Location: Backstage / Munich / Germany
Interview date: 11/23/2010
Denmark’s excellent hard rockers Pretty Maids, the very definition of defiance and, above all, of consistently high-quality studio work, first made a real mark on the scene with their studio debut “Red, Hot & Heavy” in 1984. Sadly, fortune hasn’t smiled on them enough to make their name widely known today, even though with their body of work Pretty Maids undoubtedly deserve it and then some. As much as we sympathize with the band over their commercial bad luck, it has to be said that Pretty Maids are breathing at full capacity in 2010, because this year they put out the excellent studio album “Pandemonium”, which delivers some truly impressive moments when it comes to marrying melodic brilliance with rock punch, which is exactly what Pretty Maids have always been famous for.
We had to wait quite a while for this interview. The band hadn’t been properly notified by the agency Fast Entertainment, but the concert organizer Thorsten from the agency Music for People Concerts gave Jani and me incredible help and support, coordinating everything that needed to happen to make the interview a reality.
The guys did their soundcheck, and after about an hour and a half of waiting, Thorsten came to get us and led us backstage. There, at a nicely laden table, sat Pretty Maids drummer Allan Tschicaja and new permanent member and keyboardist Morten Sandager (also known for his work with Mercenary). The main men of Pretty Maids, Ronnie Atkins (vocals) and Ken Hammer (guitar), were in the same room, but at the start of the interview they only watched from a distance and preferred to busy themselves with other things.
RockLine: How do you two feel as members who haven’t been around since the band’s founding? What’s it like to play with these guys and be part of this band?
Morten: Do we really have to answer that with those two (points at Ronnie and Ken translator’s note.) sitting right next to us?
(everyone: laughs)
Morten: Seriously now, ha, ha, ha… No. The guys are great. Friendly. We get along really well. Musically, I mean, in terms of taste in what we listen to. Recently Hal Patino joined us as our new bass player, and now the puzzle is complete.
Allan: I played with Hal years ago, I’ve known him for a long time and know him really well, and we work great together.
RockLine: Who recommended Hal to Pretty Maids, how did he join you?
Allan: We all know him. A big plus is that he comes from Denmark too, like the rest of us. Honestly, we couldn’t have asked for a better option than Hal Patino at that moment.
Morten: Hal had just split with King Diamond. King simply decided he wouldn’t tour anymore because of illness. As soon as we tried him out at the audition, it was clear Hal was the natural choice for us, because there was some chemistry between us. We felt it instantly.
RockLine: Do you happen to know the circumstances behind Ken Jackson’s decision to leave the bass spot in the band?
Morten: There are a lot of reasons. Mostly personal.
RockLine: “Pandemonium” is getting great reviews everywhere. How do you feel about that as a keyboardist, given that this is the first album on which you appear as a permanent member of the lineup?
Morten: I’m very proud of it. I’m also really honored that the guys took me on board. Until now I’d worked with them in the studio, but only as a session musician, not as a band member. I’ve been working with Pretty Maids for 17 years now. I also contributed a few arrangements and ideas to the new songs. This time our new album, which we’re presenting on this tour, is even more compact and alive than the previous one, “Wake Up To The Real World”.
RockLine: Are there any plans to head to Japan on tour this year too?
Morten: We were actually supposed to go there this fall, but not everything went according to plan. Still, the plans stand, and right now we’re in talks to visit Japan in 2011.
RockLine: What do you two think of the album Pandemonium?
Morten: It’s an excellent album. Even when we tried the songs out in rehearsals, we were thrilled by how much rock destructiveness and melodic catchiness is packed into them. For the tour we decided to put 6 songs in the set list.
RockLine: Can we expect a live release anytime soon, maybe a live DVD from Pretty Maids?
Allan: We’re working on it. On putting out a DVD. But the condition is that we hold the scissors and the canvas in our own hands. Without that, nothing happens. We need to have control over what goes on in a situation like that. That’s the only way we can offer our listeners and music lovers the best of what Pretty Maids are. The live recording that ends up on the DVD won’t come from some festival, but from our own headline show.
RockLine: How does the audience react at your shows?
