It’s really difficult to make an interview of your idol, especially when this man is Klaus Meine, the man who, along with Rudolf Schenker, wrote the most beautiful songs on Earth, sold more than 60 millions of records, and who is considered (with Dio) as THE voice of hard rock. It’s even more difficult when you have only 30 minutes to tell him how much his music helps you in your everyday life while at the same time asking him questions about the new Scorpions records, Humanity – Hour 1. But here it is, and even if I did not manage to avoid some preconceived answers from Klaus, I think this interview gives a good overview of the Scorpions in 2007 : a band which is stronger than ever !

Phone Interview made by Gegers – 03 May 2007

- Gegers : Hello Mr Meine, how are you ?

-Klaus Meine : Well, really good. I’m preparing for the tour that will start pretty soon, we’re all very excited to come back to France, the day the album is released will be the day we’ll play in Paris, at the Zenith, the 14th of May being the day our new album will hit the streets in France. For Europe and the rest of the world the album will be released at the end of May, on the 25th. The release date is earlier for France so that people can take advantage of our presence in your country, by seeing us on stage and listening to the new record immediately after. We’re very excited about this, it’s right around the corner !

- Unbreakable, your previous album, was released 3 years ago. Which opinion do you have of that album today, and what balance would you make of the Unbreakable era ?

-Well I think it’s an album which permitted us to have a lot of credibility again after the hard decade of the 90’s which was a very difficult decade for rock and hard rock, as not many bands survived the revolution of alternative music of the early 90’s. So the 90’s were kind of a difficult time. After doing some side-projects with the Berliner Philarmonics and Acoustica, which were really successful, we decided to go back to what made the Scorpions the Scorpions in a first place, to find our signature sound back, and that’s what we tried to achieve with Unbreakable. We wanted to make sure that people out there knew that this band is still alive, this band is still rocking. This album was a statement : We’re back!
 
            - Unbreakable was definitely a kind of ‘back to the roots’ album, and even if it did not have the promotion it deserved, at least in France, you fans really enjoyed it. Why then did you decide to record such a modern album like Humanity – Hour 1, while it would maybe have been more easy for you to record another Unbreakable?

- Yes it’s right. But you know life goes on, after this album we were like on a crossroads, and we asked ourselves : which way to go ? With Unbreakable we had showed that the Scorpions were back on track, but then the question was : do we want to sound like in the 80’s, or like a band which is alive and well now, in 2007 ? With the record, what we tried to achieve is to have the signature Scorpions’ sound but at the same time we want to move ahead in our career, move ahead as artists, with what we have to do and to say. I think we have made a strong record in a old-fashioned way, in the sense that we see this album as a whole unit, not an album from which people can download one single song on the Internet and never listen to the rest. This whole album is a unit,  a statement, and we hope that the fans will listen to the whole album, from the first song to the last song.

- Will there be any single to promote that album ?

- Well as far as I know, ‘Humanity’ will be the single. When we came back from Los Angeles we played that song in Brussels, for the celebration of the 50 years of the European Union in early March, because we thought this would be a very strong song to present on Television and at the show that was broadcasted all over Europe. But the next day people all around the world were able to see it as some people put it on Youtube. We got strong positive reactions from all over the world. ‘Humanity’ may not be such an obvious single but this is a very powerful song, and that’s why we chose it as a first single.

            - Here in France we’ve already heard some songs of the new album on radio, such as ‘Hour 1’ and ‘The game of life’. What expectations do you have for that album?

- How was the feedback ?

- Quite good, even if the song ‘Hour 1’ surprised a lot of people.

- Yeah that’s normal. This song is the fruit of a collaboration with many other songwriters. To have somebody like John 5 working with us on that song makes a transition from the old classic rock base to now, and even to the future. We’re very open-minded, and nothing is more boring that repeating yourself and doing the same thing over and over again. But it doesn’t mean we were on an experimental mode at all. We wanted to take what we did with Unbreakable to the next level and make an album that is more mature, with deep lyrics that portray what is going on in the world, and ‘Hour 1’ is one of those songs, along with ‘Love is war’ or ‘The cross’ for example, which reflect the dark view we have of our modern world.

            -You Klaus have written most lyrics for the Scorpions. Yet what struck me when I saw the credits for that new album is that many lyrics have been written by other people. I cannot believe you have lost inspiration !

