Summary
“I follow the Moskva, down to Gorky Park… listening to the wind of change.”
The German rock band Scorpions’ lead singer Klaus Meine was inspired to write Wind of Change at a rock festival in Moscow in the summer of 1989. Politics were rapidly shifting in the Soviet Union at the time as a result of Mikhail Gorbachev’s reforms.
Recalling the peaceful yet revolutionary atmosphere at the concerts, Klaus said “there was a whole new generation of Russian kids that said the Cold War would be over soon - we could literally feel the world changing in front of our eyes”.
No one had any idea that the Berlin wall would come down only a few months later. Wind of Change was released in 1990, and has since become an unofficial anthem for the end of the Cold War and the reunification of Germany in 1991. The power ballad is one the best-selling singles in history, and popular all over the world.
Featuring interviews with lead singer of the Scorpions Klaus Meine, Russian rock musician Stas Namin, and true stories of what the song means to people who lived in the former USSR.
Series about pieces of music with a powerful emotional impact.
Producer: Sophie Anton
First broadcast on BBC Radio 4 in July 2019.
Transcript
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| 0:00.0 | Before you listen to this BBC podcast, I'd like to quickly tell you about some others. |
| 0:05.2 | My name's Andy Martin and I'm the editor of a team of podcast producers at the BBC in Northern Ireland. |
| 0:11.3 | It's a job I really love because we get to tell the stories that really matter to people here, |
| 0:16.3 | but which also resonate and apply to listeners around the world. |
| 0:19.6 | And because the team is such a diverse |
| 0:21.2 | range of skills and strengths, we have trained journalists, people who love digging through |
| 0:26.0 | archives, we've got drama and even comedy experts. We really can do those stories justice. So if |
| 0:31.8 | you like this podcast, head to BBC Sounds where you'll find plenty more fascinating stories |
| 0:37.1 | from all around the UK. BBC Sounds where you'll find plenty more fascinating stories from all around the UK. |
| 0:40.3 | BBC Sounds, music, radio, podcasts. |
| 0:44.3 | My name's David Oak. I'm from Melbourne, Australia. Just over six months ago, me, my wife and my younger son were travelling to Spain to Morocco and to Portugal. |
| 0:56.0 | My son Liam had just finished his secondary school education. |
| 1:00.0 | He has a real love of the European football and we had to get to Madrid for a soccer match. |
| 1:07.0 | So here we were at 5 a.m. in the morning in a taxi barreling down the freeway towards the airport at Lisbon. |
| 1:17.3 | There was that eerie orange light coming from the streetlights. |
| 1:22.6 | And because it was early in the morning, no one was talking. |
| 1:25.1 | It was quiet. |
| 1:26.2 | And it was then that wind of Change came on the radio. |
| 1:29.7 | My goodness, that song, that familiar whistling. |
| 1:33.6 | It really meant a lot to me. |
| 1:36.8 | Follow the mosque down to Gongki Park, listening to the wind of change. |
| 1:49.6 | I was probably starting to get a bit teary, to be honest with you, in that Liam was sitting |
... |
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