Many fans would argue that Herman Rarebell (affectionately known as ‘Herman ze German’) played with the Scorpions at the peak of their career. Backing up that claim are several platinum and gold records awarded during his tenure with Germany’s biggest rock/metal band. “Rock You Like A Hurricane,” which Rarebell co-wrote, appeared in films and TV shows such as The Interview, Brooklyn Nine-Nine, Stranger Things and ‘The Big Bang Theory. Besides all this, ze German has released a number of solo albums and collaborated with countless musicians. His latest solo effort, released under the moniker Herman Rarebell & Friends, is What About Love, a collection of ’80s cover songs such as “Rock You Like A Hurricane,” “Every Breath You Take” and “I Love Rock ‘n’ Roll.”
Chris Galea: Before we focus on the 1980s, I’d like to take a step further back in time. Which were the bands and musicians that left the biggest mark on you as a youth?
Herman Rarebell: For me, definitely Led Zeppelin. This was my favorite band of all time. Before that I listened to the Yardbirds which later became Led Zeppelin. I was always influenced by British musicians. That was one reason why I made the decision in 1971 to move to England.
In fact it seems that in the early 1970s a lot of musicians from all over Europe settled in London, trying to build a career in music. What was the music scene like in London back then?
Well, the English scene was always of interest to me. The only good rock band we had in Germany at that time were Kraftwerk. But this was never my type of music, for me it was not professional enough and it didn’t rock enough. So I always followed bands like Led Zeppelin. They made me think this is the kind of music I wanted to play. So since there wasn’t anybody like that in Germany, I moved to England.
The first band I had in England was called Vineyard. And Vineyard only played on weekends. They played in schools and student homes, places like that. We each walked away with 30 or 40 pounds each night. This was in London. I got the Vineyard gig through Melody Maker [music magazine] and I played with them to keep myself with my head above the water.
I understand that during your time in London you were playing in a band with a certain David Harris Cooper on guitar and Gary Shea on bass, is that right?
That was also true, but we didn’t even have a name for that band. We just started to write songs together and play together. We got on really well together. Lee Jackson at one time was our bass player, but as you said, then Gary Shea joined, he’s now with Alcatraz.
How important was the London phase for you in learning how to write songs and in mastering your craft as a drummer?
Well, for me it was very important. When I joined the Scorpions on the 18th of May in 1977, they came here [in London] and played at the Marquee Club [famous venue in central London] three, four months earlier and then they made an audition at the Sound Circus. I don’t know if you know the Sound Circus. It’s in Holborn. At the time Michael Schenker already hits in England…”Doctor, Doctor,” “Lights Out’…[with UFO]. One day we met at the Marquee Club and he said to me, “Look, my brother has a band in Germany called the Scorpions. I know their drummer wants to leave. He wants to go back to teaching. Why don’t you go and talk to my brother and offer him your services? I think you would fit in very well in this band.” So I met him first in the Marquee and later we went on to the Speakeasy.
And then he said to me, “Tomorrow we do an audition at the Sound Circus [live venue] in Holborn. Why don’t you come and play?” So then I came, but he didn’t tell me there would be another 50 drummers there all for the audition. So then he stood on stage and he said, “Yeah, we’re going to play three songs with each of you.” Most of those drummers only played one song with them. I was lucky, I played three songs with them. Afterwards they said to me the same thing, you know, thanks for coming. Don’t call us, we’ll call you.
The next morning, Rudolph [Schenker – Scorpions guitarist] called me. He said, “We decided to take you to be our new drummer. Can we come over to you now and pick up your drums?” I said, “Are you crazy?” I said, “I have a girlfriend here, I have to settle things here before I leave to Germany. Do you have work in Germany?” “Yeah, I’ve got plenty of gigs.” To cut a long story short, when I arrived in Germany, there was not one gig. So I’ve given up… “Recording in progress.” Yeah, recording in progress. “Sorry, don’t worry about that.”
So actually you first got to know the guys of the Scorpions in London?
Yes, I first met them in London. I saw them at the Marquee Club, then I went to audition for them the next day at the Sound Circus. I got the gig and about three weeks later, I arrived in Hannover on May the 18th. I won’t forget the date because on that same day Klaus Meine, our singer, he got married. Then a week later, we started to rehearse for the new album, Taken By Force, which started to be recorded on the 16th of August of that same year. But until then it was still with [guitarist] Uli Roth. We still had two directions in the band, the Hendrix direction and obviously the melodic rock direction from Klaus and Rudolph.
