Scorpions
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50 free Scorpions trivia questions with answers — music quiz, new questions added Oct 2026.
Scorpions have been making records for more than half a century, long enough to go from a school band in West Germany to one of the best-selling hard rock acts in the world. Along the way they wrote a ballad that became the soundtrack to the end of the Cold War, filled arenas across America in the 1980s and played behind the Iron Curtain before most Western bands were allowed in. This quiz covers the whole story: the founding Schenker brothers and the players who came and went, the classic run of albums from Lovedrive to Love at First Sting, the cover art that kept getting pulled from shops, and the strange afterlife of Wind of Change in politics, podcasts and video games. It is written for anyone who likes the band, from casual listeners who know the big singles to fans who can name every drummer. Expect a mix of easy openers, tougher album questions and a few deep cuts from the early years.
30 of 50 questions with answers and explanations. Play the quiz
Q 01A 2020 podcast investigated a rumour that which spy agency secretly wrote the Scorpions ballad Wind of Change?
CIA
CIA authorship was a rumour said to have come from inside the agency itself, and the band's singer called the idea entertaining but not true at all.
Q 02Wind of Change, the Scorpions' biggest hit, opens with the band's singer doing what over a clean guitar?
Whistling
Whistling carries the melody before a word is sung, on a single that went on to sell an estimated 14 million copies, the most by any German act.
Q 03Which leader received Scorpions at the Kremlin in 1991, when the band handed over royalties from Wind of Change?
Mikhail Gorbachev
Mikhail Gorbachev was handed $70,000 of the single's royalties, which Soviet news reports said would go to children's hospitals.
Q 04A complaint from which American retailer led to a 'clean' band-photo cover for the Scorpions album Love at First Sting?
Walmart
Walmart objected only once the album was on sale, although the label had shown the original artwork to retailers beforehand without any concerns.
Q 05Scorpions, the band Rudolf Schenker started in 1965, come from which northern German city?
Hanover
Hanover hosted the band's 60th anniversary concert in 2025, a stadium show billed as a homecoming with Alice Cooper and Judas Priest as guests.
Q 06Which singer, a member since 1969, has appeared on every Scorpions album alongside founder Rudolf Schenker?
Klaus Meine
Klaus Meine also writes most of the band's words; in 1981 a doctor advised him to find another profession before two vocal cord operations saved his voice.
Q 07Which orchestra joined Scorpions for the 2000 album Moment of Glory, a year after Metallica's symphonic S&M?
Berlin Philharmonic
The Berlin Philharmonic had first approached the band with the idea in 1995, long before critics accused Scorpions of copying Metallica.
Q 08Drummer Mikkey Dee joined Scorpions in 2016 after more than two decades behind the kit in which British band?
Motörhead
Motörhead disbanded when Lemmy died in December 2015, and within months Dee was filling in on a Scorpions tour of North America.
Q 09Which Scorpions single from 1984 became intro music for the NHL team based in Raleigh, North Carolina?
Rock You Like a Hurricane
Rock You Like a Hurricane became the song the Carolina Hurricanes take the ice to at home games, having reached number 25 on the Billboard Hot 100 in 1984.
Q 10Which country took the place of Moscow's landmarks when Scorpions rewrote the opening of Wind of Change?
Ukraine
Ukraine took the place of the Moscow scenery in the first verse in 2022, because the band's singer felt it was no time to romanticise Russia.
Q 11Which former Pink Floyd member staged The Wall at Potsdamer Platz in 1990, with Scorpions opening the show?
Roger Waters
Roger Waters gave Scorpions the first song, In the Flesh?, on a site that months earlier had been the no man's land of a divided city.
Q 12Which music game series featured the Scorpions track No One Like You in its 2007 edition Rocks the '80s?
Guitar Hero
Guitar Hero used a second Scorpions song that year, when the band's 1984 signature anthem appeared in the third main game, Legends of Rock.
Q 13Which broadcaster gave the German band Scorpions their 1980s nickname, the Ambassadors of Rock?
