Scorpions – Forever and a Day
Featuring the Scorpions
Blu-ray | DVD
Directed by Katja Von Garnier
Cleopatra
Release Date: November 27, 2015

Like any long-running rock band, there comes a time when the group must decide how long they should keep it going. Are they too old for this? Should they go out while they’re still ahead?

German heavy metal band Scorpions, who’ve been in action for over 50 years, had to make that decision in recent years, which led to a farewell world tour that lasted three years. Scorpions – Forever and a Day, an authorized documentary from director Katja Von Garnier, gives the history of the band while also documenting their farewell tour, a lengthy outing that proved that the Teutonic titans are, in fact, not ready to pack it all in.

The documentary tells the 50-year story of the Scorpions with rare footage and old photos, along with interviews with past and present band members and crew, and others, all interspersed with live concert clips.

In the 1980s, a band couldn’t truly say that they had “made it” until they had a massive, over-the-top, epic, tear-jerking power ballad. It was a trend that dates back to KISS having the biggest hit of their career with the accidental chart-topper “Beth” in 1977. Be it Motley Crue’s “Home Sweet Home” or Cinderella’s “Don’t Know What You’ve Got (Till It’s Gone), the decade was one giant game of balladry one-upmanship. By the time hair metal burned itself out at the dawn of the 90s, there were bands that seemed to deal in nothing but ballads (Firehouse, Warrant, Trixter, et al…).

There is, however, one song that stands out to me as the apex of this movement. Veteran German metal band Scorpions were equally adept at bone-crushing rock and roll and ballads that could make the hair stand up on the back of your neck. This week’s Massive Metal Monday song is one of the latter moments. Here, with the most bitchin’ ballad of the day, is Scorpions with “Still Loving You” from their massively successful 1984 album Love At First Sting.

Taken by Force was the fifth Scorpions album. Issued in December of 1977, it would be their last album to feature lead guitar virtuoso Uli Jon Roth. The lyrics for the song “We’ll Burn the Sky” were adapted from a poem by Roth’s wife at the time Monica Dannemann. Dannemann had been the last girlfriend of Jimi Hendrix. Hendrix died in her London flat and the lyrics to “We’ll Burn the Sky” are a tribute to him. (Be sure to check out the dance performed by singer Klaus Meine during Roth’s blistering guitar solo in the video!)

Watch the video here below.

One of the most globally popular hard rock bands of the 1980s, The Scorpions, have reneged on their plans to disband and retire from making music, and have vowed to carry on and continue to stay together as a musical unit.

Lead singer Klaus Meine, who lent his distinctive vocals to well-loved and remembered Scorpion tracks like “Rock You Like A Hurricane,” “The Zoo” and the power ballad “Still Loving You,” confirmed this news to Classic Rock Magazine. In short, he slightly backpedaled on the band’s decision to call it quits last year by stressing that, “It’s one thing to say, “˜this is going to be the end of the Scorpions’, but it’s another thing to do it.”