Some dreams never die.
As a for-instance, consider the lofty dream to be a rockstar. It’s one held by so many, by people of all ages, and it’s one that’s been lived by Scorpions frontman Klaus Meine longer than anyone could hope. The 70-years-young singer has toured the world with his band for decades, shared countless stages with fellow legends and contemporaries, and enjoyed a career that’s produced 18 studio albums, innumerable compilations, and a handful of songs that will live forever.
And during that time, Meine has nurtured another dream, one even more obscenely optimistic and tragically unlikely than aspiring to rock superstardom. Born three years after the end of WWII, in the bomb-ravaged setting of post-war Hanover, Germany, Klaus Meine also dreams of peace.
It’s a lofty notion, sure, the prospects of which seem ever so unlikely. But you and I haven’t necessarily seen what Klaus Meine has seen. I, for one, didn’t have the chance to play onstage at the Moscow Music Peace Festival in August 1989 — alongside acts like Ozzy Osbourne, Motley Crue, Skid Row, and Bon Jovi — so I was never inspired to write an anthemic peace ballad after singing along with 100,000 Russians. But Klaus Meine was, and he did and, as a result, the fall of the Berlin Wall had an unofficial theme song in “Wind Of Change,” which ranks among the best-selling singles of all time.
The wind can shift, at any time, in any direction. It seems, sometimes, the wind is blowing us onward and upward and, sometimes, it’s blowing us right in the face. But no matter how strong the wind’s destructive force, it hasn’t been able to stop Meine’s shining hopes for world peace. He’s still dreaming away and, alongside bandmates and brothers Rudolf Schenker, Matthias Jabs, Pavel Mąciwoda and Mikkey Dee, he might be sharing these dreams in a city near you.
I caught up with Klaus before he embarked on another trek to share the Scorpions’ music with adoring fans and we talked music, ballads, touring, and watching bands grow up before your eyes, much in the same way the world continues to grow.