Pretty Maids

Pretty Maids

After a nine months long vacation PRETTY MAIDS are back on track. On 22nd September, the Independance day for Bulgaria, the band performed as headliners on Lovetch Rock Fest 2016. After the gig we talked to the band about the new album, side projects, marriage and life.

MH18: Hi, how was this first gig for you?
Ronnie Atkins: Tonight was the first show with PRETTY MAIDS in nine months since last year and I felt so good being with the boys from the band again on stage. This was our first gig with the new keboard player and everybody was a little rusty and we had hangovers from yesterday.
Chris Laney: To start with I was all nervous so I couldn’t think the first three songs. It wasn’t my keybord and the shit didn’t work like it should and stuff like that, so I had my mind somewhere else. But after a few songs it felt just magical, it was fun. What I mean is, this is first show and PRETTY MAIDS haven’t been playing for nine months and this is also the first show with me so of course there are a lot of nerves in the band and now everyone is happy. I think we did a good job.

MH18: This show tonight was totally awesome in fact!
Ronnie Atkins: Thank you I am so happy to hear that!
Chris Laney: Thank you man, I am so happy!

Chris Laney

Chris Laney

MH18: Chris, this is your first show with PRETTY MAIDS. Please intoduce yourself to the fans.
Chris Laney: My name is Chris Laney and normally I am a producer. So I have done CANDLEMASS, I have done CRASHDIET and some other stuff, I have been doing this for almost 20 years. So that’s how I actually got to know the guys from PRETTY MAIDS. I was trying to be their producer by doing workout, of course they have a bloody good one, already. But after a while when Morten was out of the band they called me and asked me if I knew someone who can play both keybords and guitar and I said: „I Do“ and that’s how it actually started.

MH18: During the concert you mentioned it was cold here in Bulgaria. Isn’t it colder up north there in Denmark?
Ken Hammer: It is like here, it is not colder. Even though it is nighttime I expected it would be warmer.
Rene Shades: September is a funny month, isn’t it?

MH18: Let’s talk about the new album – Kingmaker. Can you please tell us about the directions of this album. Is it a concept one?
Ken Hammer: No it is not a concept album. it is just an album with songs we wrote in a very short period of time. Yes, we had some of the riffs but basically most of the album was written within one month or something.
Chris Laney: Seriously, it is the best, it is a way up there than Pandemonium to me, it is fantastic album and my favourite song is „Bull’s Eye“.

MH18: Chris, did you do the keyboards there?
Chris Laney: I don’t do keybords on the album. PRETTY MAIDS used a session guy. But I did record a guitar solo with Ken, as an engineer. Nothing was set actually, they did the album as they were looking for a keybord player. But who knows what happens? And I love the album, I got the album, they sent it off to me before it was done asking me what I thought, so I feel involved in it.

MH18: Was it difficult because Ronnie had a busy year with NORDIC UNION and with AVANTASIA?
Ken Hammer: No, no, no that worked out before. He wrote the songs before he went out to perform for AVANTASIA project.

MH18: Ronnie, please tell us more about your side work with NORDIC UNION and AVANTASIA?
Ronnie Atkins: Basically I was asked from Serafino Perugino from Frontier Records to participate on an album, if I wanted to sing on an album of 10-11 songs. Ten years ago I would not have done such thing, but now things are different anyway, so my answer to Serafino was: „Well, why not. I can do 10-11 songs written by another song writter“. But I told Serafino If I am going to do this, it is going to be a good standard and those got to be good songs. And the first songs I got were not good. Serafino said then „Would you write with this guy, singer from ECLIPSE and producer, he would like you to send you two songs, that he wrote with your voice in mind?“ . So I got the song called „Hypocrisy“ and „When Death Is calling“ and when I heard these two songs I said „Hey, these are good songs and I would like to do these“ and that is basically it. It was great to me. After doing PRETTY MAIDS singing for 35 years it was fun to me. I was asked in the beginnig of NORDIC UNION project if I wanted to participate in the songwriting but I said „No, I am going to do the album if I am just going to sing and have no responsibility because in PRETTY MAIDS I am one of the bosses and have a lot of responsibilities“. So I wrote something like two lyrics for the album. It came out and went very successful. The same thing with AVANTASIA. Actually Tobias called me 16 years ago for the fist Metal Opera album. Back then I wouldn’t do it. And I told him I didn’t have the time to do this. Then, I met him on a boat in 2012 on this metal cruise 70 000 Tons of Metal and we had a conversation. Then he called through a mutual friends of ours and asked: „Do you wanna sing a song on the new album?“. I was on „Invoke The Machine“ from The Mystery Of Time album and he asked me to join in the tour but back then I felt like a hard gun. But these days I am a good friend of Tobi, I have a lot of good friends in AVANTASIA, I mean Jorn, Michael Kiske, all the singers. The band, the crew is like one big family. I love those guys.

