“The record company said, ‘You are completely out of your mind!’ Which I was!”: Scorpions’ hit song Rock You Like A Hurricane originally had a different title, and it was definitely NSFW

Ex-Scorpions drummer Herman Rarebell reveals the title he originally had in mind for their 1984 classic Rock You Like A Hurricane

Scorpions are one of rock’s most enduring bands. Classic late 70s/early 80s albums such as Lovedrive, Animal Magnetism and Blackout turned them into one of Germany’s most successful musical exports, but their elevation to music’s big league came with 1984’s Love At First Sting, thanks in a large part to hit single Rock You Like A Hurricane.

Except it could have been very different. In a brand new interview in the latest issue of Classic Rock about the making of Love At First Sting, former Scorpions drummer Herman Rarebell, who co-wrote Rock You Like A Hurricane’s lyrics with singer Klaus Meine, reveals that he had a very different title in mind – one that would have guaranteed zero airplay on radio or MTV.

Rarebell recalls how the slicker, more melodic approach of the Love At First Sting album was a result of the band’s growing success in the US. “It was touring with bands like Foreigner and Aerosmith and Journey that taught us,” Rarebell tells Classic Rock. “We saw how they wrote, and we learned fast.”

In the same interview, Scorpions guitarist Rudolf Schenker recalls writing the propulsive riff for Rock You Like A Hurricane during the tour for previous album Blackout, while it was down to Rarebell and Meine to come up with a set of lyrics to match.

“Klaus and Herman wrote the lyrics together,” says Schenker. “It was Klaus’s very romantic, harmonic mind and Herman’s very dirty mind.”

It was Rarebell who came up with such less-than-wholesome lines as “It’s early morning, the sun comes out/Last night was shaking and pretty loud” and “The bitch is hungry, she needs to tell/So give her inches and feed her well.” He tells Classic Rock that the lyrics were nothing if not autobiographical.