Scorpions 'Love at First Sting' 40th Anniversary

[Nickdfresh]

Unlike some other fucking bands we all know and love, The Scorpions are releasing live vintage ProShot concert vids to celebrate their anniversary. Oh look! A band that respects and cherishes their long time fans! More to follow:

[Mushroom]

At the risk of sounding gay, and I don’t care: i love this fucking band. Their remastered series from years ago exemplify proper remastered and expanded editions.

This other fucking band we all know and love might be holding out for the 50th!

[Kristy]

Ghey.

[Nickdfresh]

Second, Tokyo 1984:

[Terry]

What I had wanted was a proper dvd release of the World Wide Live vhs home video release from the mid-1980's. I used to have it on vhs, but that tape shit the bed in the 1990's. I got a copy of it as an extra on a dvd bootleg trade in the early 2000's...not a great copy, just burned onto a blank dvd on SP, but at least I had it.

For awhile various people would throw it up on youtube for free, but it would always get taken down eventually. Then there was the 30th anniversary of the World Wide Live commemorative dvd release in 2015, but I think the dvd wasn't the original home video release from the 1980's and it was only for Region 2 dvd players or whatever.

Looked on Amazon recently and someone was selling a vintage vhs of it for over $100. Someone else was selling the 2 disc version of it, but it was the European version only. I'll have to look a little more carefully.

It's a nostalgia thing for me in that the Love At First Sting tour was the only time I saw them (with a pre-Slippery When Wet Bon Jovi opening up for them), and the Love At First Sting album was the last studio album of theirs I liked. I do remember thinking that everything they did from Savage Amusement on wasn't my cup of tea or whatever.

[Rikk]

OK...we were talking about this last week...I was asking someone about this.

If I were to get a 1970s Scorpions album (less poppy, more hard-rock), which album would you think I should start with? (There's just a band I've never gotten into yet.)

[Terry]

Lovedrive isn't a bad one to start with.

The pre-Lovedrive stuff has always been a mixed bag for me, far as the studio albums went, which consisted of a few with Michael Schenker on lead guitar and a couple with Uli Jon Roth on lead guitar. Some good to great guitar playing but not a lot of great songs far as my ears went. SOME great songs here and there, but a lot that were kinda half-realized or more timely than timeless.

With Lovedrive, I think it was a blend of Michael Schenker and Matthias Jabs on lead guitars depending on the tracks.

I'd start with Lovedrive, then go get the Tokyo Tapes live album and then start working your way backward with the studio stuff...if only because the Uli Jon Roth albums are a bit better than the first albums with Michael Schenker on them.

[Von Halen]

OK...we were talking about this last week...I was asking someone about this.

If I were to get a 1970s Scorpions album (less poppy, more hard-rock), which album would you think I should start with? (There's just a band I've never gotten into yet.)

Terry gives good advice. I love the Blackout album.

[Terry]

Terry gives good advice. I love the Blackout album.

Blackout is a fine album. Indeed, a fine album.

I still think Love At First Sting is a good hard rock album. I know a lot of people point to it as the demarcation point of the band 'selling out' or whatever, but I've always thought it was a strong collection of tunes. Created with more of a sense of commercial appeal than the albums prior to it were? Yes, absolutely. No doubt with Love At First Sting the band were going for a broader audience. But they were doing it on their terms with enough of their own style intact.

Plus, when LAFS came out, I was 14 years old and didn't care back then as to if I was 'supposed' to like it or not in comparison with the earlier albums. Here in the US, Scorpions didn't get a ton of airplay until the No One Like You single anyway.

[Rikk]

Thank you, hombres.

I'll start with LOVEDRIVE and BLACKOUT.

Actually, I will have SOME connection...because I'm a huge Michael Schenker fan since I got into UFO some years ago!

(What's the album with the really disgusting album cover? NO...that is NOT the one I'm wanting to start with...I actually think that cover is really awful. I'm just curious.)

[FORD]

Lovedrive, Animal Magnetism, and Blackout were Scorpions "peak". Love at First Sting was OK, but it was all downhill from there.

[FORD]

And in this non-related trivia note, here's a single the Scorpions put out under a fake name ("The Hunters") - a cover of Sweet's "Fox On The Run" in their native German.....

