And beneath the turntable, a single record.
Elias pulled it out. The sleeve was worn soft at the edges, the corners rounded from being handled too many times. The cover art depicted a scorpion poised on a surface of cracked, desolate earth, bathed in a sinister orange glow. Best of Scorpions .
Klaus was a man of iron and silence. A truck driver. A man who believed words were a currency not to be squandered. Elias remembered the back of his father’s head better than his face. best of scorpions album
He remembered 1991. He was eight. The Berlin Wall had fallen, the world was shifting, and Klaus had come home early for once. Elias had been sitting at the kitchen table, playing with toys. Klaus, usually a statue of stoicism, had walked in, pulled his son into the living room, and played this song. He hadn't spoken. He had just sat on the sofa, eyes closed, a bottle of beer resting on his knee, humming the melody. For three minutes and fifty-five seconds, Elias had a father who was present, dreaming of a world that was opening up, a world where a boy from Hanover could be anything.
He set the record on the platter. The house was silent, the only sound the settling of old timber. He placed the needle. And beneath the turntable, a single record
The needle skipped, a jump in the groove caused by a scratch Elias had never noticed before.
When discussing the pantheon of hard rock and heavy metal, few bands have a discography as deep, durable, and divisive as Germany’s Scorpions. With over 110 million records sold and a career spanning six decades, picking their "best" album is a debate that can start a bar fight in Hamburg or Phoenix. Is it the industrial, Uli Jon Roth-led psychedelia of Taken by Force ? The anthemic global breakthrough of Lovedrive ? Or the power-ballad behemoth Crazy World ? The cover art depicted a scorpion poised on
Elias closed his eyes. He realized he wasn't just listening to songs; he was listening to Klaus’s emotional vocabulary. Klaus couldn't say "I'm lonely," so he played Still Loving You . He couldn't say "I'm afraid," so he played No One Like You .
Elias felt a strange tremor in his chest. He remembered the cover. He remembered the fear it used to instill in him as a child—that scorpion, that symbol of something dangerous and wild.