1

Klaus Meine is intelligent and articulate.

So if you listen to the “Wind of Change” podcast, and I recommend that you do, they eventually confront Klaus Meine regarding the CIA’s theoretical participation in the creation of the Scorpions song.

Now living through the eighties, the only “metal” band that really got respect was Guns N’ Roses, whose credibility has been eviscerated by Axl Rose’s facelift and the squandering of the band’s recording impact through delay and…

As for the rest of the acts…

It ended up being a formula.

Now some, like Van Halen, had success before MTV. But do we consider Van Halen metal anyway?

I wouldn’t.

But if you look at the acts that played the Moscow Music Peace Festival…

Skid Row may still be on the road, but sans Sebastian Bach, they’ve lost what made them rise above to begin with. Then again, despite having model good looks, Bach was a hothead and the whole enterprise looked like adolescence on steroids. (However, I’d be lying if I didn’t admit that I love “I Remember You.”)

Mötley Crüe? The band may have had commercial success, but it never got respect. One could actually say their travails were equivalent to a “Real Housewives” franchise. As for a standout track… You don’t hear their music played by anybody but fans these days.

Ozzy? Somewhere along the line, Ozzy became a legend. Let’s leave it at that.

And Bon Jovi made that one phenomenal album with Bruce Fairbairn, “Slippery When Wet,” who died before they could reunite in the studio, and the band never quite reached that height again, but it sustained, and now “Wanted Dead or Alive” is a veritable standard (helped along by “The Deadliest Catch,” although the song was already embedded in the public consciousness). Never underestimate Jon Bon Jovi’s good looks, and in addition, the band represented a younger generation, taking over the airwaves from the rockers who’d triumphed in the sixties and seventies.

And the Scorpions? They were GERMAN!

All I am saying is when you look back at eighties hard rock, you don’t think credibility, you think excess and entertainment, good times.

However, these acts had light years more impact upon society than any of today’s musical stars. That’s what I realized listening to this podcast.

2

There are ultimately two issues in the “Wind of Change” podcast, and neither of them involve the question of the CIA’s involvement in the Scorpions song.

a. How America has turned into Russia

b. The techniques and credibility of the CIA.

Let me try to nail this… The Russian government trades in conspiracy theories, its goal is to keep its public from knowing, never mind investigating, the truth. It is constantly spreading falsehoods…starting by allowing Putin to escape accountability for the Second Chechen War at the advent of his tenure.

When confronted with the concept of the CIA being involved in the creation of the Scorpions’ “Wind of Change,” a Russian woman who was associated with the band’s gigs in the U.S.S.R. doesn’t believe it’s true for even a second, but does think that the CIA could have spread the rumor.

And when this woman continues and the story is played out…

Let me get your knickers in a twist. Conventional wisdom is that Covid started from a Chinese lab leak. But this is untrue. No one knows for sure, but the experts still believe it came from a wet market. Yet as soon as Trump got back into office, he had an edict issued declaring the lab leak theory true. And you’ve got the right wing propaganda machine reinforcing this falsehood.

Hell, we saw the president spewing untruths on NBC yesterday, with seeming impunity.

America is now the land of conspiracy theories.

It is said in this podcast that the Russians hoped that their country would turn into the U.S., they couldn’t foresee the U.S. turning into Russia. Which is what has happened.

As for the CIA… Untrustworthy and double-dealing, it’s a fount of misdirection and misinformation.

And you learn all this in the “Wind of Change” podcast, which is not only very informative, but easy to listen to.

3

So, like I stated above, the MTV acts who appeared at the Moscow Music Peace Festival would mainly be considered entertainment. However, listening to this podcast, you can see they had influence.

People in Russia trading illegal Scorpions tapes…

I ask you, is anybody in an oppressed nation trading Dua Lipa tapes? BTS? Taylor Swift?

There’s nothing there. Entertainment for acolytes that exists in a walled garden. Those who don’t care don’t want to care and there’s no reason for them to care. Because there’s no underlying meaning. It’s mostly entertainment for the brain dead. Mindless.