[Terry]

Thank you, hombres.

I'll start with LOVEDRIVE and BLACKOUT.

Actually, I will have SOME connection...because I'm a huge Michael Schenker fan since I got into UFO some years ago!

(What's the album with the really disgusting album cover? NO...that is NOT the one I'm wanting to start with...I actually think that cover is really awful. I'm just curious.)

I think Lovedrive was the best one the band ever did with Michael Schenker.

As mentioned, though, any of those three albums (Lovedrive/Animal Magnetism/Blackout) would be good. The thing with Love At First Sting these days is that album was overplayed to the nth degree in the mid 1980's...both on radio and MTV...

I think Michael Schenker was a bit better with UFO and later the MSG than he was in terms of the Scorpions stuff he played on.

[Terry]

Lovedrive, Animal Magnetism, and Blackout were Scorpions "peak". Love at First Sting was OK, but it was all downhill from there.

It was a pretty big drop-off from Love At First Sting, too.

Like, soon as Savage Amusement came out, I could tell the band had gotten soft. Dunno if it was that took the band so long to really break big in the States, that a good chunk of the band were already in their mid-30's when Love At First Sting broke so big commercially...then they did a pretty long tour to support Love At First Sting. By the time the follow-up Savage Amusement came out, half the band had just turned 40 years old...I think they just plain didn't want to work as hard or whatever. Sort of took the foot off the pedal and relaxed because they figured they earned it for finally making it big. But, yeah, post-Love they weren't putting the effort into the tunes, and it showed.

[Mushroom]

Thank you, hombres.

(What's the album with the really disgusting album cover? NO...that is NOT the one I'm wanting to start with...I actually think that cover is really awful. I'm just curious.)

Maybe the original cover of Virgin Killer with the prepubescent girl? Definitely a record company misstep as it's too close to resembling child porn.

Lovedrive • 50th Anniversary Deluxe Edition • has a 9.5 minute long version of Holiday, great guitar solos. Coast to Coast is just a damn good instrumental.

I dig Animal Magnetism. It might be my favorite record from beginning to end. There's one song, Falling In Love, with a guitar riff intro that sounds like the tail end of VH's Jump (or Van Hagar's On Top of the World), but Scorps do it better!

Savage Amusement was their attempt to catch the big hair pop metal wave. It fell flat.

Crazy World was sort of a return to Love at First Sting commercialism, and a good record.

Face The Heat came out in 1993. One good song. By then, that ship had sailed. Too much new interesting music coming out at the same time.

I agree with Terry the pre-Matthias Jabs was spotty. Tokyo Tapes is a good place to start.

[Nitro Express]

The Scorpions were the best band that performed on Sunday at the 83 US Festival. Van Halen had a weak start after we waited and waited for them to hit the stage.

[Nitro Express]

Blackout is a fine album. Indeed, a fine album.

I still think Love At First Sting is a good hard rock album. I know a lot of people point to it as the demarcation point of the band 'selling out' or whatever, but I've always thought it was a strong collection of tunes. Created with more of a sense of commercial appeal than the albums prior to it were? Yes, absolutely. No doubt with Love At First Sting the band were going for a broader audience. But they were doing it on their terms with enough of their own style intact.

Plus, when LAFS came out, I was 14 years old and didn't care back then as to if I was 'supposed' to like it or not in comparison with the earlier albums. Here in the US, Scorpions didn't get a ton of airplay until the No One Like You single anyway.

It’s a small bottle of rocket sauce but it was good while it lasted.

[Jérôme Frenchise]

What about the Uli Roth years?
https://youtu.be/vy7mBEpBpOY?si=PzGVJpJCLN7QzYdp

[Terry]

The Scorpions were the best band that performed on Sunday at the 83 US Festival. Van Halen had a weak start after we waited and waited for them to hit the stage.

The one thing that stood out for me with the Scorpions LAFS show I saw was how well-rehearsed the band was. Almost, like, over-rehearsed. A well-rehearsed machine...like, they didn't come across at all as a band who had a lot of spontaneous moments live, musically or even in terms of in-between song patter or whatever.

