Pretty Maids have been making music for almost 20 years. Formed in 1981 by friends Ken Hammer and Ronnie Atkins, they were initially a covers band but soon started writing their own material and a self-financed demo resulted in a deal with UK record company Bullet Records. In 1983 Bullet released a 4 track EP, and further recognition was fuelled by great reaction to their UK tour the same year. Inevitably the band outgrew their label, and in 1984 signed to CBS Records. Their debut album ‘Red, Hot and Heavy’ was a success but the band really hit their stride (if not their fashion sense) with 1986’s ‘Future World’ which was recorded in New York with renowned producer Eddie Kramer. This was the album that saw the band define their sound, with typically aggressive rockers alongside more commercial, melodic moments. Follow up ‘Jump The Gun’, produced by Deep Purple/Rainbow bassist Roger Glover, offered more of the same before ‘Sin-Decade’ in 1992 produced the hit single ‘Please Don’t Leave Me’ which opened the band up to an even wider audience.

In 1995 however, the band really surprised the fans and critics by releasing the storming ‘Scream’. This was an altogether heavier and guitar-lead approach which gained numerous plaudits and saw the band release their first live album, ‘Screamin’ Live’. The follow up ‘Spooked’, released in ‘97, was regarded by many as an instant classic, maintaining the energy and heaviness of ‘Scream’ whilst still capturing the quintessential melody that is Pretty Maids. Last year’s ‘Anything Worth Doing Is Worth Overdoing’, whilst certainly having an overdone album title, also produced one of the songs of the year with ‘Hell On High Heels’, an absolute monster of commercial, hard driving rock. Which brings us nicely to the Year 2000 and the new Pretty Maids album ‘Carpe Diem’. A touch more melodic than their previous offerings, a fact that hasn’t gone down too well with certain factions of their fan-base, this is still a classic album which has all the Pretty Maids trademarks in abundance. Pretty Maid Petra Rottmann got the opportunity to have a friendly chat with lead vocalist Ronnie Atkins, discussing amongst other topics, the music, politics and...incest!!

Okay, so why ‘Carpe Diem’? Is that your motto of the day?

“It’s a little bit about live right here and now - you could get run over by a car tomorrow. There’s several stories behind the title actually. Ken had the title ‘Carpe Diem’ tattooed on his arm and we just thought about a title, and needed a title, and we thought what about ‘Carpe Diem’? For the first time to have a title in Latin, in these times when Latin is so popular (laughs). And then actually I had a pretty sad story because a guy that I know used to be in a bank, he was 28 years old. This was a few years ago. I met him down at the hospital - I was there for another reason - and I asked him ‘What’s the matter with you? What are you doing here?’ and he said he had this tumour on his arm, and two weeks later he was dead. He was only 28 years old. There are a lot of people that always tend to say ‘We will do that later’ or ‘We’ll wait until we’re older’, but the truth is that we should live in the here and now, but should also think about the future. So that’s another story behind it, but the whole idea started when Kenny had a tattoo on his arm.”

So is it hard for you as a band to re-invent yourself again and again?

“Yeah, but we’re not really re-inventing ourselves. After all these years it’s actually difficult to answer that question. We are basically, more or less, doing the same thing. Of course we try sometimes to update ourselves a little bit, but musically we try to stay on the same track. Because we were inspired by all the bands from the beginning of the 80’s and the 70’s and you can still hear that in our music, but after all these years we’ve probably achieved our own sound. I think when people listen to a Pretty Maids song they can tell it’s Pretty Maids.”

But hey, ‘Clay’ is a very poppy song and has entered the charts.

“Yeah, it is very poppy. It probably won’t enter the charts because I don’t think the record companies know what to do with it, but right now it’s getting pretty heavy airplay in Denmark. I’m a bit into everything, you know.....from old Black Sabbath to the Bee Gees, so I like pop music as well. I’m not particularly keen on all the bands doing the techno stuff because I get fed up with the rhythm of it, but generally I like a good song. With ‘Clay’, we had a lot of discussion about that song - everyone in the band actually liked the song but we also knew that it probably would, I won’t say ‘offend’ but some of the Pretty Maids fans would probably say ‘What the fuck is this?’ That song would fit perfectly in on the ‘Stripped’ album. But this time, we basically just wrote the songs, we didn’t really think too much about it, because when we did the ‘Anything Worth Doing...’ album we wanted to sort of try and repeat the ‘Spooked’ album. This time we just wrote the stuff. The band has always been a little more diverse, in the sense that we have done the fast and heavy songs and the more commercial stuff. We’ve always done that, ever since the first album actually. There’s probably one or two more commercial songs on this album than there has been on the last two, and that is enough to tip the balance sometimes of course. ‘Invisible Chains’, the last track on the album, wasn’t actually supposed to be on the album but some people thought it was an okay song. I don’t know if I particularly like that song but the rest of the stuff I actually like. This is Pretty Maids in the year 2000, in 2001 we may be a lot heavier, I don’t know.”

