Scorpions Forced to Cancel Third Concert Due to Klaus Meine’s Illness
It sucks whenever a band needs to cancel anything, but particularly their performances. I mean, duh. Hard rocks OGs Scorpions have already had to do that twice and, unfortunately, they’ve had to do it again.
The band was forced to nix their set in Quito, Ecuador at the Estadio Olímpico Atahualpa last night (Saturday, May 3). Based on a post the band made on their social media, they had to cancel because their vocalist Klaus Meine, who is approaching his 77th birthday this month, “has still not recovered from the virus that forced the recent Buenos Aires [April 26] and Bogota [April 30] cancellations for SCORPIONS and was diagnosed with a bacterial bronchitis which caused his unfortunately inability to sing.”
“The band send their deepest apologies to all their loyal fans in Ecuador and are again extremely disappointed not to be able to play in one of their favourite countries. They’ll make every effort to return to Ecuador and South America in the future.”
Because of the musician’s growing ages, it makes sense why fans may be worried about the band retiring sometime soon. Though they haven’t really bridged that concern in recent months, Meine did address it back in 2022 during an interview with Jorge Botas of Portugal’s Metal Global:
“No, we scratched that word [retirement] out of our [vocabulary],” he said. “It’s not there. We don’t think about it and we don’t talk about it and we take it as it comes.
“We’re just growing older and we do what we do and we hope our fans enjoy it as much as we do,” Klaus added. “But who would have thought we’re still around after celebrating 50 years of being recording artists — our first album came out in 1972 and now ‘Rock Believer’ looks like it hits the big time with the fans and so many positive reviews from all over the world. And after all these years, who would have thought? And it’s a wonderful thing.
“But all we know is [that] the road ahead is way shorter than what’s behind us. And we never take it for granted —we never take success for granted. We work hard on what we do because we still love it and we still enjoy it. But it’s what it is. And I think every artist knows what I’m talking about, because to go out there, play a great show for the fans and not let ’em down, it takes a lot of preparation, takes a lot of work. And being the singer, you try to make sure your pipes are in a good condition.
“It’s a lot of things, and we don’t know what the future will bring. Take a look at the next corner, and you never know what’s going on. But right now, life is good. We have a great new album out there. And we have a lot of fun. We enjoy it.”
Here’s to you, Klaus. We hope you get better soon and hit the ground running!
