Scorpions – Rock You Like A Hurricane

The Guitar Eric Clapton Couldn’t Buy

Released on January 30, 1984, “Rock You Like a Hurricane” became the German hard rockers’ signature song and their biggest American hit up to that point, peaking at number 25 on the Billboard Hot 100 in June. What fans don’t know is that Rudolf Schenker recorded that iconic riff on a 1958 Gibson Flying V he’d been chasing for years, a guitar that had already turned down an offer from Eric Clapton himself. The song’s success was immediate, with MTV putting it into heavy rotation and the track becoming the driving force behind Love at First Sting reaching number six on the Billboard 200.

In the UK, the single peaked at number 52 in August 1984, a respectable showing considering the fierce competition among rock bands at the time. The song hit number 26 in Canada and number 28 in New Zealand, proving the Scorpions had truly arrived as an international force. “Rock You Like a Hurricane” propelled Love at First Sting to double-platinum status by the end of 1984, eventually reaching triple-platinum by 1995. It was competing for airtime with Van Halen’s “Jump” and Twisted Sister’s “We’re Not Gonna Take It,” yet managed to carve out its own permanent space in rock history.

The song went through nine rewrites before it was ready to record. Rudolf Schenker had the music, including a chorus melody he could only express as sounds, not words, singing something like “na na na na” for what would become “rock you like a.” Klaus Meine struggled with the verses, ultimately enlisting drummer Herman Rarebell to help craft those provocative lines. Schenker bought the 1958 Flying V from Alex Conti, guitarist in the German band Lake, after years of persistence. Conti had already refused Clapton’s offer, but eventually relented to Schenker’s repeated requests. Of the five 1958 Flying Vs Schenker eventually collected, that original remains the best-sounding, though far too valuable to risk on tour.

The band recorded at Dierks Studios in Stommeln, West Germany, after a dramatic restart of the entire album. Initial sessions had taken place at Polar Studios in Stockholm with ex-Rainbow members Jimmy Bain on bass and Bobby Rondinelli on drums, filling in for exhausted regular members Francis Buchholz and Rarebell. But after playing a triumphant show at the 1983 US Festival in California, co-headlining with Van Halen, the recharged Buchholz and Rarebell convinced the band to scrap everything and start fresh. Producer Dieter Dierks captured Schenker’s Flying V through a Marshall amp, creating one of the most recognizable riffs of the decade. The album became one of the first digitally recorded heavy metal records, though Schenker later admitted he regretted the clinical sound, missing the warmth of analog tape.

“Rock You Like a Hurricane” was the lead single from Love at First Sting, the Scorpions’ ninth studio album released in February 1984 in the US and March 1984 in the UK on Mercury and Harvest Records respectively. The album also spawned the power ballad “Still Loving You” and “Big City Nights,” three songs that would define the band’s legacy. It arrived two years after Blackout had given them their first US top 10 album, setting a high bar the band felt determined to surpass. Klaus Meine had recently recovered from vocal cord surgery that threatened his career, making the album’s success even sweeter for the reunited lineup.

The Scorpions themselves have re-recorded the song three times. “Hurricane 2000” appeared on Moment of Glory with the Berlin Philharmonic Orchestra backing the track, while an acoustic version titled “Hurricane 2001” followed on Acoustica. A 2011 version on the album Comeblack found new life in commercials for Fiber One cookies and in films like Knight and Day, The Angry Birds Movie, and TV shows including The Simpsons, Stranger Things, and The Big Bang Theory. In 2002, the Carolina Hurricanes hockey team adopted it as their intro music, with mascot Stormy planting a storm warning flag into the ice at PNC Arena.

Schenker’s love for the song hasn’t diminished four decades later. You never lose the excitement if you play from your heart as a musician, he said in a recent interview. The track ranked 18th on VH1’s list of greatest hard rock songs and fourth best riff of the 1980s, cementing its place as the Platonic ideal of eighties metal: a headbanging-worthy repeating riff, gigantic drums, a scorching solo, and that indelible refrain that still gets crowds singing forty years on.