And when they said to me, what do you think of the band? I said, I see two bands in the Scorpions. I see a Hendrix band and then I see a band who plays in a direction of Foreigner, melodic eock. If I join you, we should go in one direction, not two ways. And they listened to me. So we became a more melodic type of band.
And of course you recorded a number of successful albums with the Scorpions, especially the album Blackout, which was probably the album which opened most doors for the band.
You’re right. It was our first platinum album in America. I wrote a lot of lyrics on that album. The title track was mine, “Blackout,” the lyrics on there, so on and so on. So for me, “Dynamite” and all those songs. “Arizona,” those are all my lyrics on there.
Before Blackout was released, was there the feeling that you had a great album in your hands?
Yeah, yeah, I did have that feeling, you know. Around the same time, in ’81, we started touring America for the first time and we started in Cleveland. And I remember the first tour, we were the opening band for AC/DC. A year later we were special guests for Def Leppard’s tour. That was all Leber-Krebs [artist management company]. They had also Aerosmith in their roster and Ted Nugent.
So we had a perfect start in the United States. We opened up for all those bands. Most of the time we played big arenas…20,000 seaters. We would start at 7.30, or something like that, and we were not allowed to play longer than 40 minutes.
Around the same time you left the Scorpions, long-time producer Dieter Dirks left them too.
No, it happened much later. We split with Dieter at the end of 1988 simply because the contract with him had run out. And the next producer then was Keith Olsen. Keith Olsen did the next album, Crazy World. And on the album is the fourth song Wind of Change,” which became a huge hit. It was a ballad obviously, but it was not a typical Scorpions song. It was also a political statement. And it came right after we played the Moscow Music Peace Festival in ‘89.
This was about the time when the Berlin Wall was coming down, right?
We played there too, we played there on the 12th and 13th of August 1989. On the 9th of November 1989, the wall came down. I’ll never forget it. I was sitting in a hotel, in the Warwick Hotel in Paris, looking at TV and I suddenly see the wall falling down and I go, ah what’s happening? And then I knew that they had made an agreement at the time, as you know, President Reagan and Gorbachev, they appear in our video of “Wind of Change, shaking hands. The video can be seen on YouTube.”
When I first saw the cover photograph of your forthcoming album What About Love? I thought of the fall of the Berlin Wall. Could you tell me the story behind that photo?
It shows my message to all the fans out there, and also to the world, really. What is the point of hate? Hate is not going to bring us anything. We’re heading towards an atomic war right now if we’re not careful, because we have only idiots around us who can’t wait to push the button, you know.
And maybe music will be the way to bring us all together. Could you tell me how the album’s idea came about?
When I toured in the ‘80s, as you know, we did many tours in America, and I always liked the band Heart and Heart had a huge hit with the song “What About Love?” in the ‘80s. It was, I think, number one for three months. What about love, you know? When I saw three years ago that the war had started in Ukraine and everything, I can see now how we have all changed. Everybody now is full of hate. And I said to myself, we have to remind people again about love.
So then I got in contact also with Howard Lee, who is the original guitar player from Heart. I told him that I would like to make a statement about love, that I think that is very important. And he said, oh, please, let me also be part of this statement. The same thing I was told by Bob Daisley, bass player from Black Sabbath, and then Dann Huff, who is a great session musician, also a great producer, he had played with Michael Jackson and in the song “Here I Go Again” of Whitesnake.
This album was a personal thing for me. Joan Jett, for example, was the opening act for the Scorpions in the 1984 European tour. So every night I would hear the chorus ”I love Rock n’ Roll…” And we did two songs of Heart. We have another one on there, because my girl can sing really well, it’s just strings, you know. And I then had a very good friendship with Robert Palmer. He came to Monaco many times to visit me, and I visited him in Milano, where he lived at that time. So for me, it was an honor to do “Addicted To Love.” We also did many festivals with Foreigner, and I always used to hear the song “I Want To Know What Love Is” then.
So basically, these are songs that were on the radio while you were playing drums with The Scorpions.
Yes, that’s it. It’s about my golden years, too. The ‘80s were my golden years. When we played the Moscow Music Peace Festival, we got everybody in Russia convinced it’s better to be together than being apart and each making wars against each other. This was the message then, and we wanted, you know, everybody was convinced, yeah, it makes no sense to go back into the Cold War, which we had there.