I think this time you pretty much covered the whole Pretty Maids universe.

“Yeah, I hope so. You know, when you start doing an album there are songs which you have certain expectations for, and sometimes during the recording process songs tend to take a slightly different direction that you originally intended. So this album ended up being a bit more melodic.”

Which is why I prefer it to the last one.

“That’s okay. It’s like this, we have two sorts of fans for Pretty Maids - those that like the more melodic side and those that like the heavier stuff, and that’s always been the band’s problem actually, and it is a problem. But then again, I guess that just proves that we are a little diverse. It’s not really a problem problem, it’s just that sometimes you might disappoint some people if there are too many ballads. But I don’t want to be a musical prostitute and just write songs for specific people. I think the most honest thing you can do, which we’ve done this time, is just write songs as they come.”

I was actually quite surprised that you managed to get this album done so soon, what with Kenny going through some turmoil and becoming a father again, and Kenn and Michael are still playing in cover bands.

“Well Michael was out of the band actually last autumn. We just had some arguments and stuff like that, but he came back, wanting to be a part of the band again. When we were starting to rehearse new drummer, he came by and there was no hard feelings or anything like that. He has other jobs - he’s also running management for stand-up comedians in Denmark, which took a lot of time, and sometimes when you make an album and it doesn’t live up to your expectations then people tend to be a little disappointed and maybe go ‘I got to think things over’. Apart from one appearance on Danish TV where we played ‘Hell On High Heels’ and ‘Please Don’t fuckin’ Leave Me’, last year we didn’t do much. We played the last gig in Talin, Estonia the day after we did Wacken open air. Then Kenny was becoming a father and we had this thing with Michael.....nothing really happened until January/February. We all got together and started writing. Obviously me and Kenny had a couple of ideas and wrote things separately but we didn’t really join forces until the new year. But we were also very, very confident that we wanted to have a new album out this year. Normally there’s been two or two and a half years between albums, which I think is too long.”

I read in an interview that Ken was supposed to be involved with Pete Sandberg’s Jade, but that came out a few months ago and he isn’t playing on it.

“I never heard about that. I don’t think he would do something like that. I just don’t think he’s into that kind of thing.”

And you?

“I’ve been asked to do things with other people in the past but most of the time I refuse. I’ve been singing backing vocals for other bands but that’s it. I really put all my energy into this band and my own project, which is not released and might never be, I don’t know, but I still write songs of my own. But I don’t mean I have plans for anything and I’m not saying I don’t want to get into something at some point, but just not right now. In fact, I was sent some tapes by this guy from Edguy for his rock opera, but I didn’t really have the time to do it so I had to refuse. Sometimes I could be interested in doing something like that but at that time, I just couldn’t get it together because we were busy doing this.”

So do you find it hard to reach your potential audience these days, because the market is dropping, especially in Japan.

“Well things are dropping a lot in Japan. Well, I don’t know - ask me again in six months.”

The trouble I found with your last tour is that you didn’t play Spain or Greece and I think you lose out on that because people would welcome you there.

“Yeah they would, and I can see that from the mail we get from those places. But also it take a promoter and a strong record company to get us there. We would go almost everywhere to play...probably not Jerusalem. It’s gonna cost something for us to go there, and we don’t have to get rich to go there, but just to have our expenses covered - if that can’t happen then it’s not possible. We just need some offers from promoters and we’ll go there, and we need the support from a record company.”

So did you vote for the Euro or against it?

