Klaus Meine
“No, really, Klaus, tell us about how the CIA are responsible for Wind Of Change – if Klaus is your real name…”
It’s mid-afternoon, and the grainy quality of this Zoom call makes it impossible to tell whether Klaus Meine and Rudolf Schenker are at all amused. It could be the big black sunglasses they’re both wearing. Of course, it’s hard to know if there’s an ounce of truth to a recent deep-dive podcast called Wind Of Change, investigating whether the Scorpions’ megahit of the same name was really a CIA-backed propaganda tool designed to reunite Germany. If there is, Meine and Schenker ain’t saying.
A beat passes, another, and then finally a smile. Meine, possibly a little resigned to the fact that one of the defining achievements of a band he’s been in for 52 years (and who’ve toured and released records continuously for half a century) is now inexorably connected to a fairly wild theory that went viral over lockdown, says: “We live in crazy times, you know, and of course, when I was confronted by this theory I cracked up laughing.
“Everybody was saying: ‘You’ve got to listen to this podcast!’ Patrick Radden Keefe, a journalist who works for , came all the way to Germany just to tell me in the middle of the interview: ‘Klaus, have you heard the story that the CIA wrote ?’ I was like: ‘What?! Say that again?’ But then I said if that were true, it only proves the power of music.”
