SCORPIONS Frontman: 'We're Not Stuck In The '80s'

David Priest of OnTrackMagazine.com recently conducted an interview with SCORPIONS frontman Klaus Meine. A couple of excepts from the chat follow:

OnTrackMagazine.com: Now how do you like doing a concept album versus a standard album of more unrelated songs?

Klaus: Y'know, with a standard album you just go fishing and then put so many different songs together and sometimes also there are songs that didn't work out with the last record and so there's some leftovers and then for some reason you bring 'em back in. Or there are songs where you go, "Ahhh, we should have done this one, let's try this and put this back in." So it's a whole different thing. But when you have a theme, like with "Humanity", and you have a Master of Ceremonies (laughing) like Mr. [Desmond] Child [producer], so you have a red line. So on this record it was not so much about, "This is my song, this is your song," it was a collaboration of so many great writers, some of the best writers in rock music. Not only Desmond, also James Michael, Marti Fredriksen, and Eric Bazilian, we've had great people around. Some of them we've worked with before, like on the last album, "Unbreakable", a couple years ago. So there was a whole different set-up and it was exciting from the very beginning, and it was not so much about, "In all those rock songs, let's look for the big power rock ballad,", it was more about, "We have this concept and we want to make an album that hopefully will blow everybody away." Because when you listen to it from the beginning to the end, every song is strong. That was a different philosophy and following this line, going through this kind of project, it was a whole new experience; it was great, it was great, we enjoyed it. And Los Angeles is, of course, it's a very inspiring place, you run into so many musicians, so many artists every other day, so then it's much easier to have somebody like Billy Corgan or John 5 put on a guitar; Billy sang guest vocals on "The Cross". You do an album like in Germany — it's a whole different story. I mean, this was not the first record we did in L.A., "Crazy World" with Keith Olsen as producer, was done partly in L.A., or we worked with the great Bruce Fairbairn in Vancouver in the early '90s. But we haven't been in America for recording for quite awhile and this was just very inspiring again, because it's the music you hear on the radio every day, it's more rock than it is in Europe, that's for sure.

OnTrackMagazine.com: What are you trying to achieve as a voice in rock with this latest release, I mean being that it's so different, overall what are you trying to achieve?

Klaus: I think what we're trying to achieve, after all these years is one thing: you put a new album out and you want to be taken serious as an artist and not become a caricature of your self. Just doing the same old songs and just boys chasing girls kind of lyrics; we've done all that. It was fun, it's been great, we had a good time, especially in America. I mean, the '80s were amazing! But we're not stuck in the '80s, we want to be seen as artists that move on, and at the same time, we've hopefully come up with a powerful, entertaining rock album, there's a message and the news. And I think it's up to artists like us and many others too, spreading out the message and sending out positive vibes, positive energy through music into a world that's pretty much out of balance, especially since September 11th, and adding something for, hopefully, a more peaceful world. We know that music, or this record or a song, cannot change the world, we know that, but we don't want to give up believing that we still can make a change, we can make a difference with music. Music is a very powerful tool in the hands of artists sending out some positive vibes. We can see it when we play, let's say, in the Middle East, we play in Israel in Tel Aviv and we play in Cairo at the pyramids, in Egypt, and people in the world of music, in the world of emotion, they're much, much closer together than what we see in the news every night. And so their music makes a difference and music is connecting people and that's what we try to do: connect people.

Read the entire interview at OnTrackMagazine.com.