SCORPIONS — Lonesome Crow (review)

Album · 1972 · Proto-Metal

2.5/5 · 2013-01-22
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“Rock You Like a Hurricane” and the “Love at First Sting” album were all the rage among many guys in my junior high school the year I started attending – 1984. A lot of kids had “Blackout” too. Ever the weirdo, I went out and bought “Virgin Killer” and then “Lonesome Crow.” Though “Virgin Killer” still captured that hard rocking essence of the Scorpions, “Lonesome Crow” was something else altogether. It was just plain weird. There were no power chords forming bombastic riffs. There was no “Rock You Like a Hurricane”, no “Polar Nights”, not even anything near Black Sabbath’s “Iron Man”from the same period. There was plenty of distorted guitar but mostly used just for soloing. This could hardly be the same band.

Indeed it wasn’t. This was the first line-up to be on a Scorpions record, a line-up that would break up after the tour as their lead guitarist, Michael Schenker, would accept an invitation to join UFO. The Scorpions were finished after one album. Brother Rudolf Schenker would go speak to friend Uli Jon Roth about joining his band, Dawn Road, and Uli accepted under the condition that Scorpions vocalist Klaus Meine would join too. Then it was decided that since the Scorpions had released an album and were more known, Dawn Road would change its name to Scorpions. Ta-da! The new Scorpions was born.

But let’s get back to the Michael Schenker version of the band. As I said, I had this in junior high school way back in 1984/5 and it was honestly a stretch for me to find anything about this album I liked. “Fly to the Rainbow” at least had “Speedy’s Coming” and “Drifting Sun”, but this? I concluded that I kind of liked “I’m Going Mad” and “In Search of Peace of Mind”. The latter had some pretty acoustic guitar and a haunting conclusion with some distortion on the guitar. There were some parts of the lengthy “Lonesome Crow” solo I liked. The rest of the album I forgot about.

Then in 2012 I became insanely interested in prog rock and as I discovered that more and more albums in my CD collection fit the description of prog, I thought about “Lonesome Crow”. Wasn’t that prog? I bought the CD (the cassette long ago having been dumped off at the Salvation Army store) and let it play for my enlightened ears. Surely, this was German prog-rock. The percussion and drumming is very creative throughout, often taking a very jazzy approach. The album begins with the percussion intro to “I’m Going Mad” and right away you can hear this is no ordinary “metal” album. Tracks like “It All Depends” and “Action Time” have some wonderful percussive work and definitely from a jazz background.

The bass also figures prominently on most tracks. Notice the jaunty jazzy feel to parts of the title track, as well as throughout the album. These early songs seem to blend and cross over between serious rock and jazz.

Of course the main feature and raison d’etre of the album is Michael Schenker’s guitar playing. Most of the tracks seem like they are just a vehicle supporting these monster-attack solos that he pumps out. There will be nothing harsh or angular to a song until a wild distorted guitar solo erupts forth. Certainly he established himself as a guitar god early on with this album. The title track especially gives him a chance to show his rock, blues, and jazz abilities, as well as crazy cosmic guitar effects. There’s also a very cool part where Mr. Schenker plays his guitar so that it sounds like a cello (one of those parts I loved even at 13 years of age).

Fans of the Matthias Jabs era scorpions will most likely find this a hard one to swallow and even those who enjoy the Uli Jon Roth era might raise an eyebrow or two after the first couple of tracks. But again, this is more like progressive rock of the early seventies than any kind of traditional metal. For its uniqueness and to the curious I recommend at least checking it out. Since re-acquiring it last year (2012) it has remained in my iPhone and occasionally specific tracks are selected and played.