Description

Very rare original German pressing with its original uncensored cover artwork featuring the nude prepubescent girl. Virgin Killer was the fourth studio album by Scorpions. It was released in 1976 and was the first album of the band to attract attention outside Europe. The title is described as being a reference to time as the killer of innocence. Recorded just before the band began cranking out their earliest hits on classic albums like Lovedrive and Animal Magnetism, Virgin Killer is the first of four studio releases that really defined the Scorpions and their urgent metallic sound that was to become highly influential. While there are no tracks recognizable to the casual fan like "Blackout" and "Another Piece of Meat," on Virgin Killer, serious fans of the group treasure this 1977 collection. Some all-time Scorpions standouts like "Pictured Life" and the title cut have all the necessary guitar chops and fierce falsetto melodies to get even the most jaded heavy metal old-timer teary eyed with nostalgia. Perhaps Virgin Killer isn't as focused as the brilliant Lovedrive or as tuneful as either Animal Magnetism or Blackout, but the group's trademark enthusiasm (the single element that separated and defined them, especially during the occasionally over-serious days of the New Wave of British Heavy Metal) and dexterity shines through on this near-historic heavy metal collection. The success of Virgin Killer was similar to other Scorpions albums featuring Uli Jon Roth as lead guitarist; it failed to attain any serious attention in the United States but was quite popular in Japan where it peaked at number 32 in the charts. The album was another step in the band's shift from psychedelic music to hard rock. Critic Vincent Jeffries of Allmusic contends in hindsight that the album was "the first of four studio releases that really defined the Scorpions and their urgent metallic sound that was to become highly influential." He also counts the title track and "Pictured Life" among the "all-time Scorpions standouts." Among the band members, Uli Jon Roth considers Virgin Killer and the previous release In Trance as his favourite Scorpions albums. The original cover art for the album depicted a nude ten-year-old girl named Jaqueline, with a shattered glass effect obscuring her genitalia. The image was designed by Steffan Bohle, who was then the product manager for RCA Records. Francis Buchholz was the bassist for the band and, in an interview conducted in early 2007, recollects that the model depicted on the cover was either the daughter or the niece of the cover designer. The photograph was taken by Michael von Gimbut. The band's rhythm guitarist Rudolf Schenker offers the following description of the circumstances behind the album cover: ‘We didn't actually have the idea. It was the record company. The record company guys were like, 'Even if we have to go to jail, there's no question that we'll release that.' On the song 'Virgin Killer', time is the virgin killer. But then, when we had to do the interviews about it, we said 'Look, listen to the lyrics and then you'll know what we're talking about. We're using this only to get attention. That's what we do.' Even the girl, when we met her fifteen years later, had no problem with the cover. Growing up in Europe, sexuality, of course not with children, was very normal. The lyrics really say it all. Time is the virgin killer. A kid comes into the world very naive, they lose that naiveness and then go into this life losing all of this getting into trouble. That was the basic idea about all of it.’ The band's former lead guitarist Uli Jon Roth notes that the cover art of the old Scorpion albums were usually done by other people. He has since expressed regret over the original album cover: ‘Looking at that picture today makes me cringe. It was done in the worst possible taste. Back then I was too immature to see that. Shame on me—I should have done everything in my power to stop it. The record company came up with the idea, I think. The lyrics incidentally were a take-off on Kiss, whom we had just supported on a tour. I was fooling around and played the riff of the song in the rehearsal room and spontaneously improvised 'cause he's a virgin killer!' trying to do a more or less way-off-the-mark Paul Stanley impersonation. Klaus immediately said 'that's great! You should do something with it.' Then I had the unenviable task of constructing a meaningful set of lyrics around the title, which I actually managed to do to some degree. But the song has a totally different meaning from what people would assume at first. Virgin Killer is none other than the demon of our time, the less compassionate side of the societies we live in today—brutally trampling upon the heart and soul of innocence’. The cover generated controversy: the album could only be sold sealed in black plastic in several countries and the cover was replaced in some countries with an alternative cover art depicting the band members. The original is named in various ‘worst album cover’ lists: Cracked magazine online named it the No. 1 ‘Worst Album Cover of All-Time’. In a 2010 interview Meine commented on the cover art again stating: ‘Back in those days (the 70's) it was RCA, our record label then, went over the edge with Virgin Killer. Today when you think of child pornography on the net, you would never do something like that. We never did this in the sense of pornography; we did it in the sense of art. It is about the song and the label was pushing the idea because they wanted to get the controversy to help the album sale and you cannot get better promotion than that. Looking back from the band point of view it was never an album cover that we took home to our parents and said, "Look what we just released". Track listing: 1. Pictured Life 2. Catch Your Train 3. In Your Park 4. Backstage Queen 5. Virgin Killer 6. Hell Cat 7. Crying Days 8. Polar Nights 9. Yellow Raven