- No (laughs). I don’t think me or anybody in the Scorpions has lost inspiration! When we decided to make a collaboration with Desmond Child, it is not only because we knew him as a producer but also because we knew him as a genius songwriter, who wrote so many anthems for Bon Jovi, Aerosmith, Kiss…It was the most important thing for us to find a good producer for that album so that we could move ahead and come up with something not only strong, but also hopefully that could fit in our own history. When we decided to work with Desmond, we told him that he would be involved in the songwriting and that we hoped he would come up with something amazing, so that we could do something great together. But not only Desmond worked on that record, there was also James Michael and some of the best songwriters in the world of rock music, some with whom we had already worked on Unbreakable, like Eric Bazilian, or Marti Frederiksen. So this was a familiar kind of team with musicians and writers we know for many years and we’ve been working with before, the difference is that this time we opened up the door and said ‘let’s do something all together’, so the working process was not so much ‘this is my song – this is your song’, we all wanted to come up with something that is just amazing, and I hope this album will be a big step forward in the world of rock.

            - Marti Frederiksen and Eric Bazilian, who worked with you on Eye to eye and Unbreakable are credited on some songs. Does it mean that those songs are left-overs from previous recording sessions ?

- No, not at all. Actually there are left-overs from Unbreakable, but it’s amazing we didn’t touch them, not even one. But you’re absolutely right, there are some great left-overs, and time will tell if we do something with them or not one day. Everything on Humanity – Hour 1 is brand new material. The song ‘The game of life’ that you have heard on French radio is a song I’ve written last year before we went to L.A. I went to Stockholm for a couple of days and wrote this song with two Swedish songwriters, Mikael Nord Andersson and Martin Hansen, who are the producers of The Rasmus. They are great and talented people. When we went to L.A. I thought I would write new lyrics for that song, but Desmond liked it very much like that so we did not touch anything from this Swedish session. But except from that song which was written before we went to L.A everything is brand new.

- To which other album would you say that Humanity – Hour 1 is the most close ?

- Well I don’t know. I’ve just read an article from Rock Hard Germany (it’s great after so many months to have the first impressions from the journalists and the fans), and what it says is that even if you can not compare albums like Love at first sting and Humanity, our new album makes a perfect connection with our best works we made in the 80’s, but with a modern and up-to-date sound. I think that’s an amazing compliment. So much time has passed between those two albums, the world has changed so much that we feel like we’re living on a different planet now. But here we are, with a new album ! What we tried to do with this album is to come up with a record that will hopefully be another classic, and not just an average album. We don’t know what the future will bring, but this record is our 21st album and we cannot afford to come up with something that is cheap. We don’t want people to think that this album is cheap and that we better stop recording. Why to make an album ? We got such a strong back-catalogue, and when we go out and play live (year after year and all over the world), we have fun, we enjoy what we’re doing, and it’s very powerful energy. Wherever the Scorpions go, they deliver, which is good ! And we’ve noticed that the fans are back, hopefully they are back in France as well, and we’re very happy about that, but why should we make another album, WHY ? (laughs) The only legitimacy for recording a new album is to come up with something amazing, something that nobody expects from a band that is 35 years old and which released many albums that made rock history. The only way to record another album is to come up with a triumph and to have people go « wow ! This is fantastic, we never expected this ! » That’s what we try to do with this new album, and I hope that people will enjoy it as much as we do (we are all very excited about this). We’re impatient to bring it on the road and play the songs live. For us recording a new album fuels the fire, we’re really impatient now to hit the road again.

- Uli Jon Roth will play with you again for the French shows. We will be very happy
to see him, but why did you decide to invite him again on stage ?

            - Because Uli also represents the perfect connection between the past and now. The fact is we played with Uli in Colmar and we saw all the excitement of the fans, and also the excitement on stage, as we really had a good time. And also Uli, who was really busy with his own career and had never showed any real excitement to play with the band again really changed after that concert in Comar and so we decided to take it to the next level at the Wacken show last year. We didn’t know if this would work in front of so many metalheads but it worked fantastic. We had put 50 songs on the Internet for the Wacken audience to choose our setlist, and they just loved the show
This huge show, with also Michael Schenker and Herman Rarebell was a huge success, and it will be released on DVD, we are working on it right now. We will play with Uli in France, and Michael Schenker will join us in Britain. They are legendary guitar players, and we are happy to have them back in the Scorpions’ family for these shows.

            - How many songs will he play with you on stage ? Can we hope to hear some rare stuff, such as This is my song, or Drifting sun ?