“I voted against it. It’s something in the heart, and I did that even back in ‘92/93 when we voted. I’m just not that keen. It’s not that I don’t want to be a part of the European community, it’s just that the politicians, and not just in Denmark but generally, tend to be a little too arrogant. They manipulate a little bit and talk to people like they are fucking stupid and I think people are afraid of being handled from somewhere down in Brussells, and that idea I’m not too particularly keen on. In fact I wrote a song on the album which is a little bit about it, called ‘They’re All Alike’. It is about politicians and how they beg for your vote.”

Can you give us some comments on the songs?

“Well, you know I always hate that Petra, but okay, for you...‘Violent Tribe’, the first song, is a typical Pretty Maids song and is one of the first songs we did for this album, written all the way back in ‘98, even before the ‘Anything Worth Doing...’ album came out. There’s a little bit of fiction, like ‘Escape From New York’, and a little bit of reality too, because violence in Denmark is getting more and more extreme, but that’s what that song is about. ‘Carpe Diem’ I’ve talked about previously and musically is just another typical Pretty Maids rocker. ‘Tortured Spirit’ is one of the last songs written and is about a man with a split personality, where the bad side tends to take over. This is one of my favourites - it’s my Ozzy Osbourne song! ‘Wouldn’t Miss You’ is a typical love song. That was written when we had a five day rehearsal just before we went into the studio actually. We just had this hookline and thought it was good. That’s one of my favourite commercial songs on the album. Then ‘Clay’, and clay is something which you can shape. I’ll be clay in some woman’s arms - she can shape me as she wants to. That’s basically what the song is about. It’s about a man who meets the girl of his life, and it’s probably the most poppy song on the album. ‘Poison Pleasure’, musically, is another typical Pretty Maids fast melodic song. Lyrically it’s about drugs. These days in Denmark there are so many people taking ecstasy, amphetamines, coke and all that, and it’s getting really heavy now. Years ago it was just rock and roll musicians, now the kids are getting younger and younger. And it’s so easy to get now and a lot of people are dying. ‘Until It Dies’. We just had the riff - it’s an old riff, from ‘98 as well. And we took it from there and it just felt that the music lead up to something dark. I like bombastic songs sometimes, and this is one of my favourites as well. ‘Unwritten Pages’. The lyrics were written after a heavy argument with my wife on the way to rehearsing, and the song came about at that rehearsal I was talking about before. It’s another melodic song, and I like the verse on this one. The ‘shuffle’ song ‘For Once In Your Life’ is actually from the ‘Anything Worth Doing’ sessions, the recording as well. It’s not a left over, we just thought in ‘98 that it was a bit too commercial for the album. What we added to it was some of the backing vocals and the heavy guitar riff, which then made it fit with the other songs. I have a version and it sounds totally like Mike and the Mechanics or something like that. ‘They’re All Alike’ is a typical Pretty Maids heavy songs, and is not just about politicians as I mentioned, but people who reign and rule.....and try to fool. ‘Time Waits For No-One’ is one of the songs that I actually thought would turn out a lot more heavy than it actually did, but it just sort of took a different direction. Lyrically it’s a little like ‘Carpe Diem’...you know, time flies. Especially when you have kids! And ‘Invisible Chains’, the last song, was actually meant to be a bonus track but it ended up on the album anyway. We used to call it ‘the Beatles song’ because it reminds so much of ‘Lucy In the Sky with Diamonds’. You know, the intro of it. These chords are heard so many times, we just thought it would be a good idea. It actually had a different chorus originally, and then we changed the chorus and thought it would fit in. Lyrically it’s about incest.”

Really!! I’ll have to listen more closely.

“Well what can I explain about that? It’s not an experience I’ve had, but there are a lot of people that obviously have, when you read the papers and stuff like that. We just had a big case in Denmark this summer, from a little village where there’s been so much of it, about one girl who’d been used by her father and some of his friends, and it’s really, really fucking disgusting. So that’s one of the places where the idea for the song came from. It’s a terrible thing, but it happens unfortunately.”

So are you pleased with the finished album?

“Well I can’t really tell you if I am right now. I don’t listen to the album these days because during the mixing and stuff you tend to get enough of it. So now I’m just waiting to get out on the road and play live. Of course, when we go into the studio to record an album, we don’t do that unless we think that the songs are there. The style might be a little bit more commercial but I can still defend it because I think the songs are good. I can’t tell you if it’s one of our best albums until some time has passed and I can look back.”