Morten: Again, it depends on who you’re playing in front of. There are places where the crowd is really loud. They’re constantly shouting, either following the verses and singing along, or they’re simply loud and cheer us on at the top of their lungs. In Germany and Scandinavia, for example, the audience is calmer, but they still give us incredible support during the shows. They just absorb the music in a different way. It’s purely a matter of the temperament of a given crowd.
RockLine: Besides Japan, are there any other Pretty Maids shows planned for 2011?
Morten: Yes. In the spring we’re planning another European tour, and we’d especially like to visit countries in Eastern Europe, like Russia, Ukraine, the Czech Republic,… of course we’re also trying to set foot in South America and the United States, but that’s a tougher financial lift.
Allan: In the summer we’re also planning to play a few European festivals next year.
RockLine: How happy are you with Frontiers Records?
Morten: I think it’s a good fit for us, because the label has a lot of older bands who laid the foundations for melodic hard rock, so in that sense we feel very much at home with Frontiers Records. As for promotion, though, I don’t have any real insight into what the label has done for Pretty Maids so far. I think plenty of bands in our line of work ask themselves the same questions. I also think the current economic situation isn’t exactly rosy, or favorable to the kind of music we play in Pretty Maids. So we have to tighten our belts. The label is very limited too and isn’t ready to invest money in this kind of music the way they did back in the eighties.
Meanwhile, Pretty Maids guitarist Ken Hammer sat down at the table. Ken clasped his hands and cracked his knuckles good and loud a few times. His voice, thanks to a cold, reminded us of none other than the original throat of Motorhead, Lemmy Kilmister….
RockLine: Ken, what can you tell us about working with so many renowned producers and musicians who’ve shaped the Pretty Maids sound over your career, from Roger Glover to Jacob Hansen?
Ken: They’re all complete individualists, every one of them. You’ve given me a tough question, ha, ha, ha… Let me start with the latest album, where we worked with Jacob Hansen. This guy played an important role in freshening up our sound for 2010. He knows exactly how a modern sound gets made in the studio today, and that’s the sound we wanted too. And that’s not all. Besides his producer duties, Jacob is also a brilliant guitarist and vocalist. And of course we took advantage of that on “Pandemonium”. When I think back to Roger Glover,…. Roger is a man of great experience, which is without doubt priceless. He used it to steer the sound of a dozen of our older albums.
RockLine: How do you and Ronnie write Pretty Maids songs together?
Ken: Very simply. We don’t even think much about it, and of course it depends on the situation. We might get together for an acoustic jam, and something comes out of it that has weight and the potential to become future music. We often call each other when one of us comes up with an interesting riff that could be used for a song. It’s funny, too, that an idea like that can pop up right in the middle of a soundcheck. There’s no recipe for it. The ideas just come up completely spontaneously.
RockLine: Who’s the “soft” side of Pretty Maids? Who mostly comes up with the ballads?
Ken: Everybody. Because we all love ballads. You know, I haven’t thought much about that either. There are two kinds of music. Bad and good. There’s no in-between. When a song is taking shape in Pretty Maids, nobody thinks much about what it’ll turn into in the end. Will it be a ballad, or a fast song, more direct and punchy, or mid-tempo, whatever… It’s evolution, a process. You have a vision, you want a new album, and the ideas that come up don’t follow some predetermined formula that lets you pick what kind of ideas they should be. No. They come spontaneously. And often we can’t tell right at the start whether an idea will end up in a ballad or a fast song.
RockLine: Do you happen to know why Pretty Maids didn’t break through in the eighties, even though all the possibilities and potential were there?
Ken: No idea why. You tell me, if you happen to know. Of course, that all came down to the labels again. To hell with them all. There are always crooked people working at every one of them.
A few moments later Ronnie sat down at the table too. Our interview time was slowly running out, but of course our hangout carried on through an interesting chat, where the guys didn’t hide their astonishment that we’d come all the way from Slovenia to Munich just to see Pretty Maids live. But that’s our fate, and we’re used to traveling. And it’ll always be that way. And that wasn’t the end of our time with Pretty Maids, either. The extremely friendly tour manager Arild invited us to the after-show party following the gig. We obviously couldn’t turn down the invitation. It was another magical and unforgettable day – a real rock celebration that stretched deep into the night…
interview by: Jani Mihevc Cah
text translated and edited by: Aleš Podbrežnik
photos: Aleš Podbrežnik
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