its very best self and there are no limits in a pure endless rock night! “Speedy’s Coming”, “Steamrock Fever”, “Dark Lady”, “Robot Man”, these must definitely be among the greatest live recordings in the history of this music. What is also rather interesting is the fact that they also performed the classic rock ‘n’ roll songs “Hound Dog” and “Long Tall Sally” in a real killer medley! Also, Scorpions for lots of years were performing a traditional song of each country they were playing in during their tours. In “Tokyo Tapes”, they played “Kojo No Tsuki”, a traditional Japanese song. I am not able to know how the original song goes, but Scorpions made a fantastic ballad out of it, with Klaus Meine’s voice giving some hard shivers. Words seem so weak when it comes for such a monument to be described, especially when it’s not your mother tongue. The truth is that “Tokyo Tapes” is a legendary release, a triumph of rock, beyond of any criticisms; an album that not only reaches perfection, but gets even beyond it.

My advice would be, for anyone interested, to avoid buying the new, remastered version of the album, because it contains one song less (“Robot Man” is missing), for the package to be limited to only one CD instead of two. Of course, the missing track can be found in the “In Trance” remastered version, but it’s not the same to listen to the song through the whole live album’s atmosphere, is it?

KJP / December 2003

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“Lovedrive” is the first album of the most commercially successful and famous line-up of the Scorpions, featuring for the first time Mathias Jabs on the lead guitar, who remains in the band until today. It’s very interesting to note that Michael Schenker also appears in some of the album’s moments (more specific playing the lead guitar on “Another Piece Of Meat”, “Coast To Coast” and “Lovedrive”), since he was to officially rejoin them at the time, but he finally didn’t, due to some health problems. Mathias Jabs was hired instead. The band here sounds for the first time so sharply incredibly renewed and hungry for quality and worldwide success! In this album, they make a huge turn into more straight music ways, but without losing their personal vibe at all. The philosophy of the guitar-led, Hendrix-influenced, electrified hard rock music has almost gone and here the structures are more straight, simple and easy-to-listen. But still, the band keeps its level very high and they are still able to create awesome 100% Scorpions songs.

“Loving You Sunday Morning”, “Another Piece Of Meat”, “Lovedrive” and the unusually funky “Is There Anybody There?” are excellent pieces, really inspired compositions that have heavily sealed the history of rock with their useful freshness and originality. Also, one of the coolest instrumental songs I’ve heard, “Coast To Coast”, which is a really fucking great melodic piece! Except for the classical hard rock side of the band, they present two all-time classic ballads, “Always Somewhere”, which is their first boldly commercial (but also insanely good) love ballad and “Holiday”, another monumental ballad of rock, two songs that have without a doubt kept company to millions of people in their desperate love moments. Another innovation the Scorpions made was the very different artwork they dressed the album with, something totally different than anything they had done in the past. It’s the start of a short period (it includes the “Lovedrive” and “Animal Magnetism” albums) that is being characterized by some very clever and interesting pictures, made by the Hipgnosis company. There is not even a single “not good” moment included in this album, an album that was the kick-start of a brand new period for the band; a period that marked them forever and led them into the pantheon of the really big ones, after conquering both sides of the Atlantic Ocean.

KJP / December 2003

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Countless reviews have been written for the legendary “Blackout” and I suppose that none of them really can manage to exude the substance of this exciting album. After they had already conquered Japan and Europe, “Blackout” was the album that made the Scorpions the absolute rock stars also in the United States once for all. It didn’t simply open the gates to the big halls, but it created bigger halls, especially for them! It’s a recording that advances the golden decade of the 80’s with the best possible way, through the absolute extreme rock ‘n’ roll dream of every musician. It’s a mark, a triumph, a sign of the times! And how could this be different with so many hymns like “Blackout”, “Can’t Live Without You”, “Now!”, “Dynamite” and “China White”, being the parts of the most metallic album the Scorpions ever did. Of course, all these are under one of the most famous recognizable album covers ever done, a picture of Gottfried Helnwein, who saw the picture of “Blackout” being the main cover of all the rock and metal magazines of that time. It is almost impossible to think that a ten years old band can make such a spontaneous, fresh and influential album after developing its style without losing its identity and I suppose that this is one of the elements that separate the really big bands from the rest. “Blackout” is a buy-or-die case of album for every fan of this music.

A few people know that Don Dokken was to be the main vocalist of this album. Klaus Meine had developed a polypus at his vocal cords at that time and the doctors said that he was in danger of losing his voice after the surgery, which was mandatory anyway. Meanwhile, the Scorpions didn’t want to delay the recordings of “Blackout” and they hired Don Dokken, with whom they recorded the whole album. Don was also an easy solution at the time, because he was recording his "Breaking The Chains" album in Dierks Studio, where the Scorpions were doing the additional recordings for "Blackout" in the same time. But in the same time, the surgery of Klaus was absolutely successful and after he rejoined the band, they erased all the Dokken recordings and finally made the album as we know it today. This is why Don Dokken is mentioned in the thanks-list of the album, in the same list with professor “Deep Throat” Rose!! Actually, it’s rather interesting to mention that the magazine Melody Maker wrote back then something like “the doctor that did the operation to Klaus must also have a diploma on metallurgy!” commenting on the incredible shape of Klaus’ voice, which was more metallic than ever! And that was the truth.

KJP / December 2003

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