Scorpions - Wind of Change

Did the CIA write this 32-year-old international mega-hit song?

Photo by Nika Benedictova on Unsplash

How Scorpions 1990 power-ballad, “Wind of Change” became my latest earworm is an intriguing journey to trace backward.

It all started a couple weeks ago when I wrote my Substack on Peter Bjorn and John’s whistling-laden hit song, “Young Folks.” Here’s the link below if you haven’t read it. (It’s worth the 8 minutes.)

Peter Bjorn & John - Young Folks

While finishing that piece, I got to thinking: What other great songs have been written that feature whistling? I posed that question to you all, and received a few wonderful responses.

Challenge 69 mentioned “(Sittin’ on) The Dock of the Bay” by Otis Redding. That was one of the first songs I thought of too. Kendall brought up Billy Joel’s classic, “The Stranger.”

I thought of a few other songs.

Meat Puppets’ 1985 favorite “Maiden’s Milk” from their brilliant Up on the Sun album.

Peter Gabriel’s “Games without Frontiers” is another amazing whistling song.

A few others came to mind.

1. J. Geils Band, “Centerfold.”

2. The Bangles’ “Walk Like an Egyptian.”

3. John Lennon’s “Jealous Guy.”

   And then there was Scorpions’ “Wind of Change.”

I was very aware of this heart-felt political song — it was Scorpions biggest hit in their 50 plus year career — but to be honest, by the late 80s, my heavy metal persona had been almost completely usurped by punk rock, new-wave, funk and R&B. I’d been a tried and true metalhead from the early to mid-80s but after high-school I packed away my Iron Maiden and Mötley Crüe concert T’s and wore shirts promoting my new favorite bands: Meat Puppets, fIREHOSE, Hüsker Dü. (Had to keep an umlaut band in my faves.)

I mean, look at that photo of me, below. I think I’m wearing tortoise-shell glasses. Can you believe just a couple years prior I had a mullet, a wispy mustache and wore a jean jacket laden with pins from heavy metal bands? (Scorpions of course, Van Halen, Motorhead, Metallica, and probably Def Leppard and a few others too.)

That’s me wearing my Meat Puppets t-shirt next to Danny Elfman and my friend Samantha, backstage at an Oingo Boingo concert in 1988. I look a bit like I’m photo-bombing.

After Scorpions’ 1982 album Blackout and their 1984 follow-up, Love at First Sting, they completely fell off my radar. Those two albums featured a good portion of the songs most non-obsessive fans recognize:

“No One Like You,” “Dynamite,” “Rock You Like A Hurricane,” “Big City Nights,” and “Still Loving You.”

I was a virginal teenager in 1984 who’d never been dumped because I never even had a girlfriend. So the fact that the epic ballad “Still Loving You” was able to reach into my heart and squeeze, evoking the emotional equivalent of begging a true love to give me just one more chance — says volumes about the power of music. Says volumes about the power of Scorpions to exude that sense of longing for something or someone you have lost and desperately want back.

I never went to my high school senior prom, but I was told by more than one friend that when the DJ played “Still Loving You,” even the metalhead couples raced out to the dance floor. Scorpions were a band that brought the stoners, the jocks, the preppies and the nerds together, if for just one song.

I’m pretty sure the whole idea behind the metal power-ballad was to transition the head-banging to the head-board banging.

(Yeah, that line is incredibly cheesy, but I couldn’t have left it out, could I have?)

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WIND OF CHANGE

Where was I?

Yes, “Wind of Change.”

So, after I posted a playlist of my favorite whistling songs online, I received a comment by another wonderful music writer, Kevin Alexander (who has a great Substack called “On Repeat” that I highly recommend), who asked me if I’d heard the podcast of the same name. “It’s surprisingly engrossing,” he added.

I hadn’t heard the podcast. (The first episode is linked above but can be played on whatever app you play podcasts on.)

But I was heading to Los Angeles to see family (a 6 hour drive south from my home in Oakland, CA) a couple days after receiving the podcast recommendation, so I thought: what better time to immerse myself in something surprisingly engrossing that is related to a Scorpions’ song?