Now of course it was different in the sixties. Music moved the culture. But listening to this podcast I was stunned to realize how powerful MTV was. We think of its ability to make musical acts international successes, we tend not to look at its cultural power. It was a youth marketing platform. And even though the acts wanted to get rich, they were all anti-establishment, at least to a degree. They didn’t, they wouldn’t, comport with cultural norms. Selling out to corporations? Who’d want to be involved with these people?

These acts didn’t have brand extensions, it was them and their music and that was it. Sure, they sold t-shirts, but they were emblematic of fans’ belief in them. It wasn’t a rip-off enterprise. And if it wasn’t related to music, they didn’t do it, they didn’t even think of doing it, because they wanted to live the rock and roll lifestyle, before the smartphone camera, when sex and drugs and alcohol…that’s why you did it!

These were renegades. As soft as they appeared back then, compared to today’s acts the gulf is laughable.

As for the Scorpions… Klaus Meine speaks English with more thought and analysis than seemingly all in today’s Spotify Top 50, AND IT’S HIS SECOND LANGUAGE!

We used to hang on the words of our musical heroes. Now we pay attention to their antics, but why would we listen to these commercial nincompoops?

4

So the monoculture is history. MTV took the power of rock and roll and supercharged it. And then mostly abandoned music when it was discovered that half hour programs got much better ratings than endless music videos. You might switch the channel if you saw a video that didn’t appeal to you, but that was far less likely if you were watching “Remote Control” or “Cribs” or the rest of the lifestyle product featured. One could actually argue that MTV was a harbinger of today’s fame for nothing culture. Then again, MTV did change cultural mores… MTV did more for racial integration/harmony than any book or movie or… It was nearly as positive as the Civil Rights Act of 1964. Black people were featured right along whites, and they were stars and… There were gay people too, like Pedro Zamora, the “Real World” cast member who died of AIDS.

And then it all devolved into the internet era. A Balkanization of power and ideas. All those angry that they could not triumph previously decried intelligence and expertise and planted their own flags and ultimately made the landscape incomprehensible. You can’t break an act. Then again, are the acts worth breaking, is the issue that more people are not listening to certain songs or that they don’t want to?

I’d posit the latter.

Which begs the question of whether we’re at the tipping point of a renaissance, because the mercenary music business is so far from the ideals and power of songs, it has followed commerce into if not irrelevance, meaninglessness.

5

As for the CIA’s involvement in the Scorpions’ “Wind of Change,” I leave you with this:

Bob,

I’m asking that my name be withheld because I don’t need the “hate mail” that will inevitable follow.

I was in the room when Klaus came up with the idea for “Wind of Change”. In fact, I was a fly-on-the wall, from its inception to its completion, and I was one of the first two or three people to hear the song.

Furthermore, I played keyboards on the demo … and also on the final album version, recorded at Keith Olsen’s Sound City Studios in California.

This “CIA” thing is preposterous!  Ridiculous!  Anyone who claims otherwise wasn’t there!

There’s a great story about a fan once approaching George Harrison, and saying:  “I have a rare bootleg recording of The Beatles rehearsing.  Would you like me to make you a copy?”.  And George replied (try to imagine his laconic Liverpool accent), “I don’t need to hear it … I was THERE!”.

Well … I was there when “Wind of Change” was written and demo’d … in my home studio!

I can say, with certainty — I do not recall any CIA agents being present!

Tune in June 6th to Faction Talk, channel 103, at 4 PM East, 1 PM West.

Phone #: 844-686-5863

If you miss the episode, you can hear it on demand on the SiriusXM app. Search: Lefsetz

1

So I’m listening to this podcast episode about Doc McGhee’s 1989 Moscow Music Peace Festival and I’m getting extremely frustrated. Because the narrator was leaving out the most salient point, that Doc was doing this as a give back to the government for not going to jail on smuggling charges. He’s going on and on and I’m getting more and more frustrated and then…

The podcast I’m listening to is “Wind of Change,” you know, the 2020 show that investigates whether the CIA wrote the Scorpions hit of the same name. I was fully aware of its release, but I ignored it. Because it seemed like click-bait to me, that there was no chance this had occurred.

