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Favorite Rock Band Paper Scorpions

Word Count: 1013

There are many bands that I enjoy listening to and remember from my early childhood.
However, my personal favorite is most likely Scorpions. The band was formed by Rudolf
Schenker in 1965 in Hannover, Germany. He was influenced by the British invasion of rock and
styled his manner of dress in this fashion. In 1969 his younger brother Michael and Klaus Meine
joined the band on guitar and vocals, respectively. They recorded their debut album with Lothar
Heimberg on bass and Wolfgang Dziony on drums in 1972. At the end of their tour for this
album though, Schenker took an offer for the band UFO that they had opened for, leaving the
band to call in Uli Jon Roth to finish the tour, and soon after the band seemed to go on a bit of a
hiatus until 1973. After Schenker declined to come back to the band, and Roth declined the offer
to remain the bands lead guitarist, Roth invited Schenker into his own band, Dawn Road. They
later got Francis Buchholz on bass, Achim Kirschning on keyboards, Jurgen Rosenthal on drums,
even got Klaus Meine into the band, and they readopted the Scorpions name. From here, the
band rose back into fame as they recorded more albums and went on even more tours throughout
the 1970s.

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Much of the music performed by Scorpions in their early years was reminiscent of
psychedelic rock, such as their albums Lonesome Crow, and Fly to the Rainbow. The latter
of these two, however, was when the bands sound shifted towards a heavier sound, with more
drum backbeat and distorted electric guitar. Their album Virgin Killer in 1976 had received a
great deal of controversy over its cover art depicting a nude prepubescent girl, yet was still
praised musically and sold rather well. Schenker and various other band members stated that the
album cover was the idea of the record company, and some still express regret over the choice.
The album Blackout, released in 1982, was the bands best-selling album to date, and
contained three of the bands greatest hits: "Dynamite," "Blackout" and "No One Like You". The
1984 album Love at First Sting signaled the point where the bands international popularity
marked them as rock superstars. The album contained the single Rock You Like a Hurricane,
which propelled their popularity even further. The song, among others the band had recorded
,such as "Bad Boys Running Wild", "Big City Nights", and "Still Loving You", had videos aired
on MTV, which contributed to the albums, and the bands, success. The Scorpions performed in
Leningrad in 1988, being the second western band to ever perform in the Soviet Union. They
returned the following year to perform at the Moscow Music Peace Festival. This success
continued far past this, even with the release of the Crazy World album in 1990, including the
single Wind of Change, continuing to add to the bands success. The band had announced its
retirement on January 24th, 2010, but after the release of their Sting in the Tail album, decided
to continue playing. The band to this day has currently sold over 100 million records worldwide,
recorded 18 studio albums, received double-platinum record for their Crazy World album in
1991, and are still performing today after 51 years.
The music played by Scorpions had started out like many psychedelic rock bands of the
time, but eventually developed into the heavier hard-rock sound it is known for today. The song

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Rock You Like a Hurricane is a good example of this style, with distorted guitar aggressive
vocals, and a heavy hitting drum backbeat driving along the sound. The song follows an AAB
format, that repeats once, leads into a guitar solo, and the bridge then repeating until the end of
the song. This form is common in much of their music, and in much of music in this style,
though many of the bands other hits have more of a melodic, ballad-like sound rather than a
metallic sound. Other popular singles in this style by Scorpions include "Big City Nights", "No
One Like You", "Send Me an Angel", "Still Loving You", and "Wind of Change". They are
known among many other bands such as Metallica, Judas Priest, Iron Maiden, Black
Sabbath, and more to be one of the most successful hard rock and heavy metal bands in history.
They are also the single most successful German rock band in the United States to this day.
Schenker himself claims that the sound of Scorpions stems largely from classical music, rather
than the blues influence in American rock music.
Ive always been drawn to the hard-rock musical style of the 70s, the glam-rock and hairmetal style from the 80s, and the like. Its what I had grown up listening to, continued to listen
to, and enjoyed far more than anything new artists could put out on the radio today. There are
just so many great artists are out there from this period, from different corners of the world, that
had put out music of this style. For the most part I prefer to try and listen to as much of the genre
as a whole instead of any one select favorite band most of the time. If I could, I would have tried
to incorporate more aspects of various other bands from this era of music and write about how
much I wholeheartedly love this genre as a whole. However, I still feel that, having to choose an
individual group to write about, Scorpions is still my favorite band from this period. Their sound
is so entirely unique and distinct from anything else in its time, and does so without the
unnecessarily over-distorted and abrasive sound that many metal bands soon to follow them tend
to use. Their music is, despite their hard-rock style, very much melodic and ballad like. There are

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very few other genres of rock Id rather listen to, especially going forward in time, and the
Scorpions are very high up on my personal list of favorites from this period of time and overall.

Works Cited
Weber, Barry. "Scorpions: Artist Biography." Allmusic. N.p., n.d. Web. 20 July 2016.
"Band." Scorpions. N.p., n.d. Web. 21 July 2016.
"Scorpions's Biography." Last.fm. N.p., n.d. Web. 20 July 2016.