60th Anniversary – Coming Home

No band with German roots is more successful worldwide than the SCORPIONS. If you enter the search term ‘Scorpions, Band’ on the Internet today, you may have to pause after just 19 or 20 pages. The wealth of information that the WorldWideWeb can provide on the rock band, which was founded in 1965, is seemingly limitless. If you put all the CDs sold since then side by side, the distance would be the same as from Hanover to Madagascar. And back. If you stack the albums upwards, you would reach the ISS space station three times.

No question: Higher. Further. Faster. That could be the synonym for the music group founded in Hanover, Lower Saxony. Here you go: no other band has played a concert at a higher altitude. In September 2010, the Scorpions gave a concert in front of 40,000 fans in the ‘Hernando Siles’ stadium in La Paz, Bolivia, at an altitude of 3636 metres. No other German band sells more singles worldwide than the Scorpions - Wind of Change is still the record holder. But, on the other hand, no other German band has had such a lasting influence on international rock music as the Scorpions. Whether Smashing Pumpkins, who wrote a tribute to the Scorpions with their song Tarantula, or Kirk Hammett from Metallica, who once said: ‘I bought “Taken by Force”. That was it. ‘The Sails of Charon’ is my favourite song and a highpoint in modern music for myself. Then I got ‘In Trance’, ‘Lonesome Crow’, ‘Fly to the Rainbow’. From that point on, I was the biggest Scorpions fan and looked for any sort of information I could find on the Scorpions.’ First and foremost, of course, Jon Bon Jovi, whose band the Scorpions once opened the arena gates for the big rock career: ‘The only band that still matters today is probably the Scorpions. Why do I say that? Because I think they're the best thing that has ever happened to heavy metal or hard rock.’