SCORPIONS guitarist Rudolf Schenker is featured in a new interview with Beyond The Dark Horizon. An excerpt from the discussion is available below.

Q: I’ve been following the tour through your facebook page and l gather that you’re having the time of your life.

Schenker: "Fantastic! What can I say, we have a 40 year career now and this tour has really been about celebrating around the world - Get your sting and then Black Out. That’s what we do. We have a blast every night on stage and now we are here in San Antonio, Texas and the people here from what I heard are getting crazy. Tonight will be a special night; a night to remember. That’s what we’re trying to do with the whole tour. We started March in Moscow and then we went through all of Europe, most places we’ve sold out, which means we’re playing before 25, 000 people and it’s really great to see that all the fans that have been part of our career and rock music are coming out to celebrate with us. It’s amazing."

Q: What’s even more amazing is the fact that the story of The Scorpions has always been about friendship. What started as friends will end as friends. Friendship is the foundation.

Schenker: "That’s correct. That has always been the basic idea, vision and philosophy of The Scorpions. When I decided to start up the band, the inspiration came from THE BEATLES and THE ROLLING STONES’ British invasion, which basically was 4 to 5 friends making music and traveling around the world. For me, that was the kick that got me into playing guitar. When I got the band together, the first priority was to find good musicians but get people in the band that I could build a friendship with. So in the end, especially when you’re on tour for over a year then it makes very much sense. If you are creating music with someone together and you find out on tour that it’s someone that you can’t live with, it becomes terrible for the career and music. When people can’t build a kind of relationship with friendship, everything becomes meaningless. Friendship is the most important thing about The Scorpions; it’s the reason why The Scorpions really have built bridges between generations, religion, countries and current events. This was also the basic idea when we went out on tour in foreign counties."

Go to this location for the complete interview.

During a new interview with the legendary Schenker, he tells BraveWords.com that their Get Your Sting And Blackout Farewell Tour is only a farewell to tours. He says the band is open to play one-off gigs after the end of the current tour. He also mentioned that a large final show is being planned with former members (guitarists ULI JON ROTH, MICHAEL SCHENKER and drummer Herman Rarebell) and will occur sometime in 2011.

A Blu-ray of the Get Your Sting And Blackout Farewell Tour tour is being put together and Schenker added that the band have over 800 hours of never-released footage that they want to start releasing after the tour ends; footage that dates back to the beginning of the band until now.

Watch for the revealing interview at BraveWords.com soon!