And then in response to my post on “London Falling,” Alex Skolnick e-mailed me:

“I’m familiar with Patrick Radden Keefe from the fascinating Podcast series he did, Wind of Change, about the CIA and Scorpions (yes, those Scorpions, as in Rock You Like a Hurricane):  https://crooked.com/podcast-series/wind-of-change/ ”

 No way!

In case you haven’t dived in, the response I’m getting about “London Falling” is universally positive…more than that, people can’t stop talking about it.

Now my shrink told me the author, Patrick Radden Keefe, had written the book about the Sacklers, “Empire of Pain.” I’d had no desire to read that, because I’m more of a fiction guy and I followed the OxyContin story very closely, was it really worth spending all that time to learn only a few new things?

But after our session, I immediately went to Libby and reserved the Sackler book. (Which I just got by the way, but I’m working my way through a couple of books before I get to it.)

And then I get Alex Skolnick’s e-mail.

Now part of me still winced, believing the premise to be over the top, but if it was Patrick Radden Keefe and Skolnick had recommended it, I was going to check it out.

Now “Wind of Change” is one of those podcasts where you can see the dollar signs while you listen. This isn’t homemade stuff, there are a lot of moving parts: travel, people, research… In other words, it’s produced.

In truth, this type of podcast is falling out of favor, if for no reason other than these true crime shows ultimately become monochromatic and are all alike. Kind of like the streaming documentaries. At first, the facts had impact, the story was fascinating, the paragon of the genre actually being the 2003 film “Capturing the Friedmans.” But now, streamers are amplifying the smallest stories in sensationalist ways, with faux gravitas, to the point where they all run together and I’ve mostly stopped watching.

But I dove in and listened to this professional story that I believed was inane.

Now in truth, I was going to wait to finish the show before I wrote about it, and I still plan to do so, but I was so intrigued, positively shocked regarding the episode about Doc McGhee, that I had to hip you to it.

2

Now most people who write about the music business don’t get it, because it’s not their regular beat, they don’t know the history and in addition they look down upon the industry, one reason being it’s peopled with figures like Doc McGhee.

The mainstream press likes their subjects to be pedigreed. To have graduated from college, maybe have a storied background. Whereas music is laden with those sans education, but even worse, it’s run by hustlers.

That’s what those outside the industry don’t get, how it’s run. For some reason they think they know, but it would be like me writing about medicine… I could zero in on some momentary event, but I don’t know the history, never mind not having the expertise.

And we see this with the Live Nation/Ticketmaster trial… We can debate all day long whether Live Nation is a monopoly, but one thing is for sure, whatever happens, ticket prices will not go down. But parading politicians and the media keep believing there’s some nefarious plot that if uncovered will allow everybody to go to the show for fifty bucks. How could they get it so wrong? Even after the trial most people still get it wrong.

Which is why the music business does its best not to intersect with the legal system, the judges won’t understand it, and if you lift the rug you will find a lot of behavior that many will be uncomfortable with. The phrase is “sex, drugs and rock and roll,” and that didn’t come out of nowhere.

So when Patrick Radden Keefe goes on for nearly an hour about the Moscow Music Peace Festival without mentioning Doc McGhee’s brush with the law, I figured this was just another case of outsiders not knowing what was going on. I mean the fact that it was part of a government deal was all over the news back in 1989…but that’s nearly forty years ago. Like the CIA agent who doesn’t know the song “Wind of Change,” who says she doesn’t even consider music to be a fulfilling pursuit, who is keeping the record here? People like you and me. Who lived for this stuff, who sacrificed our lives for rock and roll. The ones who are pissed that it has devolved into a pop world.

Anyway, at the end of “I Follow the Moska,” episode 5 (of 8), Keefe interviews Deb Wilker, who talks about the story not adding up back in ’89. I mean if the government wanted to promote peace, why would they send this ragtag bunch of metal bands to Russia.

Voila!

Okay, finally, the subject was broached, Doc’s history in the drug trade. I was satisfied.

But then Keefe said in the next episode they were going to do a deep dive into Doc and his story.

WHAT???

