SCORPIONS Guitarist Says Songwriting Doesn't Get Easier As Time Goes On

antiMUSIC's Morley Seaver recently conducted an interview with SCORPIONS guitarist Rudolf Schenker. A couple of excerpts from the chat follow:

antiMUSIC: You've been in a band since the late '60s and have released so many records. At this point in your career, do you find it's easier to write songs or is it becoming increasingly difficult come up with new riffs or things to write about?

Rudolf: It's never something easier. It's like surfing. Either you are on the wave that is easy or you're not, and it's not easy. You know, it's all biorhythms. You have also as an artist, you have a kind of biorhythm where you are more or less creative. Nobody…it's like breathing in and breathing out. There's always a time for something. Sometime you are very, very strong and powerful to create something. And sometimes you feel, what is this all about? So in this case, you can see it with rock music. In the 90s it was grunge and alternative and these fantastic singers and you found out some of these young kids who started with grunge and alternative, they are being influenced by SCORPIONS, AEROSMITH and AC/DC. They played some stuff from us and then they went out of the shadow of their idols and started to do their own thing and came up with grunge and alternative. So in this case, for hard rock and classic rock it was a bad time. But it's normal. You can't always just eat caviar or watch strippers or whatever. Even if the best stuff is there. You have to change some time to really get you more, get something else. Especially the younger generation who are listening with a brother or a father and listening to SCORPIONS. The kids want to find their own music. Now it's different. Now young kids they really don't like the new stuff, not everybody, but they're finding out, Oh there's bands like SCORPIONS and they're listening to this stuff. And it's great that we have a big world of different music. I mean the '60s and '70s, especially the '60s and '70s, they were the more creative part of this kind of music, no question about this. But the music, is not getting…there are new bands that are really good. Like I really love to listen to bands like 3 DOORS DOWN, or SYSTEM OF A DOWN, or maybe GREEN DAY, or SMASHING PUMPKINS' new album ….it's great…or NICKELBACK. New bands are great. And I think it's maybe not so exciting like the '60s and '70s because rock music is more commercialized now. They're doing commercials and all these things. In the '60s and '70s it was really very bad to do commercials. Today it's easy. It's even good for some band to have a commercial because it makes the band even more hits.

antiMUSIC: You've released some pretty interesting record covers in the past. Covers from the '90s onwards have been not so controversial. Was this an intentional thing on your part? Were you tired of the controversy that some people might be talking about more than the actual music?

Rudolf: It's not very interesting anymore. You know why? Because in the old days, don't forget, the album sleeve was very big. It was great to hold it in your hands. And then the CD came, and (laughs) you have this nice, great, outstanding cover and it's not coming across so well because it's not so big. In this case, you're losing not interest, but also after a while, it's hard to really find outstanding ideas again. You know, especially outstanding ideas who are…if you see an outstanding idea which presents big, it's much stronger than when it's small. In this case, when the CD came we were more focused on saying, okay, we want to have good music, okay, the album sleeve is still important but, if we won't have this great, amazing idea then we won't die.

You can read the whole interview at this location.