By Martin Popoff

So says SCORPIONS riff-machine Rudolf Schenker on the band’s interesting and prolonging retirement plans, which now include – on top of something like three years of touring! – an album that isn’t really an album, and so it’s not violating any principle concerning the announced retirement of Germany’s most famous bunch of classic metallers.

“There is no mission!” explains Schenker, in his usual enthusiastic heavy German-accented English, on why they would put a record together combining re-makes of hits along with covers of early inspirers (and SOFT CELL’s ‘Tainted Heart’ for no good reason!). “Only an inspiration, finding out that we have in our concerts now, on the farewell tour since 2010, many, many, many young fans. And we couldn’t believe it, but we found out that we have on Facebook, over one million users, and that the people, the ages of 80% of this one million is people between 14 and 28! So in this case, we saw the people singing with us songs like ‘Blackout’ and ‘Rock You Like A Hurricane’. And seeing how the record companies are all falling apart, we said yeah, why not do the best songs from Scorpions, the classics, and put them on an album and use ProTools and technology to give the sound more punch? I mean, I love analog, of course, which is more for heart and soul, but digital is good also, because you can put lots of energy in for the young kids, for the modern way of listening.”

That’s one half, with the back being covers of famous songs by the BEATLES, STONES, KINKS, T. REX, SMALL FACES… all music the Scorpions guys grew up on, given their origins back to 1965 – and yes, they were actually called Scorpions then! Crazy world indeed…

“Yes, so that was somebody’s idea: why not make it also half-and-half, bands who inspired us? Make cover versions of Kinks, Stones, Beatles, PRETTY THINGS (he said this twice – not on here!) or whatever, and let’s see how this sounds. So then we started working on that, and also found out what Klaus could sing. We were working with 20 to 25 songs, and out of the 25 are the songs which you hear now. In this case, we give a holler out to the bands that inspired us to make music, and also give the best of our own band on this album, as a project, as an extra, to our fans.”
“I mean, I’m a guy from the old days,” continues Rudolf, intimating that actually, these old chestnuts are from a wave too new to be his own personal ground zero. “ELVIS PRESLEY, LITTLE RICHARD, BUDDY HOLLY, EDDIE COCHRAN, all these people. But of course, when the Beatles and the Rolling Stones came, they were the black and the white. The Beatles were white, and Rolling Stones were the darkie guys. I like the Pretty Things very much, The Kinks, YARDBIRDS. So this is my side, bands who inspired me. But when I was a fan of Elvis Presley, I wanted to make music too, but I was also a soccer player, and somehow I noticed how difficult it is to make music on the guitar, and the guitar had to wait in the corner until the Beatles and the Rolling Stones came. And I’ll tell you one thing, when I had started to really work hard to become a guitar player was when I saw these four guys, five guys, as friends traveling around the world and making music, to their friends. In my naïve thoughts – which, it was good to be naïve – this kind of dream came through my way of building The Scorpions, and finding the right people, musicians that I could also be in a good friendship with, which was very important for me. And that’s also the reason that we are still together, because of the philosophy. The basic situation is friendship and enjoying being a gang traveling around the world looking for adventure. Not looking for how you can make money.”

And as alluded to, Comeblack does not count as a continuation of the career. As Rudolf explains, positioning it, so to speak… “We told the fans, when we started the world tour, and we told the media, that this will be the last tour and the last studio album. And we will stick to it. Comeblack is a side-project. It’s something that we did, but there are no new songs on it. We have our library; in our warehouse, we have tons of bonus material. Remember from the vinyl days, there were only nine songs on an album, and we always recorded around 14, to find out of the 14 or 15, which songs we wanted to put on the album. So we have a lot of songs, and what we want to do, especially after we finish, we want to give the fans a box or something, maybe with bonus tracks from the Scorpions, and maybe another film on DVD or Blu-ray, with a live concert of The Scorpions, which will be happening the end of 2012, the beginning of 2013.”

“And something else. We have to think about what else we can do. But no, we also have 900 hours of film material in our warehouse, in the library, playing in front of the pyramids in Cairo, playing in the jungle, playing in Red Square and other very outstanding places. But we need lots of time to put things like this together, to make it really great. So that will be the next thing we are doing, in 2013, ‘14.”

In closing, an innocent question about the band’s last (last?) studio album, Sting In The Tail, conjures a surprising response… “Sting In The Tail… the reason we said we were going to do a farewell tour was Sting In The Tail! Because when we finished the album, shortly before mixing, our manager said, ‘Hey guys, that’s a fantastic album; how do you want to beat that? It’s unbeatable.’ And he said, ‘Hey guys, I would think this would be a great album to make farewell tour.’ First of all, we were shocked, but then sleeping over the whole thing, we said, maybe it’s right. Klaus and me, we were 63, the time is right, we have the ‘80s big sound with a twist, we have an album which is fantastic, and an album that has the DNA of the Scorpions completely in it. This album became very successful, and it put us in the Top 20 in the Billboard charts in 2010, and so in this case, and we have a tour now around the world, since March 2010, a sold-out tour around the world, with lots and lots of people. We just came in from the French tour, and Portugal, sold-out places like Lisbon, 20,000, and France, 19,000, the other places full, sold-out. That’s fantastic. And I think that’s the way you have to finish a career of over 40 years – on a high note, not fading away. Have a great time with your fans, enjoy it, and so in the collective mind of the people around the world, ‘Hey, The Scorpions were a great band.’ I think that’s a good thing, instead of fading away, or maybe crawling in front of your fans – that’s not the way the Scorpions are. As an animal, it’s a very strong animal. But in the moment, the animal, the scorpion is not as healthy and strong as the scorpion wants to be, then this dangerous animal becomes a weak animal, and we don’t want to become weak.”