68. Scorpions / Animal Magnetism. 1980. 3/5.

It is always a challenge to follow up an album that has done particularly well on the charts and also is a massive hit with the fans. It doesn’t matter how long you have been around for as an artist or a band, or how many albums you already have in the bank in that regard, if you produce an album that captures the imagination of the music listening public, you know they are going to expect more of the same when it comes to your next release.
This is the quandary that faced Scorpions in 1980, after the release and tour that followed for their album “Lovedrive”. Though long time guitarist Uli Jon Roth had left the band prior to its composition, the return of the prodigal son Michael Schenker after his stint with UFO had ensured that it received peak promotion, and along with Roth’s replacement Matthias Jabs the band had produced an album full of metal anthems and power ballads that found an audience in every genre. Of course, with Michael Schenker around you just know there are going to be problems that come with him, and this proved true again. For the tour following the release of the album, Michael was once again made a full member of the band, which required Scorpions to let Jabs go, something that didn’t sit well with anyone. Of course, with Michael being... Michael, it wasn’t long before his attitude and eccentricities caught up with him and the band, and less than two months into the tour Schenker had quit the band. Again. This forced the hand of the band, who then had to come back to Jabs on their knees and ask him to come back to the band permanently. Thankfully for everyone involved he agreed and has been with the band since then until the present day.
The other problem that was a minor issue at this point in time but would soon become a greater one was Klaus Meine’s vocal chords. He had begun to experience some soreness during the writing and recording process for this album but nothing that was serious enough to cause issues. That was to come after the tour to promote this album, when Meine had to undergo surgery on his vocal chords during the sessions for the following album. Here, for the album that would become “Animal Magnetism” there were only slight niggles that suggested anything was wrong. And when you listen to the album, you certainly can’t hear anything that might suggest there was a problem.

For this album, Rudolph Schenker composed almost all of the music, with only two songs having other composers of the songs. The Lyrics however were shared between Meine and drummer Herman Rarebell, and their fairly typical writing tropes stick hard to the ‘girl and boy’ thematic that pushes the majority of Scorpions material in this decade.
“Make It Real” is just the perfect atypical Scorpions track, with that beautiful lead guitar opening the song from Matthias, and Klaus coming into the verse with Rudy and Matthias rhythm riff underneath, all held together with that lovely bassline from Francis Buchholtz and Herman’s solid as ever drum beat. Everything that makes Scorpions the band they are can be found on this opening track. “Don’t Make No Promises (Your Body Can’t Keep)” opens with a riff that seems very familiar and does seem to have extremely similar connotations to a song from the previous album “Another Piece of Meat”. Some of the lyric lines even get close to the mark in that way. It has always been a little off-putting, because that other song always comes into your head when you are listening to this one because of that opening riff. It’s interesting, because Matthias write the music for this song, while Rudolph did the music for “Another Piece of Meat”. Coincidence? Probably. But surely, they must have noticed the similarity when they were recording it? “Hold Me Tight” pulls back into a harder mid-tempo with the start-stop guitar riff and emphasis on the drum beat that also has a similar Scorpions template to it. It is at a tempo and riff stage that makes it very reminiscent of the way metal devolved in the 1990’s, here however with a lighter feel. It’s an interesting song when compared to what happened 15 years down the track. This is followed by “Twentieth Century Man” which is either a very weak track or one where the band just got lazy. The rhythm doesn’t excite, the riff throughout sticks to the same and Klaus sings in an almost monotonal way just over the riff, something he doesn’t do often. There is no energy coming through here, and it feels and sounds like filler.
“Lady Starlight” is the first power ballad of the album, utilsing a full range of strings including violins, and woodwind such as the oboe and French horns, along with the double bass. It’s a true production beautifully performed vocally from Klaus, and it isn't until the four minute mark of the song that the guitar and drums make their belated arrival. It is an interesting segue from the band, who had always mixed their hard rock tracks with their softer ballad tracks on albums reasonably seamlessly, but here we are pushing the boundaries once more by introducing these other instrumentalists into the framework of the song. It is the only song on the album that it occurs, and it closes side one of the album in a quiet and thoughtful way. Depending on your music preference.
On the other hand, the song that sounds like it should be the power ballad, “Falling in Love”, is actually one of the hardest songs on the album, with the return of the basic Scorpions sound including the rhythm, the great guitars and Klaus’s directed and upbeat vocals. The opening riff sounds like a Def Leppard song of the same era, and the resulting energy pushes this song to a better level than much of the first half of the album. It’s interesting that Herman Rarebell is credited solely as the only writer of this track, and suggests some more input into the music of other songs from him may have been warranted. “Only a Man” is Herman’s lyrical predecessor to “Rock You Like a Hurricane”, with lines such as “Well it’s hard to say no when you’ve done a good show and they all want you to celebrate, well I try to refuse, try to make some excuse, but at this point it’s mostly too late”. Aahh, the life of the rock star. Musically it’s takes a bit to get going but eventually it gets into the track and it is bouncy enough to keep you entertained.
The absolute standout song on this album is “The Zoo”, one that has rarely left live set lists since this album was released. It is an unusual one for the Scorpions, as the tempo is backroom slow, hardly getting upwards through the whole song. What it does possess is energy throughout, in both vocals and music. The rhythm of bass and drums is the standing pylon of the song, the base of the track that stands alone at times and then at others as the glue that holds it together. Rudolph’s rhythm guitar riff bangs that up a notch, and Matthias’s lovely guitar licks add the punctuation point. And Klaus’s vocals are supreme, enunciating with the right emphasis and passion as the song requires, and Matthias’s voice box is an added bonus. The tempo mirrors the lyrics of the song, of walking along the streets of the metaphorical zoo. It is still just brilliant to this day.
“Animal Magnetism” is the album closer, and one of the strangest Scorpions songs ever recorded, in my humble opinion. It actually harks back to their earlier albums, very late 1960’s progressive rock, something you need to be using LSD for to get the full range of music and colours being emitted by the track. The lyrics are certainly channelling the flower power era of free love, and it is an interesting call back to that time, a decade earlier than the album being produced here. It ends the album on a strange note, one that is fine once you are familiar with the album itself, but a strange choice if you are coming in for the first time.