I believe recordings of that festival were used in the Scorpions’ World Wide Live album, right?
Yes, and you can see the whole thing on YouTube. There was Jon Bon Jovi, Mötley Crüe from the States, Ozzy Osbourne, from Russia there was Gorky Park, it was us from Germany, and Cinderella also played there. I think also Skid Row were there, with Sebastian Bach. So I think there was a very strong bill with a very strong message, and we were all on the same line. I don’t know if it’s even possible today to do something like that again.
It’s a shame that peace didn’t last very long in Russia.
Yeah, for me it was a big disappointment, because we really hoped that we can change something with music. But we did make change, you know, at least in the language of music made the people as crazy as in America or in England, in a rock concert. When I saw the soldiers, the thousands of soldiers there who formed human shields so people don’t get too crazy, and I saw the same soldiers throwing their heads in the air and dancing and singing along our music as Russians. I knew then that it wouldn’t be long before they also join the West and the capitalist way and live our way of life, you know, and that was exactly what happened.
So my album is a tribute to the ‘80s, because I think it was the best time for music. We had the strongest songs, the strongest hits, all those songs you can still play in 100 years’ time. A song like “I Want To Know What Love Is,” for example, is the best hymn I ever heard from any band. And also, “What About Love?” is a great ballad and I took also a drum song in my album, since I’m a drummer, I said to myself, I have to put in “In The Air Tonight’ [by Phil Collins]. You remember the drum fill? Yes, I had to do that. In fact I started the album with this song. What is your favorite song on the album?
Probably the one of Joan Jett. I mean, that song brings back many happy memories for me.
Oh, yeah, for me too. And I’m going to play this song, when I play a show, a live show, I’m going to have this as my last song in the setlist.
So you are planning some live shows to promote the album?
Well, it depends. If any of those songs is a hit again, yes. If I don’t have a hit, I’m not going to go out. For what? To play for 100 people? No….it would be a waste of time. Hopefully it will all go well. I have enough hits anyway, so don’t worry.
Speaking about live shows, I know you rejoined the Scorpions in 2006 for the Wacken Festival. What was that like? And are you still in contact with the band, apart from Michael Schenker?
Yeah, Michael and me, we go back many years. We played together for six years from 2010 to 2016 in his band. When they fired James Kottak, I wrote an e-mail to Klaus, to Rudolf and to Matthias [Jabs, Scorpions bassist] and I said how about we get back together again, do some work again? Not even an answer, nothing. I thought that was very rude. And I said to myself, okay, that means a definite no, you know, so fuck you. It’s a shame, you know. Not a shame, it’s dumb.
I’m sure the fans would have loved to see you back in the Scorpions.
Not only that. When I was in the band, the band had hits. I wrote a lot of beautiful lyrics, over 35 songs. Also the producer, Dieter Dirks, if you want to make an album like Blackout, what they said about the last album, I said to Rudolf, this has nothing to do with Blackout. Blackout is a killer album. Your album is a piece of shit, you know. Why can’t you do this? Why don’t you get me back in the band and Dieter Dirks as a producer? Then I’ll make you another Blackout album.
Herman, what are your plans for the future?
At the moment, I have no specific plans. I will see how this goes. I will promote it on all the channels, with people like you. Then I know there’s, let’s say, a million or two million people waiting for me out there. But if nobody makes a reaction, then for me there’s no point to go out. What for? If I cannot convince the people with my album, I’m not going to convince them live.
What about original material? Are you writing your own music?
I have about 200 songs lying in my wardrobe here, which I have still to record. They’re all written, the lyrics are written, the music is written. And I will see if this album is a success, then it makes sense to make the next album. But I want to know how many of my fans are still out there, how many of them are still alive, what reaction they have to this album.
I can come up with the next album, with my own songs again. But this time it was a thank you to the ‘80s, a thank you to the bands of the ‘80s who created this music, and a thank you also to my great Creator for letting me live this life in the ‘80s with all those great bands and having played with them in many festivals. And that’s why I picked these songs, because they have a personal meaning. It was the best time for me, the music in the ‘80s, I have to tell you.
(interview published April 9, 2025)
Watch Herman Rarebell & Friends – “Love Is A Battlefield” Video
