AD: Rudolf Schenker for Kitty Hawk

The pride of Hildesheim, Lower Saxony

Here’s Rudolf Schenker pushing a Kitty Hawk tube power amp in Guitar Player, January 1997. The ad dates to the days of the Scorpions album Pure Instinct, as reflected in the text.

 

Scorpions revisit the ’80s

Though the band is retiring from touring, Scorpions will continue to release music. Guitarist Matthias Jabs tells Billboard that the group is reexamining songs written and recorded during sessions for Blackout and Love at First Sting, but bringing the material up to date. From Billboard:

We’re doing it the way we are recording albums today but the basic ideas, the riffs, the feel, the way they were written and arranged, we try to keep as much from the old recordings as possible. Thirty years later no one would come up with these ideas we came up with when we were younger, so we want to keep that spirit in there.

Read more at Billboard.

Right here.

 

AD: Matthias Jabs for Hughes & Kettner

“Putting a wall of these together has a punch like you wouldn’t believe.”

I don’t recall seeing that many Matthias Jabs endorsements back when. Did he really use a wall of Hughes & Kettner amps to promote Scorpions’ Face the Heat album? Who knows.

Scanned from Guitar for the Practicing Musician, July 1994.

 

Inquisition: Michael Schenker

Do I really need to introduce Michael Schenker? Probably not. If you’re a student of rock guitar you’ve heard his searing, distinctive playing on close to 40 years worth of recordings by Scorpions, UFO, and Michael Schenker Group. His two-tone Flying V is as iconic as any instrument in the field and his writing style has been an influence on the entire genre of hard rock. It is our distinct pleasure to present the rapid fire answers of the Mad Axeman himself:

What’s the last album you listened to?
MSG Live 30th Anniversary Album

What is one album you feel everyone should listen to?
Led Zeppelin 3

Who is one person, present or past, that you would love to collaborate/jam with?
Rod Stewart – Blues Rock Album

Who is one person outside of music that you admire and why?
My mother, because of her humbleness.

Do you read music?
No.

Any other obsessions/passions besides music?
Life.

What was your first guitar, do you still have it?
Framus. No, I don’t have it anymore.

Keep up with Schenker right here.

Special thanks to Felicitas Siegel for facilitating the above exchange.

 

Scorpions to blackout

While we were working on our album these past few months, we could literally feel how powerful and creative our work was – and how much fun we were still having, in the process. But there was also something else: We want to end the Scorpion’s extraordinary career on a high note.

Maybe this should’ve happened half way through Savage Amusement, then?

At any rate, the balding German legends have released a (grammatically questionable) statement.

Right here.