In a recent conversation with Liz Barnes of Planet Rock’s “My Planet Rocks”, vocalist Klaus Meine (Scorpions), talked about the band’s new album called ”Rock Believer”.
Meine was asked if the album title is somehow a message to a certain group of the band’s fans around the world.
Here’s what Meine said:
“Maybe that’s because of the pandemic, it’s all a dialogue with the fans. Especially [since] we are blocked away from the world of touring for such a long time, it’s like you wanna stay in touch with your fanbase. And through social media today, with Facebook, Instagrams, and even TikTok [laughs], whatever comes along the way, you have a chance to be in touch with your fanbase and it’s a pretty cool dialogue. You get some feedback on what you say, and maybe it’s good, sometimes it’s maybe not so good.
“I’ll tell you a story. In the middle of the pandemic, and way before we recorded the first track of this album, I wrote a little song in my studio back home just to put something out on social media without saying, ‘Here’s a new single from the Scorpions.’ It was just a little song. And the song was ‘Sign Of Hope’.”
He added more:
”It was maybe two minutes something, not a big song. And I wanted to get in touch and just say, ‘Stay strong. Take good care of yourself. We’ll see you again. Let’s go through this pandemic together.’ And by the end of the year, we put out three [‘Sign Of Hope’] fan videos and reached a lot of people. And it was such a nice interaction with the fans. And the same goes for the lyrics in ‘Rock Believer’.
”We are the essence of rock believers, yes, but also we’ve heard so many years: ‘Rock is dead.’ There is grunge, there is hip-hop, there is rap. Yes, those genres are very popular these days, no question about it, especially hip-hop and rap, but we see every time we go on the road rock is not dead at all; it’s well and alive. And ‘Rock Believer’ is directed to this community, saying, ‘We love you and we hope you love this new album as much as we do. And I’m a rock believer just like you.’ It’s a clear message.”