3

Live Nation may be a public company, streaming counts are public information, but when it comes to the music business at large, it’s one of bullying, obfuscation and intimidation, with a bit of sexism thrown into the mix… After all, isn’t that in many cases what these bands were singing about?

And if you’re inside, with access, you’re privy to amazing stories. You’d be surprised who scalped their own tickets. Who bootlegged merch. But if you speak this truth, you’re excommunicated. It’s the code of the road, everybody knows and nobody speaks.

Which is one reason why this CIA/”Wind of Change” story could be true, but I’m saving analysis of this.

In other words, there is no deep dissection of the players.

Oh, Clive Davis has been on a mythmaking campaign for decades. But the truth is “Mr. Music” lives in his own little backwater. He had hits, undeniable hits, but most of these acts did not have careers. It was all about Top Forty, and the modern music business was built on albums and the acts that made them.

And how did these acts become successful?

How do you think these records get exposure, to this day? Do you really think there’s someone out there picking the best? Don’t make me laugh.

Dollars are changed, horses are traded, there’s an understanding that if you don’t come through for me now, forget me delivering in the future…

And most people have no idea that this is going on.

Despite all the press, most people don’t know the history of Michael Rapino and Irving Azoff… There’s been a lot of ink spread about David Geffen, but no one seems to have actually dealt with him on a business level, to see how he operates.

And that’s it. Maybe Lucian Grainge gets a little press.

But the rest of the players in the music business, they’re essentially faceless to the public. And if you scratch the surface…

4

So Doc McGhee… He managed Bon Jovi and Mötley Crüe and Skid Row and even Kiss for over 25 years. How does this happen?

It’s not like you’ve got a problem and you call up your lawyer.

Either there’s a garage manager, your buddy who helps you grow, or there are interviews with players before a decision is made.

So who are these people?

If Q Prime gets a new act, if John Silva gets a new act, it’s understandable, but Doc McGhee had no portfolio, how did THIS guy sign all these bands, especially when he was starting out?

Call it charisma, call it storytelling, call it the ability to come right up to the line and then cross it…a special kind of person becomes a manager.

One who can’t work anywhere else.

So I’m listening to this podcast and they’re delineating all the details of the drug deals McGhee was involved in. How he introduced growers to dealers. There are stories of jail. Manuel Noriega…who uses a drug dealer’s Lear Jet to fly to D.C. for meetings with the government.

WHO ARE THESE PEOPLE?

They are not dumb. You cannot win if you’re dumb. These are extremely intelligent people, they’re STREET SMART!

But there’s never been a thorough investigation of their identities previously. But here in this podcast about this fakokta CIA plot there’s more information about Doc McGhee than ever found previously?

HOW COME I DIDN’T KNOW ABOUT THIS!

That’s what I’m thinking as I’m listening. So much is revealed here, but no one e-mailed me about it, it was not part of the hype…

If this were the pre-internet era, we would know. But today? With so much product in the pipeline? Media hypes, it does not dive in. Most outlets print the press release. Actually listening, doing the work, pulling out the relevant points? Doesn’t happen.

I mean they’re plotting out all the deals, Doc’s involvement and then…

THEY GO TO HIS HOUSE!!

My mind is flipping. Why in the hell is Doc speaking with these people?

Then again, Doc’s no idiot, maybe he thinks if he doesn’t, they’ll print inaccurate information.

And what managers do is create the narrative and sway minds… They’re like Steve Jobs with his reality distortion field.

My eyes roll into the back of my head seemingly every day. Some manager e-mails me their act is the latest thing since sliced bread, a cut above the Spotify Top 50… It’s never happened.

Then again, when you hear from a name, like Doc McGhee, you pay attention. Because irrelevant of how good the act is, you know he’s going to push the button, use all his relationships to make the act a success. Attention is demanded.

Not that I actually know Doc, been around him, but I don’t think we’ve ever even spoken. But he’s out there, in his sportcoat, smiling… Intimidating he is not, at least not on the surface.

So, Doc gets out of the army and why does he go into dope and music…

BECAUSE NO ONE WILL HIRE HIM!

