A new podcast, Wind of Change, will explore the tantalizing possibility that Scorpions’ 1990 power ballad of the same name was actually written by the CIA as a piece of late Cold War propaganda.
The show is hosted by New Yorker journalist Patrick Radden Keefe and all eight episodes premiere May 11th on Spotify. It is a joint project co-produced by Crooked Media and Pineapple Street Studios.
As Keefe recounts in a new trailer for the podcast, the story goes that Scorpions wrote “Wind of Change” after participating in a landmark concert in Moscow in 1989 with other hair metal heavyweights like Bon Jovi and Mötley Crüe.
“Wind of Change” was a huge hit in the United States and across Europe, and its arrival lined up perfectly with the fall of the Berlin Wall and the eventual collapse of the Soviet Union. But, Keefe says, for the past 10 years he’s been dogged by a rumor a friend shared with him: That “Wind of Change” was actually written by the CIA to encourage change throughout the Soviet Union.
In a statement via Deadline, Keefe said of the podcast: “It’s a story that stretches across musical genres, and across borders and periods of history, so it was important to me that you hear the music, and the accents and the voices, and judge for yourself who might be lying and who is telling the truth. I’ve had so much fun pursuing this crazy story over the course of a year, exploring the dark byways of Cold War history and doing nearly a hundred interviews in four countries with rockers and spies. I can’t wait to share it with the world.”
