Scorpions changed lyrics to ‘Wind Of Change’ because it “romanticised Russia”
Die Zeit. “It simply isn’t right to romanticise Russia with lyrics like: ‘I follow the Moskva/ Down to Gorky Park…Let your balalaika sing’“.The band have changed the lyrics to: “Now listen to my heart/ It says Ukrainia/ Waiting for the wind to change,” which are projected on a screen behind the band as they perform.Released in 1991, the perestroika power ballad is the German hard rockers’ most famous song; it was voted song of the 20th century by viewers of the public broadcaster ZDF in 2005.Even though the song was released over a year after the fall of the Berlin Wall, it is widely remembered as the soundtrack to the era of economic and social changes in the former Soviet Union that heralded the end of the cold war.Meine said he composed the words on September 3 and 4, 1989, a month after Scorpions performed at the Moscow Music Peace festival.Elsewhere in the interview with Die Zeit, Meine discussed his friendship with Hanoverian ex-chancellor turned Russian gas lobbyist Gerhard Schröder, whose fifth wedding party he attended in 2018.“I haven’t spoken with Gerhard Schröder for a while,” Meine said.