Wind of Change" - The Scorpions, 1989 (rock)
I follow the Moskva
Down to Gorky Park
Listening to the wind of change
An August summer night
Soldiers passing by
Listening to the wind of change
The world is closing in
Did you ever think
That we could be so close, like brothers
The future's in the air
I can feel it everywhere
Blowing with the wind of change
Take me to the magic of the moment
On a glory night
Where the children of tomorrow dream away
in the wind of change
Walking down the street
Distant memories
Are buried in the past forever
I folow the Moskva
Down to Gorky Park
Listening to the wind of change
Take me to the magic of the moment
On a glory night
Where the children of tomorrow share their dreams
With you and me
Take me to the magic of the moment
On a glory night
Where the children of tomorrow dream away
in the wind of change
The wind of change
Blows straight into the face of time
Like a stormwind that will ring the freedom bell
For peace of mind
Let your balalaika sing
What my guitar wants to say
The Meine brothers, whom you and I know as a couple of serious guitar shredders who hail from Germany (aka The Scorpions), began writing this song in 1989 after a visit to Moscow. They were actually the first hard rock band ever to play in Russia. They returned the following year to play the Moscow Music Peace Festival. It was then that the words to this song were written. They were inspired by the site of thousands of Russians cheering them on, even though they were German. Lead singer Klaus Meine is quoted as saying, "Everyone was there: the Red Army, journalists, musicians from Germany, from America, from Russia - the whole world on one boat. It was like a vision; everyone was talking the same language. It was a very positive vibe. That night was the basic inspiration for Wind Of Change."
It was the same year this song was written that the world changed forever. Modern history will record that in late summer of 1989, Communist Europe ceased to be. "Wind of Change" rose to be the unofficial theme song of the dismantling of the Berlin Wall, late in the summer of 1989.
The Berlin Wall was erected in 1961 and separated two German states for 28 years. West Berlin was free. East Berlin was not. The Wall was over 96 miles long and was actually two walls back to back. In 1975, the final modifications to The Wall were added, constructed from 45,000 sections of reinforced concrete each 12 feet high and 4 feet thick. It had 116 watchtowers, 20 bunkers, barbed wire, canine patrols, fakir beds (beds of nails under balconies) and anti-vehicle trenches that guarded a "no man's land"...the death strip area in between the two walls. It was paved with raked gravel, which made it easy to spot foot prints.
When the border between East and West Berlin was officially closed at midnight on August 13, 1961. East Berlin was controlled by Josef Stalin and became a socialist state. Families were abruptly separated. People who commuted to work from East to West were instantly either homeless or without employment. At least 136 people are confirmed killed trying to escape from East to West Berlin (but there were probably many, many more "unconfirmed"), and countless documented and undocumented desperate successful and failed escape attempts.
Ironically, the collectiveness The Scorpions (and everyone else) experienced at the Moscow Music Peace Festival would not end when the Music Peace Festival ended. "Wind of Change" celebrated the political shift in Eastern Europe. Although "Winds of Change" wasn't written specifically about the Berlin Wall, the feelings of the world and the lyrics of the Meines was somewhat of poetic foreshadowing. The Berlin Wall was an icon of the rule of tyranny and poverty behind the Iron Curtain, and it was one of the largest, most real, tangible, material objects that smacked the face of humanity and said that the Cold War was real...and it was so much more than simple politics. When the Berlin Wall came down, it signalled the beginning of total collapse of the Iron Curtain in Europe, which would trickle all the way up to the very hub of communism: Mother Russia. The Cold War, which had gripped the world and glued us to the edge of our seats for five decades, was finally over.
In 2005, viewers of the German television network ZDF chose "Wind of Change" as song of the century. It is the highest ever selling song in Germany, and is frequently played with footage of the Wall coming down. This song is also widely known in Germany as the song of German reunification (and the fall of communism in Eastern Europe, generally), even though it only rose to popularity two years after.
A key to some of the lyrics:
Moskva - the name of a river that runs through Moscow
Gorky Park - an amusement park in Moscow
balalaika - a musical instrument of Russian origin that is fretted and has three strings and looks an awful lot like a Gibson Flying V guitar.
