Oregon Music News: Oregon’s all-genre music magazine since 2009

12/08/2015

Scorpions' 'Forever and A Day' documents the band's end or does it?

By RUBEN MOSQUEDA //

The Scorpions didn’t retire which in itself makes Forever and A Day more anti-climactic. If you’re a die hard this won’t move the needle much for you.

Scorpions issued Sting in the Tail in 2010 and they quickly announced that they’d embark on a lengthy world tour that would last for over 24 months and that they’d disband and retire. As we know now things didn’t happen that way. In fact The Scorpions are still on tour and have been touring behind their new album ‘Return to Forever’ which they released in the United States in the fall of 2015. Singer Klaus Meine, guitarists Rudolf Schenker and Mathias Jabs still look and sound great; perhaps the reason that they’ve elected to press on as a recording and touring unit.

The newly documentary Forever and A Day captures The Scorpions on their ‘supposed’ final tour. The documentary is comprised of concert clips and interviews with the band and close confidants. Forever and A Day fails to include past members; guitarist Uli Jon Roth, bassist Francis Buchholz and drummer Herman Rarebell which would have been a welcome addition to the footage with Meine, Jabs, Schenker, current drummer James Kottak and current bassist Paweł Mąciwoda.

The best moments in this documentary come when Klaus Meine talks about the string of ballads that he’s written throughout the years and how they’ve all been inspired by his wife.  That’s moving. Also the conversation with Dieter Dierks who worked on their classic albums; In Trance, Virgin Killer, Taken By Force, Love Drive,’Animal Magnetism, Blackout, and Love At First Sting. I was completely hooked by Dierk’s stories---more of that would have been magnificent.

The bar on documentaries has been raised to such a high level with people like Sam Dunn that when you see a documentary like ‘Forever and A Day’ it looks like a student film in comparison. I really wanted to love Forever and A Day but there’s just too much bouncing around between interviews in German and then switching back to English; that it doesn’t make the film flow very well. I would have loved it if they chose a language (preferably English) and stuck with it. In the end we know The Scorpions didn’t retire which in itself makes Forever and A Day more anti-climactic. If you’re a die hard this won’t move the needle much for you.

 

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