- Well there will be Pictured life, Dark lady, We’ll burn the sky of course, a ‘Uli-classic’ that we have to play), and also a couple of songs that we haven’t played for, wow…let me realize…yes, 30 years (laughs). There will be some surprise songs in the shows, I won’t tell you which ones now, but there will be some songs that we have not touched since we recorded them on album! We’re really excited because we will be confronted again to some very old material, like Fly to the rainbow. And what also excites us is that we will play those songs along with songs from Humanity – Hour 1, so this is a kind of full circle.

            - It is 11 years that James Kottak is in the band, and 3 years for Pawel Maciwoda. But we do rarely see them on interviews. Do you consider them as true members of the Scorpions team ?

- Yes they’re definitely true members of the Scorpions’ team, but there is the artistic side and there is the business side. Pawel and James are full members on the artistic side, but not on the business side. But if you take a look around at Kiss or the Rolling Stones, you’ll see that it’s everywhere the same. We’ve got a very long history, so how could someone who joined the band three years ago be on the same level as Rudolf or Matthias ? No way. So there is this kind of difference, we don’t like it but it is there. You cannot ignore the business side of things, particularly in these days where artists are endangered by illegal downloading. We have to take business into account, because recording an album like Humanity – Hour 1 costs a lot of money. But on the artistic side James and Pawel are very important for us, they are part of our family.

            - You wrote quite a lot of songs on your own, such as Kiss of borrowed time, But the best for you or A moment in a million years. You were never tempted to record a solo album ?

            - Well, I think that recording a solo album when you’re part of a band requires a really strong artistic reason. Our life, and my life as a singer of the Scorpions keeps me going since all those years, and it’s a 24/7 kind of operation. We’re running all over the world playing shows, recording albums, doing all that. So I don’t really have the time and the will to record a solo album, I don’t feel like it would make me more happy to see my name printed on an album artwork. I’ve always tried to put my best in the Scorpions, and I don’t think there is any room to something else in my artistic career. Moreover, if I recorded an album for myself, it would be very much like Scorpions in a way, with just different guitarists.
On the other hand something I would love to do would be a collaboration with amazing singers like Amy Lee from Evanescence and other singers for some kind of project. It wouldn’t necessarily be MY project, but something like this would be exciting and interesting. I would be happy to gather different singers from various cultural backgrounds for a joint project very different from what I do with the Scorpions. But as I said we’re a very busy band, and the young kids of the bands, Pawel and James, let’s call them like that, are hungry for more so we got to go touring ! (laughs). We think that the Scorpions still have something to say, that we’ve got a message of hope to transmit to the younger generations and to the people who come to our concerts. I’m very happy we see so many young people at our concerts. They feel something in the Scorpions’ music that they really enjoy. With this new album Humanity – Hour 1, we try to send out positive energy for the younger generations who carry the flag of responsibilities for the world tomorrow. We should never stop believing that we can make a change. We know that a song cannot change the world, but we can send something positive out there which may give people the power and the faith to go through their daily life and their future. Music is a very powerful tool to reach people everywhere in the world, and that’s why we try to do.

            - Here in France you’ve got a really strong and active support with your fan-club Crazyscorps, which helped you for example to come and play at the Olympia in 2005. What do you think of the job this fan-club has done for you so far, and to you consider fan-clubs as good ways for promotion ?

            - You know I’ve talked about the ‘dark’ side of the Internet with all the downloading and stuff but there’s hopefull a bright side of the Internet. Personally I love to go on the Internet and I don’t know how I could work without it, in terms of communication. It’s definitely a great tool to connect people all over the world. I think the French Fan-Club is doing a fantastic job. Sometimes we’re even quite jealous because they have information that nobody has before. They’re very smart and quick guys, and we’re very proud of them !

- It looks like there was some kind of misunderstanding some weeks with this fan-club concerning the artwork of your new album. Can you tell us what happened and if the problem is solved now ?

            - Well the thing is that somebody in France, when BMG got the artwork of the new album, put it on the Internet before it was officially unveiled on our official website. Crazyscorps somehow had access to that website and put the artwork on its own website. All the information, like the tracklist for example, were slowly sneaking out from our record label in France, and people at Crazyscorps have been smart enough to take it up and put it on their site ! But our relations with Crazyscorps are okay now. I mean it’s great they have such a strong fan-club, we’re very proud, and it’s great to see that after many years when it was not really easy for us in your country the fans are back, and it was really great for us when we played the mythical Olympia in 2005.
And the French fans are going to have a very special treatment, because the album will be released there 11 days before it will be released in the rest of Europe and in the rest of the world, and we will play 4 shows there, there will be a signing session on the Champs-Elysées…there are a lot of things planned, and we’re very excited to play the songs from our new album on stage. We’re ready to rock !