Klaus Meine sat down with Backstage Pass and recalled the time Bryan Adams let him ‘kick his butt’ when he beat Scorpions on charts. While explaining how Scorpions’ ‘Wind Of Change’ became a top hit, he revealed they almost took out one certain part of the song:
“I was not thinking about this could be something where later on. it was a huge discussion [about] is this cool or is it not. When the record company in America wanted to release that song as a single, the ANR guy called me and said ‘Claus you know this will be the next single in the US, but we have to take the whistle out.’ I said ‘no way.’”
They didn’t take the whistle out of the song and it eventually helped it become a hit. The rocker then explained why it wasn’t number one but two — because of Bryan Adams:
“So of course we kept it in and became also hit in the United States and in England. We missed the number one slot because of Bryan Adams. Later on when I met with Bryan he was like standing in front of me was bending over and said, ‘okay Claus, come on, you can kick my ass.”
Scorpions Had To Change The Lyrics For ‘Wind Of Change’
Meine and his bandmates wrote ‘Wind Of Change’ after playing at the Moscow Music Peace Festival in 1989. The song was inspired by seeing thousands of Russians cheering for them in 1988 — they were the first hard rock band to play in Russia. And at the same festival in 1989, the crowd loved them.
Although the rockers kept the whistle in the song, they eventually had to change the lyrics because it simply ‘lost its meaning.’ In another interview, Meine explained:
“When I wrote [‘Wind Of Change’], it was about the time when the Scorpions went for the first time to the Soviet Union back in ’88 when we played 10 shows in Leningrad. After all those years living in the shadow of the Berlin Wall, living with the Iron Curtain, to see how we have the chance with music to build bridges and really come together. So it was so very inspired by this moment of hope, hoping for a more peaceful world and just joining together into a peaceful future.”
He added:
“And so that was the expression. And so many years later now, I think the song has lost the meaning of being a peace anthem, being a song of hope. But I had to change those lyrics, like I said.”
You can see the recent interview below.