Scorpions lead singer Klaus Meine has elaborated on his decision to alter the lyrics to “Wind Of Change,” an anti-war anthem the West German rock band put out after performing at 1989’s Moscow Music Peace Festival. Speaking to Ukraine’s TCH, Meine recently said, “Since the release of the [new Scorpions] album [Rock Believer] in February, we were preparing a new show, a new set. We were booked for a residency in Las Vegas. I thought, ‘This is not the time to romanticize Russia with lyrics like, ‘Follow the Moskva / Down to Gorky Park.” And I wanted to make a statement that we support the Ukraine in this very difficult situation.”

Meine continued:

When I wrote [“Wind Of Change”], it was about the time when the Scorpions went for the first time to the Soviet Union back in ’88 when we played 10 shows in Leningrad after all those years living in the shadow of the Berlin Wall, living with the Iron Curtain, to see how we have the chance with music to build bridges and really come together. So it was so very inspired by this moment of hope, hoping for a more peaceful world and just joining together into a peaceful future. And so that was the expression. And so many years later now, I think the song has lost the meaning of being a peace anthem, being a song of hope. But I had to change those lyrics, like I said.

In May 2020, an eight-part podcast called “Wind Of Change” (launched by New Yorker investigative journalist Patrick Radden Keefe) explored whether the CIA actually wrote the 1990 hit song. As of December 2020, it’s being adapted into a TV show to stream on Hulu.