[Terry]

What about the Uli Roth years?
https://youtu.be/vy7mBEpBpOY?si=PzGVJpJCLN7QzYdp

Uli Roth was a talented enough player back in the day. Obviously very influenced by Hendrix.

The - for lack of a better word - 'problem' with Roth re: Scorpions is that the rest of the band wanted to break big, whereas even by the mid-1970's Uli Roth's heavy influence of Hendrix was already sounding a bit passe in terms of where hard rock was going. Come 1976, what Roth was doing sounded hopelessly stuck in the late 1960's. When with the Scorpions, oftentimes it sounded like the rest of the band were just Uli Jon Roth's backing band and a few too many of the songs were not particularly memorable vehicles to showcase yet another Hendrixesque-type guitar solo.

I may well come across as contrarian or whatever to the loads of Scorpions 'purists' or whatever one wants to call those who think the only stuff the band ever did that was worth hearing was all that pre-Lovedrive material. Personally, I always found it a bit of an endurance test at times to listen to those pre-Lovedrive studio albums. Tokyo Tapes IS excellent, though.

[Terry]

The Scorpions were the best band that performed on Sunday at the 83 US Festival. Van Halen had a weak start after we waited and waited for them to hit the stage.

I've heard they were one of the better ones.

All I've ever seen/heard of their set were the three or so tunes via the abridged '83 US Fest Heavy Metal Day thing that was originally on Showtime and maybe ten years ago re-run on VH1 Classic.

Odd that from what I can tell Scorpions Us Fest set wasn't released from start-to-finish officially. I think Quiet Riot, Judas Priest and Triumph have all put out their sets from that day as home video releases.

[silverfish]

The one thing that stood out for me with the Scorpions LAFS show I saw was how well-rehearsed the band was. Almost, like, over-rehearsed. A well-rehearsed machine...like, they didn't come across at all as a band who had a lot of spontaneous moments live, musically or even in terms of in-between song patter or whatever.

I said something along those lines in another thread years back.

"I went to the 1988 Monsters of Rock show. My recollection is that the Scorpions set sounded
exactly like World Wide Live. Very tight and not a single bum note. Coulda been a recording
and I wouldn't have known. Not a knock - just decent musicians doing their job and c'mon,
who wants to hear Klaus in a German accent say that he "Vorgot the Vucking Verds!"."

https://www.rotharmy.com/forums/show...t=#post1937420

Still not intended to be a knock. Sounds like those guys always play tight and leave the ad-libs to the professionals.

[Nitro Express]

The one thing that stood out for me with the Scorpions LAFS show I saw was how well-rehearsed the band was. Almost, like, over-rehearsed. A well-rehearsed machine...like, they didn't come across at all as a band who had a lot of spontaneous moments live, musically or even in terms of in-between song patter or whatever.

They are Germans. They run with precision and get down to business. They were really tight. We watch a show like that and then drunk and coked Dave forgets the fucking words.

[Terry]

I said something along those lines in another thread years back.

"I went to the 1988 Monsters of Rock show. My recollection is that the Scorpions set sounded
exactly like World Wide Live. Very tight and not a single bum note. Coulda been a recording
and I wouldn't have known. Not a knock - just decent musicians doing their job and c'mon,
who wants to hear Klaus in a German accent say that he "Vorgot the Vucking Verds!"."

https://www.rotharmy.com/forums/show...t=#post1937420

Still not intended to be a knock. Sounds like those guys always play tight and leave the ad-libs to the professionals.

That was the thing with World Wide Live, at least as far as the album/cassette release went (obviously with the home video one can tell there were scenes filmed onstage for close-up shots of the band where they were miming along with the music...where it was a staged video shoot a la more than a few of the close ups one saw in Zep's Song Remains The Same movie), where the audio just sounds note perfect...as you say, very tight and not a single bum note. I remember listening to the WWL cassette in the late 1980's thinking it sounded like something the band recorded in a studio and then overdubbed crowd noise or whatever onto: it wouldn't shock me EITHER way with World Wide Live in terms of there being or not being a lot of post-performance recording for that live album, because the band WERE as tight and note-perfect live as their studio albums.