Unlike many of their peers, the well-traveled members of Scorpions had no qualms about being on tour when they were booked for their first Las Vegas residency in 2016. Germany’s finest hard rock ambassadors had just added former Motorhead drummer Mikkey Dee and had been supporting their 18th studio album, Return to Forever, when they checked into the Hard Rock Hotel.
“You can understand why so many artists, they love playing Vegas because fans come from all over the world to see their favorite artists, and you have your place for band and crew, and you don’t have to move every other day of the year,” singer Klaus Meine told interviewer Eddie Trunk in 2017. “We like to move around, but all of us, we really enjoyed that residency. It was cool and they treated us really like Elvis. We had the biggest billboard on the Strip.”
Six years later, Meine is preparing to check into Planet Hollywood Resort with Dee, guitarists Rudolf Schenker and Matthias Jabs, and bassist Paweł Mąciwoda for Scorpions’ nine-concert Sin City Nights stand at Zappos Theater, with Skid Row opening. Scorpions’ latest album, Rock Believer, finds the band sounding invigorated and enthusiastic, much as they did when Scorpions broke big in America 40 years ago.
The Scorpions story dates back much further than that. In 1965, Schenker recruited Meine and 11-year-old brother Michael Schenker for a group influenced by both Merseybeat and British blues. They evolved a hard rock sound throughout the ’70s with Hendrix-influenced Uli Jon Roth after the younger Schenker departed to join the band UFO. Roth left to go solo and was replaced by Jabs, whose fiery playing served Scorpions songs well and helped define the lead guitar sound of ’80s hard rock.
The next milestone came when “No One Like You” from 1982’s Blackout became one of the first hard rock hits to be made popular on MTV, with its video shot in Alcatraz and its iconic scene of escaped prisoner Rudolf Schenker, wearing forks as wraparound eyeglasses, smashing a guitar. Two years later, Love at First Sting secured Scorpions’ position in the pantheon of ’80s rock gods. “Rock You Like a Hurricane” became their biggest anthem and the success of “Still Loving You” made rock ballads as standard as spandex stage wear.
In 1991, they scored a No. 4 hit with “Wind of Change,” a song inspired by the Soviet Union’s rapidly changing society. The song became an anthem that Scorpions played at the former site of the Berlin Wall in 1999, and at their last concert in Kyiv, Ukraine, in 2019.
Meine and Schenker both turn 74 this year. Meine’s trademark vibrato is on point and Schenker is irrepressible as ever, adding expressive lead work to standout Rock Believer track “When You Know (Where You Come From).” With each musician exuding health, there’s no reason for Scorpions to hold out on delivering what was best about ’80s rock to original fans and their children, and their children’s children.
Planet Hollywood Resort, March 26, 30, April 1, 3, 7, 9, 12, 14 & 16, starting at $100 plus tax and fee. ticketmaster.com
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