Chances are if you can get a straight job, you’re never going to make it in the music business, certainly not as an independent player like a manager. It’s their identity, their ability to get people on the same page and make things happen… These are not everyday people. And it’s clear as day in this podcast.

Doc starts talking about the Moscow festival, how the two shows drew 300,000 people. But the interviewer is prepared, and says the stadium only holds 75,000 and the total was half of Doc’s claim. Doc shrugs and…all managers exaggerate. My favorite used to be with record sales. If some act’s manager told me they’d sold 100,000 copies of their indie record, that meant they’d sold less than 5,000. And since everybody lies, everybody exaggerates. And it’s all right here in this podcast!

And Doc is bobbing and weaving and…

They’ve already laid the groundwork, Dave Sabo talking about meeting Doc at Jon Bon Jovi’s house…

Great managers are oftentimes BIGGER than their acts, larger than life in their own way. And they oftentimes have more money, because they’re not tempted by excess and that’s one thing they do understand, MONEY!

And Doc is waxing rhapsodic, about how the CIA definitely couldn’t be involved in the Moscow Festival, because the legal case was back in 1980… Well, then the interviewer says how a judgment wasn’t entered until 1988, only one year before the Peace Festival.

And Doc’s laughing, saying how he did it all himself, that’s what he’s best at, making things happen, but… I’ve never heard of a manager flying to a location every two weeks for a year in advance of a show, never mind in Russia.

But, isn’t it common knowledge that it was a quid pro quo, that Doc did this show to keep from going to jail?

Doc says absolutely not.

But when I finish the episode an immediate Google brings me to Jon Bon Jovi admitting it. And then Doc denying it.

And…

If you want to know how a real manager operates, if you want to know the real story of Doc McGhee, you absolutely have to listen to “The Doctor Is In,” episode 7 of “Wind of Change.”

6. The Doctor Is In

Or on the podcast platform of your choice.

And really, you should start with “I Follow The Moska,” episode 5 of “”Wind of Change,” which lays the groundwork.

“The Biggest Hits on Spotify Right Now Are a Blast From the Past – From Gen Z to Boomers, listeners across generations are increasingly embracing throwbacks”

https://www.wsj.com/arts-culture/music/spotify-streaming-hits-nostalgia-old-972818d5

Apple News+: https://apple.news/AwwVLXJvzStGa8lsYCnjWtw

Are the old songs just better or in today’s fragmented world is it just harder to reach the masses with new material.

Want to be positively stunned?

“In 2019 and 2020, over 90% of the songs on its Global Top 50 had been released in the last two years. That fell to 68.8% in the first four months of 2026, the company said. May 11 was a stunner: Seven of the top 10 songs on the platform were more than two years old.”

And:

“Still, its latest (Luminate) report indicates that the portion of 13 to 24-year-olds who say they primarily listen to songs from the 2020s has dropped from 55% in 2021 to 44% in 2025. The share of that group who are drawn most to tracks from the 1990s or earlier rose from 18% to 25%.”

So what is going on here, does the new music suck and the public knows it or is it just harder to break new tracks?

I’d go with the former.

Today’s music is either blatantly commercial or niche. Even those brought up in the MTV eighties would find the Spotify Top 50 bland, sans edge, unless it’s obvious and manipulative. There’s a whole music industrial complex feeding this fading beast and it is out of touch with the public’s desires.

The data does not lie.

Then again, the promotional system is broken. With TV nearly meaningless and active listeners not partaking of terrestrial radio, how do you reach listeners?

Via TikTok… But the dirty little secret of TikTok is music is background, not foreground. The music is subsidiary to the antics/performance of the influencer/creator, inherently making music a second class citizen.

Let’s be clear, old hits are just that, they’re established, they’ve run the gauntlet and survived, the detritus has been stripped away. The fire hose of new product, which has not gone through this winnowing process, is overwhelming and ultimately incomprehensible. This is something the music industry could address, but chooses not to in a world where every label is looking for an edge, gaming the system, they do not want a level playing field. Labels want to promote their product and their product only, they don’t believe in consensus, it’s every label for itself.

