Whether bands can emerge victorious from difficult times also has much to do with the underlying friendship between band members. Scorpions’ Klaus Meine shared with Vintage Rock Pod that his vocal surgery was a testament to their friendship, as the band members could have carried on without him but chose to wait for his healthy return to record their ‘Blackout’ album.
“I mean, for me, it felt like the end of the road, you know, because it was really serious. I underwent surgery twice on my vocal cords,” shared the Scorpions vocalist. “We knew all the songs, all the vocal lines, everything, and I knew that it would be quite a challenge to put the vocals on that album.”
Meine continued, “Fortunately, when I offered the band that I would leave the Scorpions, Rudolf Schenker said, ‘Come on, Klaus, you do everything you can, and we wait for you until your voice is back and until you’re ready to go.’ This was like, with all the tragedy around those ‘Blackout’ recordings, it was such a triumph at the end of the day. Since then, it feels like I’m on the longest encore, you know, in my life because it was also like real friendship; it was a triumph of friendship.”
“We always said the Scorpions, the longevity of the band, it’s about chemistry and not only being business partners but also being friends,” said Meine about their long run in the industry. He added, “That moment when we recorded ‘Blackout,’ it proved exactly that, and it was like a friend saying, ‘Come on, Klaus, you don’t leave right now; we wait for you until you’re ready to come back into the studio and sing, put those vocals on,’ and I did.”
Keeping the initial spark that allowed the bands to become who they are is quite challenging to maintain over long periods. Although Meine had offered to step down from his role, his band members were ready to wait for him until he could sing again. The ‘Blackout’ album was not only a triumph for Meine for recovering but also for their friendship before anything else, allowing them to keep going this long in the industry.