MTV
MTV put four videos from Love at First Sting into rotation in 1984, helping it become the band's most successful album in America.
Q 21Which Scorpions power ballad sat unfinished for seven years after an earlier guitarist rejected it as too commercial?
Still Loving You
Still Loving You reached the top three in France and Switzerland, far above its number 64 peak on the American chart.
Q 22Which guitarist won the Scorpions' lead guitar job in 1978, after the band had auditioned around 140 players?
Matthias Jabs
Matthias Jabs was dropped within months when the founder's brother came back, then rehired for good when that return collapsed on tour in 1979.
Q 23Which Gibson guitar is Scorpions founder Rudolf Schenker famous for playing, with a signature model in his name?
Flying V
Q 14Michael Schenker, the founder's younger brother, left Scorpions in 1973 to play lead guitar for which British band?
UFO
UFO had just toured with Scorpions as their support act, and losing the teenage guitarist broke up his brother's band for a time.
Q 15The idea for Wind of Change came to the Scorpions' singer one summer night at which Moscow spot?
Gorky Park
Gorky Park housed a cultural centre opened without official permission, where Soviet and visiting musicians, poets and artists mixed freely.
Q 16The Scorpions' first live album, a 1978 double LP, was recorded on tour in which country?
Japan
Japan heard it first, months before Europe, and the Tokyo concerts it captures were the last the band played with its departing lead guitarist.
Q 17The video for the Scorpions hit No One Like You shows the band's singer facing execution at which American prison?
Alcatraz
Alcatraz was filmed during a San Francisco shoot for the 1982 single, which went on to top Billboard's rock radio chart.
Q 18Which then-unknown American singer sang guide vocals for Scorpions in 1981 while their frontman had throat surgery?
Don Dokken
Don Dokken sang on the demos for Blackout, but none of those takes survived and he is credited only with backing vocals.
Q 19The Scorpions song We'll Burn the Sky sets a poem by Monika Dannemann, the last girlfriend of which guitarist?
Jimi Hendrix
Jimi Hendrix is the guitarist the poem mourns, and Scorpions turned it into a track on their 1977 album Taken by Force.
Q 20Which 1990 Scorpions album, home of Wind of Change, was the band's first to top the German chart?
Crazy World
Crazy World was also the first album since 1974 made without the band's long-time producer, and its lineup split two years later.
Flying V guitars became a trademark of both Schenker brothers, and Gibson later built a signature model in Rudolf's name.
Q 24The Scorpions song The Zoo was inspired by a street the band had visited in which American city?
New York
New York's 42nd Street, a place the band had heard called a zoo, came back to the singer when he first heard the song's riff.
Q 25At which German landmark did Scorpions play Wind of Change in November 1999, ten years after the Wall fell?
Brandenburg Gate
The Brandenburg Gate concert marked the anniversary to the day, and six years later German TV viewers voted the ballad the song of the century.
Q 26Which music magazine hailed Scorpions as heroes of heavy metal during the band's mid-1980s peak?
Rolling Stone
Rolling Stone used the label as Love at First Sting went double platinum in America within months of its release.
Q 27In which capital did Scorpions record a 2013 unplugged album at an open-air theatre on Mount Lycabettus?
Athens
Athens was chosen to repay the loyalty of Greek fans, and the hillside venue made it the first open-air show in the acoustic series' history.
Q 28Which 1983 California event, funded by Apple co-founder Steve Wozniak, had Scorpions play on its Heavy Metal Day?
US Festival
The US Festival put Scorpions in front of a crowd reported at more than 375,000 near San Bernardino over Memorial Day weekend.
Q 29Which magazine named the bubblegum cover of the Scorpions album Lovedrive the best album sleeve of 1979?
Playboy
Playboy's praise did not stop the American label swapping the picture for a plain blue scorpion on a black background.
Q 30A 1999 Scorpions video from the album Eye II Eye featured a look-alike of which White House scandal figure?
Monica Lewinsky
Monica Lewinsky's double did little for the single, taken from an album whose techno and pop touches the band's fans rejected.