Wind Of Change

The band wrote this during a visit to Moscow in 1989. The previous year, they became the first hard-rock band to play in Russia, and they returned to play the Moscow Music Peace Festival. At this show, they were inspired by the sight of thousands of Russians cheering them on even though they were a German band. In a Songfacts interview with Scorpions guitarist Rudolf Schenker, he called this song, "A kind of message soundtrack to the world's most peaceful revolution on earth."

Lead singer Klaus Meine told NME about the concert that inspired this song: "Everyone was there: the Red Army, journalists, musicians from Germany, from America, from Russia-the whole world on one boat. It was like a vision; everyone was talking the same language. It was a very positive vibe. That night was the basic inspiration for Wind Of Change."

The "Wind of Change" that was blowing was the fall of the Soviet Union, which is what the song is about, but when the Berlin Wall fell on November 9, 1989, the song became the unofficial anthem for the German Reunification, an event that politically lasted from the fall Wall to the official reunification on October 3, 1990 (The Scorpions are a German band). The music video plays to this interpretation, with footage of the Berlin Wall being dismantled. The Berlin Wall didn't come down until a few months after the song was written, though, and the inspiration came in Russia, not in Germany. This is confusing stuff for those not familiar with the time the song was written, so to put all of this in context we'll need a (very condensed) history lesson. In 1917 the Bolsheviks overthrew the existing government in Russia in an event called the October Revolution. From there, Soviet Russia was born. In 1922, Soviet Russia became the Soviet Union after it officially unified with the Transcaucasian, Ukrainian, and Byelorussian Republics. In 1924, Joseph Stalin took over control of the Soviet Union. The already authoritarian control became even more so. Though the Soviet Union was ostensibly composed of free bodies operating under the shared ideological banner of socialism, the truth was that all of it was tightly controlled from Moscow. Stalin viciously cracked down on anyone he thought might oppose his rule. This went beyond actual political saboteurs and included anyone who might harbor dissident ideas. During World War II (1939–1945), Russia fought Nazi Germany. The Germans were initially the aggressors, but once engaged in conflict, the Soviets did not relent. The period of conflict gave the Soviets the opportunity to overtake many parts of Europe, and the Soviet Union expanded dramatically. When World War II ended, the Allied nations and Russia divvied up sections of the defeated Nazi Germany. The western parts of the country went to Western influence, while the eastern went to Russia. The Berlin Wall was built to separate the two sides, with people on the western side living under the liberal political systems of Europe and those on the eastern side living under the harsh authoritarian control of the Soviets. The Scorpions were formed in Hanover, a city in West Germany, and grew up in the metaphorical shadow of the Berlin Wall. The harsh reality of the Soviet Union was very real in their minds throughout their entire lives. So, when they were given the chance to play in Russia, after that nation's isolationism had finally started to soften a bit, they took the event seriously. They played there the first time in 1988 in Leningrad as part of their Savage Amusement tour, becoming just the second Western music act to do so (Uriah Heep was the first, playing in December 1987). The Scorpions got a chance to perform in Russia again in 1989, this time as part of the Moscow Peace Festival, where they were part of a lineup including Ozzy Osbourne, Mötley Crüe, Cinderella, and Skid Row. Bon Jovi headlined, which didn't go over well with the Scorpions. Lead singer Klaus Meine later explained that while the festival was a cool feather for the caps of the American acts, it was something much more significant for the Scorpions. They'd lived with the tension of the Soviet presence for all of their lives. They had friends behind the Soviet "Iron Curtain." As Meine told Rolling Stone, "We were not just a band singing about these things; we were a part of these things." The band were in Moscow for about a week leading up to the festival. On one of the press days before the Peace Festival performance, the inspiration for "Wind of Change" struck Meine.