Otherwise, the three majors and a consortium of indies could get Spotify and the other DSPs to feature only a handful of tracks a week, from one to five, and only five if they’re in different genres. So every week, let’s say on Friday, when new music is released, subscribers would go to the homepage page and check out the new music for two reasons:

1. It’s been anointed.

2. Since everyone is listening to these same songs, they can talk about them, whether they feel positively or negatively about them.

And there can be a continuation chart. Which of the weekly songs survive and thrive.

Having said that, the labels have to decide if they really want to be in the new music business. Right now, their catalogs are driving profits, and investors just can’t fathom the investment, the costs required for new music for so little return. New music is sexy, old music is bank.

So either you’ve got to turn into an oldies enterprise or…

You’ve got to change the new music formula completely.

You’ve got to produce more music in more genres and stick with it.

Right now the major labels only put out a tiny sliver of the new music they used to, and it’s only in genres that are blatantly commercial, otherwise the lift is too heavy. So you get pop and hip-hop and anything that is not inherently commercial is pushed aside. But this business was built on the seemingly uncommercial that turned mass, sometimes over two to five albums, it took a while for the music to percolate in the marketplace, for the audience to cotton to it, for the acts to grow.

That commitment is out the window.

But you know what genre is burgeoning?

Country.

Today’s country music is the rock of the seventies, and one thing is for sure, there’s a huge demand for it. What is called rock today has no appeal to the masses. It’s noisy with less than palatable vocals and it appeals to a tranche of the audience, but never seems to grow larger.

In other words, if you’re looking for rock to come back, forget it.

But country can get bigger.

Country is played on stringed instruments, i.e. guitars, and it has traditional song structure and even the lowliest of the hits have somewhat relatable lyrics. The formula is easy, but seemingly everybody outside the sphere pooh-poohs it. In other words, verses, choruses, bridges, changes, melodies…the building blocks of popular music for over a hundred years.

But not in the Spotify Top 50.

Not that all new music has to be country, but…

Do not expect the masses to cotton to acts that have bad vocals. There are a lot of acts that do decent touring numbers but can never achieve mass because unlike in the old days, the singers can’t.

On the other hand, we’ve got decent singers who can’t write. And believability is core to success. Once the public perceived the performers were writing from the heart, their innermost feelings, music blew up in the album era of the late sixties. Today’s pop landscape is akin to the pre-Beatle pop dreck. There was a marketplace, but it didn’t drive the culture.

Which brings me to the fact that those in new music production are too hip for the room. They think they know better. They’ve got contempt for the average listener unless they’re playing to them with lowest common denominator dreck.

So…

Expect this trend to continue. Taylor Swift went pop but country Morgan Wallen gets more streams. How come no one can acknowledge this? And both do stadium business.

Hip-hop is fading.

And whereas the voices of yore had character, today’s are interchangeable.

This is a real problem, expect the trend to continue. And to deny it and refuse to address it is to have one’s head in the sand.

I don’t expect any action, because that would require self-examination by those involved, which they’re not wont to do.

I’d say the major labels’ new music production is ready for disruption, but that’s already happened. They don’t develop new acts, they just try to capitalize on those that have already had success online.

This is an industry whose head is so far up its own self-satisfied ass that it refuses to change, as music loses its perch as the most powerful entertainment medium.

Want to know which way the wind blows?

Go on Tiktok, or watch Netflix.

Ignore the fact that slim genres have vocal audiences, like K-pop. That’s niche. We haven’t had broad since Adele. Who is so big, she can afford to spend years away from the marketplace, whereas for most acts, if they’re not in your face 24/7, they’re instantly forgotten. We need more acts like Adele, who float above the scene.

But we do have Chris Stapleton.

You may not find Morgan Wallen appealing, but Stapleton is both successful and appealing, everyone in Nashville agrees that Chris is the king. So why aren’t there more Stapletons? Because great artists are born, not made. They have a viewpoint, that they hone. But in most pop the focus is on every younger performers, it’s utterly laughable.

There is a way out of this mess, but it would require turning around the Titanic.

But since I don’t see that happening, expect more and more ancient hits to resurface, to have more mindshare amongst the youth than the new material produced just for them.

Luminate report: https://luminatedata.com/reports/retro-revival-2026/