Francis Buchholz, who played bass for The Scorpions for nearly two decades including the German hard rock band’s most successful era, died Thursday of cancer. He was 71.
His family shared the news on social media, writing in part: “To his fans around the world – we want to thank you for your unwavering loyalty, your love, and the belief you placed in him throughout his incredible journey. You gave him the world, and he gave you his music in return. Though the strings have gone silent, his soul remains in every note he played and in every life he touched.”
Buchholz was a teenager when he joined The Scorpions in 1973 and would play with the group’s longest-running and most successful lineup through 1992, working the bass alongside singer Klaus Meine, guitarists Rudolf Schenker and Matthias Jabs and drummer Herman Rarebell. The group released four albums with Buccholz for RCA Records from 1974-77 that failed to gain commercial traction, but the fifth put them on the international map.
After Scorpions changed labels — to Harvest Records in Europe and Mercury in North America — Lovedrive arrived in early 1979 and began to get airplay in the group’s homeland. Sporting a controversial, attention-getting jacket, the LP was the first with Jabs and defined the sound that would make the band international stars. Powered by songs including the title track and “Loving You Sunday Morning,” Lovedrive just missed the German Top 10 and gained traction in both the U.S. and UK.
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Animal Magnetism, with another eyebrow-raising cover, streeted in 1980 featured future classic rock staple “The Zoo,” a chugging tale of life on the mean streets of late-’70s New York City. The disc again sold well in Germany and continued the band’s rise in the States, Great Britain and other countries.
Two years later, The Scorpions hit the Big Time.
Blackout attacked radio airwaves on both sides of the pond in early 1982, giving The Scorpions its first taste of the international mainstream success it would enjoy for the next several decades. The searing title track was the lead single, but the power ballad “No One Like You” would become the band’s first smash on U.S. rock radio, topping Billboard’s then-nascent Mainstream Rock chart.
The album went Top 10 in the U.S. and Germany and Top 15 in the UK and other European countries, and the group launched a massive tour that included a stop at the 1982 Summer Strut at Anaheim Stadium with a potpourri lineup that also included Foreigner, Loverboy and Iron Maiden. The following year, the group was second-billed behind Van Halen for the US Festival’s storied “Heavy Metal Sunday” in the desert east of Los Angeles.
The group’s success continued with a run of platinum albums including Love at First Sting (1984), which featured the uber-catchy smash “Rock You Like a Hurricane,” along with “Big City Nights” and another power ballad in “Still Loving You.” The disc was another international hit, and the Scorpions followed up with 1988’s Savage Amusement, which gave the group another mainstream rock hit with “Rhythm of Love.
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In 1990, as the Cold War was winding down, The Scorpions scored their biggest international hit with yet another power ballad in “Wind of Change,” from its album Crazy World. Penned by Meine after his late-’80s visit to Soviet Russia, the track became a worldwide smash, topping pop charts in a dozen countries and going Top 5 in many others including the U.S. and UK.
Buchholz would leave the group in 1992 and later joined up with ex-Scorpions axman Michael Schenker in Temple of Rock, with which he recorded two studio and two live albums in the 2010s.
Along with his bass playing, Buchholz was an accomplished mechanical engineer. He founded Rocksound, a stage-equipment rental company, in the late 1970s that distributed specialized speaker cabinets that he had designed.
Survivors include his wife, Hella; their son, Sebastian; and twin daughters Louisa and Marietta.