Wind of Change, the podcast, is indeed surprisingly engrossing. Actually, not surprisingly. All I had to do is read the synopsis of the 8 episode show to know that I would be in for a wild ride.

Here’s how the website for Crooked Media describes the show.

It’s 1990. The Berlin Wall has just come down. The Soviet Union is on the verge of collapse. A heavy metal band from West Germany, the Scorpions, releases a power ballad, “Wind of Change.” The song becomes the soundtrack to the peaceful revolution sweeping Europe — and one of the biggest rock singles ever. According to some fans, it’s the song that ended the Cold War.

Decades later, New Yorker writer Patrick Radden Keefe hears a rumor from a source: the Scorpions didn’t actually write “Wind of Change.” The CIA did.

This is Patrick’s journey to find the truth. Among former operatives and leather-clad rockers, from Moscow to Kyiv to a GI Joe convention in Ohio, it’s a story about spies doing the unthinkable, about propaganda hidden in pop music, and a maze of government secrets. “Wind of Change.” An offbeat eight part investigation.

Wind of Change is an Original Series from Pineapple Street Studios, Crooked Media and Spotify. Follow Wind of Change on Spotify to binge the full season.

It’s a pretty crazy story. The podcast was released in early 2020, before the tragic events of Russia’s invasion of Ukraine. In response to the invasion, Klaus Meine has rewritten the lyrics of “Wind of Change” to reference Ukraine instead of Gorky Park in Moscow.

I don’t want to spoil anything by recapping the podcast, as it’s one of those blow-your-mind stories that is more effective the less you know ahead of time. Let’s just say that journalist Patrick Radden Keefe was able to gain access to a boat load of seemingly inaccessible information and larger-than-life people. My drive down south and my drive back home were a breeze, as I was lost in the storytelling coming through my car’s speakers. There are 3 bonus episodes as well.

And ignore the whole Spotify bullshit in the description. You can play “Wind of Change” anywhere.

Now back to me.

I eventually returned to the worlds of hard-rock and heavy-metal. I realized I simply loved music. Genres didn’t matter to me. They might be handy when writing about music, to make it easier to categorize or compare a band or artist to illustrate to a reader, but it’s almost always reductive and ineffectual.

Today, I will often play Madonna and then Hank Williams and then Dead Kennedys and then Emerson, Lake and Palmer. I love ambient, disco, top 40, hip-hop, world music….Essentially, if it’s made from the heart and isn’t just a play for dollars, I’m in.

That said, I am a man of a certain age and a lot of newer music is simply not meant for me. I can appreciate it on a sonic level perhaps, but I see no need to be the creepy old guy trying to keep up with what the Gen-Z kids are listening to. Well, not all of it.

What I’m saying, is that my break from my young metal-self was short-lived. I never got rid of my Mötley Crüe and Metallica records. By my late-20s, I was able to re-tap into the joyous power that I felt listening to loud and heavy music. In my 40s, I would buy tickets to see Scorpions play live at the Concord Pavillion — with hair-metal icons Cinderella as the opening act.

Though a large majority of the audience was made up of people my age (some a little older, some a little younger), I would venture to guess that none of them ever stopped loving Scorpions (they’re “Still Loving You”) and the hard-rock bands that defined their youth. I wish I still had my Scorpions concert t-shirt from when I saw them perform at the Inglewood Forum in 1984, with Iron Maiden and Girlschool.

I’d like to think it would still fit me, threadbare and musty as it would surely be.

(This is a crappy photo of the Scorpions concert on their first of several “farewell” tours, back in 2009 or 2010). That’s a close-up of vocalist Klaus Meine on the dual monitors. You can see the stage in the middle left - with the bright lights. It was a great show.)

Thanks for reading! If you like what you have read, leave a comment! Have you heard the Wind of Change podcast? If so, what did you think? If you have any ideas for Earworm and Song Loop topics, email me at ambidextwords@gmail.com