I am a huge fan of Metal/Hard Rock documentaries. I’m also a Scorpions fan so this should be perfect for me, right? Actually, I didn’t really enjoy it all that much, and I’ll tell you why.
This was supposed to be a five decade career retrospective of the band but while watching, I felt this constant reminder that a band I grew up with isn’t the same as I remember them. Don’t get me wrong. The newest Scorpions line-up sounds just as good, if not better than the ‘World Wide Live’ dudes I grew up with in the 80’s. It’s just different. I guess I’d be more interested in vintage live stuff ‘from the vault’ than modern day footage. There weren’t even any full songs on here.
This hundred minute DVD is really a documentary revolving around the farewell tour the band did a few years ago, before coming out of retirement shortly thereafter. It appears to have been finished with that in mind… like they were really preparing to retire, and ending everything with a big goodbye but as most people know, this is kind of pointless now. They’re back!
The filmmaker skimmed over the band’s early days with Michael Schenker, and completely jumped past the Uli Roth period and never even mentioned Francis Bucholz… not surprising really, but there was little to no mention of any other early members. There were interviews with people like Paul Stanley and others who had nice things to say about the band… Sure, they discuss the problems Klaus had with his voice, about his marriage being good after all these years, the band’s dealings with Russia, and quite a few other interesting topics, really… but I suppose the thing I liked the least was something that other English speakers will likely also find irritating: the fact that the whole thing is spoken in German with no option to listen to it in English! You have to watch it with subtitles.
Overall I guess I would’ve like it a bit more if it resembled recent Hard Rock/Metal documentary films like he story of Anvil, God Bless Ozzy, or the new Quiet Riot movie. To me, Those were all very entertaining. One of my faves is Born In The Basement (which is the early story of Overkill) since it focuses primarily on the younger band I grew up with. I just didn’t like this one much. Perhaps we will get another proper Scorpions career retrospective before too long… spoken in English. Hopefully.
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