"Wind of Change" is a song by the German rock band Scorpions, recorded for their eleventh studio album, Crazy World (1990). The song was composed and written by the band's lead singer Klaus Meine and produced by Keith Olsen and the band. It was released as the album's third single in January 1991 and became a worldwide hit, just after the failed coup that would eventually lead to the collapse of the Soviet Communist regime. The song topped the charts in Germany and across Europe and hit number four in the United States and number two in the United Kingdom. It later appeared on the band's 1995 live album Live Bites, their 2000 album with the Berlin Philharmonic Orchestra, Moment of Glory, and on their 2001 unplugged album Acoustica. With estimated sales of 14 million copies sold worldwide, "Wind of Change" is one of the best-selling singles of all time. It holds the record for the best-selling single by a German artist.
The band presented a gold record of the single to Mikhail Gorbachev in 1991. As of September 2015 the video for “Wind of Change” has been viewed more than 215 million times on YouTube to date. VEVO meticulously recorded the view requests and certified them. With this, the Scorpions are the first German band cracking the 100 million click mark.
Background and writing
The lyrics celebrate glasnost in the USSR, the end of the Cold War, and speaks of hope at a time when tense conditions had arisen due to the fall of Communist-run governments among Eastern Bloc nations beginning in 1989.
The Scorpions were inspired to write the song on a visit to Moscow in 1989 and the opening lines refer to the city's landmarks:
The Moskva is the name of the river that runs through Moscow (both the city and the river are named identically in Russian), and Gorky Park is an urban park in Moscow named after the writer Maxim Gorky.
The song also contains a reference to the balalaika, which is a Russian string instrument somewhat like a guitar. The balalaika is mentioned in the following verse:
Composition
"Wind of Change" opens with a clean guitar intro played by Matthias Jabs, which is played alongside Klaus Meine's famous whistle. The song's guitar solo is played by Rudolf Schenker.
Other versions
The band also recorded a Russian-language version of the song, under the title "Ветер перемен" ("Veter Peremen") and a Spanish version called "Vientos de Cambio".
Legacy
In 2005, viewers of the German television network ZDF chose this song as the song of the century. It is the highest selling song ever in Germany, reportedly selling over 6 million copies in that country alone, and is frequently played on television shows presenting video footage of the fall of the Berlin Wall. In Germany, it is remembered as the song of German reunification and a message of hope.
Uses of the song
- Plays in a scene from the 2010 movie Gentlemen Broncos, when main character Benjamin Purvis walks out of a bookshop with his date.
- Popular UK football show Soccer AM uses "Wind of Change" as its tribute to UK troops overseas.
- It also features in the video game SingStar Rocks! and has been added as a downloadable content from the SingStore.
- The song was featured in the episode "Chuck Versus the Seduction Impossible" of the TV show Chuck.
- In series 15, episode 2 of Top Gear, the song can be heard during the introduction of The Stig's "German cousin".
- In the independent film In Search of a Midnight Kiss (distributed by IFC in summer 2008), writer/director Alex Holdridge has characters in the film sing an impromptu version of "Wind of Change" as the movie concludes in celebration of the main character's changing fortune, and as the credits start to roll. Austin, Texas-based rock band Sybil performs a cover of the song.
- The song was used in the Berlin Wall trailer for Call of Duty: Black Ops (2010) in the "First Strike" DLC.
- Hong Kong pop singer Alan Tam included a Cantonese version of the song called "再等幾天" (English: "Wait a few More Days") in his 1992 albumLover.
- Plays at the end of the 2014 film The Interview.
- A version was played on the church bells of the Oude Kerk in Amsterdam, Netherlands as part of the project 'Recording Heaven' by the artists Roos Blogg and Maia Lyon Daw in 2009.[7]
- The song were also used during before the warm up sessions on A State Of Trance Festival 2003.
- David Lemieux used it as his entrance song in his boxing match to Gennady Golovkin on pay per view at Madison Square Garden October 17, 2015.
- It is played at the end of a sketch about the social disintegration of the suburb of 'Cowsick' in the TV series Brass Eye.
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Charts and sales
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