For those who are not up to date with my Scorpions discovery history, the first album I ever had of theirs was a taped copy of “World Wide Live” which came my way from my heavy metal music dealer back in 1986. I used to play that to death. Then when I began university in 1988 and began my regular Wednesday afternoon pilgrimage to Illawarra Books & Records, I bought my first two Scorpions albums which were “Lovedrive” and “Love at First Sting”. And from there the Scorpions obsession began in earnest. The collection of the remaining of their albums then became a process over a number of years. In the main that didn’t occur until the turn of the century. Like most people I knew songs from that awesome live album and various best of’s that were floating around, but actually acquiring a copy of “Animal Magnetism” didn’t occur until 2002, at a time when there was a little more money in the purse for such things. Not much more, mind you.
I know when I first listened to the album, I found it average. Having been raised on those three 80’s albums along with “Blackout”, every new Scorpions album I picked up had a lot to live up to. Judging their catalogue against those three studio albums and the live album is a harsh call. And yet, that’s what this album had to compete against, and for me it couldn’t do that. Yes, there are some good songs here, and some that were familiar to me from the outset, but overall, as album I felt this was not in the same class. So I gave it a listen for a time, and then it went back to the shelves. In the years since when I have put it on, not much had changed. It was okay, I listened to it without any qualms, and then moved onto whatever the next thing I chose to listen to.
Here again though, it has returned to my rotation, this time the second-hand vinyl copy I have picked up in recent times as I rebuild my vinyl collection. And this time, it was first just played in the background at work, before I brought out my discerning ear over the last couple of days to pick up how I really feel about it now, some 45 years after its release. And to be fair I think I have enjoyed it more than I remember doing so in the past. It is an album that is stuck between arguably the best two Scorpions albums released in “Lovedrive” and “Blackout”, and so comparatively it is up against it. For me, the main problem it faces is the somewhat boring and perhaps averageness of songs such as “Twentieth Century Man” and “Only a Man”, and the different shades offered by “Lady Starlight” and the title track “Animal Magnetism”. “Make It Real” and “The Zoo” are so far in front of every other song on the album that it feels unbalanced in that respect. When listening to the album on vinyl, with a designated halfway point where it needs to be turned over to continue, to me there is no stronger half of the album, both have their very strong songs and then a couple that let them down. It is hard to pinpoint why this is the case on this album, but from my perspective not on the preceding or following albums. Perhaps it is just personal preference, and this one just doesn’t have the strength of song I am looking for when it comes to this band.
There are 19 studio albums in the Scorpions discography, and while the album releases may have slowed down over the years the band has not. Of those 19 albums, I rank this as #8, which I guess is still not terrible, despite my obvious reservations on parts of this album.
Scorpions went on from this point to absolutely dominate the 1980’s decade, with three further studio albums that brought the band its highest profile of its career. And while this album made small impacts on charts around the world, their next album took them to a whole new level.