Scorpions Deadly Sting!
Scorpions - Manchester Apollo, 29th July 2007
Sunday had been a great day with our trip out as a family and the night promised to carry on with the goodness as we toddled off with Bradders to pick up Dan on a lovely bright sunny Sunday evening. We got to the incredibly busy Apollo and marvelled as I parked the car about the amount of throwbacks and mutants were toddling about. There were some excellent specimens about the place and I felt really quite young being there in the presence of these "people"!
We got straight into the hall as MSG struck up the first song. We knew things were not going to be going too well when we noticed that the singer's mic was not working. At that point we had got to the front where we found Pete and Wendy and crue and we also noticed that Schenker himself looked like he hadn't slept for four days, had been dragged through a hedge and that he was physically unable to play guitar. He was totally out of it and put on a shit performance. Every solo was a mess and all the band could do was try to keep it all together. Beloved songs were slaughtered before the incredulous audience. Tempos were all over the place and the singer constantly went off-tune as he seemed to be spending the whole set making sure that Schenker remained upright. Great songs were butchered and the band also felt the need to ignore quite a few MSG classics in favour of putting some UFO numbers in ("Lights Out" and "Doctor Doctor", natch.) The latter was just the worst, the singer stood behind Schenker so he would stay on his feet and the song was ended after the first solo to spare us the pain of listening to anymore. The only reaction from most of us was along the lines of "what the fuck is this?"
It was a real shame to see such a performance from a once-great musician. How the years have been so bad to the man are beyond me. There were points when, after going down on his knees, he had real problems getting up again, he was so bad. I felt embarrased for the band. As Brad said, with a withering look on his face at the end of the set; "That was fucking arse."
But then it was time for the changeover and the usual slagging off of the support band and the piss-taking out of each other. For some reason, the advertised support slot from Uli Jon Roth didn't happen, which was a damn shame as that would have been good. They should have fucked MSG off instead, as apparently the show the night before was terrible too. The crowd went mad when a roadie came on and placed the Smallest Mic-stand in Rock (apart from Ronnie James Dio, perhaps?) at the front of the stage. Why the guys who aren't really tall have such incredibly massive voices is one of those strange things I'll never work out. Maybe if Brad sawed his legs off below the knees, he'd be able to sing better... OUCH! (Sorry, darling!)
Then at 8.45pm, the lights went out and off we went. They ran on stage and ploughed straight into "Hour 1" from the new album and then continued to blast us with solid rock noise for about two-and-a-quarter hours. Rudy ran on looking the exact opposite of his piss-head brother looking lean and fit and spending a good 75% of the show doing his guitar windmills in fine style. Klaus Meine ran about the stage like an 18 year old blasting out his vocals faultlessly and whipping up the crowd in fine style. I don't think that anyone could ever get tired of Meine's line in stage raps; "HOW ARRRRRE YOOOOOOOOO TOOO-NIGHT OUT ZEEEERE?!" All good stuff. Mr Jabs ran about making his odd-but-cool guitarist faces and played great. The rhythm section were as tight as ever and drove the music along, with some excellent backing vocals from Mr Kottack on the drums. The whole thing was as good as you would expect it was going to be. The Scorps' live reputation has carried them through thirty years of life and it shows no signs of stopping now.
Uli Jon Roth joined the Scorps on stage and they cherry-picked what seemed to be the best moments off "Tokyo Tapes" and just killed. It was truly awesome to hear those songs. Brad had all his favourites played at that point and sang along like a man possessed. This part of the set can only really be described as "epic"! There was a lot of relief that Michael Schenker was not asked back on stage to do some numbers with the headliners. I hope that they'd bungled him into his bunk and left him there to dry out a little.
The set list was generally excellent with something for everyone played from every point in their career. Personally, my favourites came towards the end with "Blackout" and "Dynamite" and stuff like that. There was no "Coming Home" this time, but that was OK, as they played that last time and it's best placed at the top of the show. We did get "Still Loving You" which was great, even if we did have to have "Wind of Change", which even won me over by the end of the song... Damn them and their catchy tunes.
Sound and light was excellent too. Klaus was too quiet at the start of the show, but they'd soon balanced everything so it was all as clear as a bell before too long. Even the addition of the third guitar didn't effect anything.
"...Hurricance" brought the show to a crashing close with it's extended middle breaks taken from the "Hurricane 2000" arrangement. The audience were tired, but baying for more as the lights came up and we filed out. We were almost run over by the Scorps' bus as they drove off, waving like the mad Germans that they are, to us. That was fun. And so was the continuation of the piss-taking. It took forever to get out of the car park, as you'd expect, but it gave us a chance to see just how normal we are as the freaks returned to their cars... I should have got some photos!
...And that was that! A great show from a truly great rock band who just don't get the respect that they deserve. There's some good footage to view here. Check out Brad's storming backing vocals and then realise why our band has to be so loud... We're all trying to play over the singer!
Quote of the night: "She should get a good hard shag and get her hair washed!" (Dan)
Set List
Not in the proper order
- Main Set
- Hour 1
- Blackout
- Bad Boys Running Wild
- Deep and Dark
- Love 'Em and Leave 'Em
- Holiday
- Coast to Coast
- The Zoo
- 321
- Humanity
- Tease Me, Please Me
- Big City Nights
- With Uli Jon Roth
- Pictured Life
- Speedy's Coming
- We'll Burn the Sky
- Fly to the Rainbow
- In Trance
- Encores
- Wind of Change
- Still Loving You
- Dark Lady (With Uli Jon Roth)
- Dynamite
- Rock You Like A Hurricane
Scorps Movie
The video is in FLV format and should stream quite quickly to your computer. Excuse the distorted sound, the microphone on the camera isn't the best when recording high-volume noise. Please be patient if the video doesn't load immediately.
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© 2006 Graham T. Ebbrell