Author: Urban Bolta
Photos: Jernej Vene
Location: Olympiahalle / Munich / Germany
Concert date: 12/17/2012
Attendance: 13,000
Ticket price: €42
Scorpions, the legendary German heavy rockers who rode a wave of evergreen hits (mostly of the softer variety) in the eighties straight into the iron-clad rotation of radio stations around the world, are slowly wrapping up their long musical career.
If we’re to take them at their word, once the worldwide »Get Your Sting and Blackout« tour is over, Scorpions will put their instruments in the corner and enjoy a well-earned retirement. And that was exactly the reason to catch them live one more time as their career draws its last breath!
Scorpions kicked off the farewell tour in March 2010 where else but Moscow, but even then they warned that it would drag on deep into the future, so we can hardly blame them now for the marathon (almost) three-year wander. The wicked tongues who talk about the tour’s rich financial side, supposedly the reason Scorpions keep stretching it out, are so far proven wrong this time around.
In the company of the agency Koncerti.net, we rolled into Munich in changeable weather and pulled up in front of the Olympiahalle, where Scorpions were supposed to play two months earlier, but the show got postponed because the beauty, built in the early seventies for the Olympic Games, was being renovated. That pushed the gig in the Bavarian capital to the very tail end of the tour, which made it all the more exclusive, since it was Scorpions’ last show of calendar year 2012.
Even before the main act of the evening, the sold-out Olympic Hall was warmed up by local band Eisbrehcer, but despite their icebreaker-heavy riffs of industrial-tinged metal, they couldn’t get the crowd up to working temperature. The genre gap was unbridgeable, so despite a professional stage presence the playful German lads didn’t find a warm reception. Big minus for the concert organizer for casting the well-meaning Eisbrecher as the opener and thus stabbing them in the back.
We waited quite a while for the techs to get the stage ready, but in the end proverbial German punctuality was confirmed once again, as after an intro video with footage from the megalomaniac »US Festival 1983« Scorpions hit the stage at exactly nine o’clock sharp.
The opening two numbers, Sting in the Tail and Make It Real, came with heavy pyro support. Right from the very start Scorpions lit a flame in the crowd, and then kept pouring oil on it with a playful performance the whole way through! Despite the years (Rudolf Schenker and Klaus Meine are both already 64), the Germans remain true ambassadors of kinetic live shows. The guitar trio of Schenker / Jabs / Mąciwoda made great use of the runway (the so-called cat walk) stretching some 10 meters into the crowd, regularly flashing smiles that hid seasoned toughness and miles upon miles of experience. Right on the trio’s heels the whole time was none other than Klaus Meine, the small man in the recognizable cap, who with forty years in the band is one of the key links of this German heavy metal institution. During the long performance of the instrumental Coast to Coast (»Lovedrive«, 1979) Meine took the chance to duck backstage and recharge his vocal batteries, which served him well this evening. In most long-running rock bands the voice turns into the weakest link under the weight of age, and the Scorpions’ frontman knows that well, so he approached his duties extremely carefully. He was also grateful for the occasional backing vocals on the choruses, where drummer Kottak proved to be his reliable right hand.
The middle stretch of the show was emotionally very intense. After the playful The Best is Yet to Come, where Meine toyed with the crowd, came the acoustic Send Me an Angel, dedicated to the victims of the shooting rampage in Connecticut two days earlier. The five of them at the edge of the runway, surrounded by thousands of raised hands and lit lighters, in the setting of the amphitheater-shaped sold-out Olympic Hall – that was definitely a sight you can’t forget! They carried on with their acoustic journey in Holiday, which of course ended in a loud electric version.
The show was accompanied throughout by a visual spectacle on the big screens above Kottak’s drum kit. In keeping with the theme or the era a song came from, short clips sucked the audience even deeper into the whirlwind of the rock fairytale, which made the whole show feel even more lived-in.
After Hit Between The Eyes the intensity dipped, as the solo show of drum maniac James Kottak followed, once a member of bands like Kingdome Come, McAuley Schenker Group and Warrant. He certainly doesn’t lack technical skill, but unfortunately his pounding on the drums is soaked in way too much testosterone, which shows in the constant egocentric, off-putting posing in front of the crowd. Maybe some people enjoy a show where flexing his tattoos in macho fashion is one of the highlights, but I’ll puritanically look for my favorite drummer miles away from this 49-year-old musician.
Between songs there was plenty of room for each of the five to show off their antics. Standing out, naturally, was the likable Rudolf Schenker, founder and lead guitarist of the band. Despite his years he proved his vitality by constantly running around the stage and took on some of the solo spots too. The go-to guy for that stuff, though, is his colleague Matthias Jabs. During Kottak’s solo Schenker dressed up in a comical mustachioed getup, so the heavy-hitter Blackout was played with a humorous flair! Original and fun!
In the home stretch the most recognizable Scorpions tunes dropped one after another: Big City Nights, and in the encore one of the most beautiful rock ballads ever, Still Loving You, plus the song that will forever be tied to the historic turning points at the shift from the eighties to the nineties, Wind of Change. As proof that the year’s closing show really was something special, No One Like You followed, since on the current tour they played it only at select venues, and for the farewell Scorpions served up a pyro-boosted Rock You Like a Hurricane. When the hall was already emptying and all the guitar picks had flown into the front rows, the rock dinosaurs surprised the home crowd by coming back out once more for When The Smoke Is Going Down, which, at a good two hours, made the show in the Bavarian capital one of the longest of the tour.
Germany’s number-one rock export still runs at full steam despite the years! True, Scorpions can no longer deliver shows as intense as, say, in the eighties, but catching one of their concerts is still an investment worth every cent, because their evergreen classics outgrew their era long ago and easily hold up today too. Traveling with Scorpions on their farewell tour was a genuine experience that a crowd of more than ten thousand won’t be forgetting anytime soon!
The ride, wrapped in an always safe and pleasant atmosphere, was once again provided by the travel agency Koncerti.net led by the fearless boss and hardcore rock enthusiast, Concert Freak!
Setlist
1. Sting in the Tail
2. Make It Real
3. Is There Anybody There?
4. The Zoo
5. Coast to Coast
6. Loving You Sunday Morning
7. We’ll Burn the Sky
8. The Best Is Yet to Come
9. Send Me an Angel
10. Holiday
11. Raised on Rock
12. Tease Me Please Me
13. Hit Between the Eyes
14. Kottak Attack
15. Blackout
16. Six String Sting
17. Big City Nights
—————-
18. Still Loving You
19. Wind of Change
20. No One Like You
21. Rock You Like a Hurricane
—————-
22. When the Smoke Is Going Down
Photo Gallery