MH18: „Face The World“ video starts with a message „It is not destination but the journey that is important“. How do you see your journey through the years and how do you see your current destination?
Ken Hammer: We have not reached the destination yet and the journey is fun. Like John Lennon said once „Life is what’s happening when you are making plans about the future“.
Chris Laney: I think I found my new home. I have done three solo albums, I have played in different bands i.e. with Randy Piper in ANIMAL (ex-W.A.S.P. guitarist), I have done so many albums with different bands. I have been a PRETTY MAIDS fan since I was young, so being in this band is ………. I am just the luckiest guy alive.

MH18: So how you do feel now in the band?
Chris Laney: It is so new. I mean this is my first gig and we have been rehearsing three time before this show. Since I live in Stokholm, Rene lives in Spain, so there is a lot of travelling to get together, but it feels fantastic and I mean I’ve loved PRETTY MAIDS since I was 12 and that is back in ’83-’84.

MH18: The new song from Kingmaker – „Humanize Me“ and „Derranged“ from Louder Than Ever deal with the topic about people who had lost direction. Do you lose direction sometimes or you just see what happens more and more around you?
Ken Hammer: That’s a hard question and good one indeed. It is a general feeling how we see life from our point of view. Yes, a lot of people lose direction ………   Many songs from the new album are very political but we are not a political band anyway. We have this genaral feeling from the countries we live in. It is not political, but everytime you have an opinion, it is political. This is more observation, than opinion and we write about it.
Rene Shades: We are lucky to see many other countries and different people too.

MH18: Tonight your performed the „Kingmaker“ song. It is the first time audience listens to this song.
Chris Laney: It is the fisrt time anyone hears this song, it was fun. It is a great song. We played two songs from the new album: „Face The World“ and „Kingmaker“ and it is always fun to play new stuff even for the other guys.

MH18: Since Pandemonium album in 2010 PRETTY MAIDS are in new era. It sounds like you have an exposion of ideas about the songwriting. What is the secret?
Ken Hammer: I f***ing wish I could tell you that. If I knew that, I would have done it earlier. Obviously Jacob Hansen, the producer helped a lot pushing the band into this new era. There was Wake Up To The Real World and the next step sound-wise as well was Pandemonium and then Motherland. He just changed the band’s sound. Yes, it sounds like a new band, but still with the same songs. Just sounds better.
Rene Shades: You can still say it is the same band no matter if you listen to Wake Up To The Real World or Future World or Motherland.

MH18: Can you tell something about Morten Sandager and the reasons to split?
Ken Hammer: There is not really much to talk about. Morten made a decision he did not want to be in the band anymore for personal reasons. If you want to dig deeper into what the personal reasons were, you should ask Morten. But we are still at friendly terms, there are no bad feelings, no bad blood.
Rene Shades: It can be also very tiring to be playing all the time, sometimes you need other things in your life.
Ken Hammer: If you are not all in, and may be he wasn’t at the end, it is better to quit, which he did. He called me up recently and we spoke friendly.

MH18: Ken, you and Ronnie are like the core of PRETTY MAIDS. A lot of musicians came and went away through the years. Were there some splits which were more emotional than others?
PRETTY MAIDS: It is always emotional, it is always emotional, of course it is. When a brother leaves the band it is like a family member who leaves the family. Of course it is emotional, but when you pass that emotional feeling you accept it „so be it, that’s how it is“. When you have been together with a brother for many, many years and you have done hundreds and hundreds of concerts, you are somehow bonded. But sometimes it is also good for a band, it’s not all bad, yes, sometime it is bad, but not always, and sometimes this just gets you to the next level.
Rene Shades: I think emotionally Ken would never want to change one member. You can compare this like the mafia movies and the marriage (laughing).

MH18: Amazing comparison to a marriage actually.
Ken Hammer: When you get married to a girl you say: „I am going to be with this girl for the rest of my life“ and that’s why you married, but later on small things just happen so you do not stay together for whatever reason. And people ask you: „What happened between you and your wife, you looked so happy“ – „Yeah, we looked so happy at one point …….“

MH18: You asked your fans about their favourite songs from your albums at your Facebook page. Do you prepare best songs collection or setlist for live recording?
Ken Hammer: The whole idea behind that was just to give a little update about each and every album and how we saw it from our point of view when it was recorded. It is always nice to get some input from the fans.
Rene Shades: We did talk about the next tours to maybe have one or two songs a night that were voted by the fans.

MH18: What is you perfect setlist if you do not take the opinion of the audience?
Ken Hammer: That’s all the new songs! Think about it, we have been going on for about 35 years and every time you make a new album you want to do the new stuff. But because so many people expect to hear a lot from the older stuff we have to cover that as well. It is difficult.

MH18: Are there songs which you wished to play but someone told you „the audience is not going to be happy with this song“
Ken Hammer: We have that sometimes as well, for example tonight we played „Rock The House“ just because we liked it.
Rene Shades: There were things in the past like there were two guitar players or just one guitar players so there had been some limitations for some songs. Now we are very lucky we have a keyboard player who can play rhythm guitars.

MH18: Is there a song written by other band or composer which you feel it was perfect to you?
Ken Hammer: „Please Don’t Leave Me“. That is my case (laughing).

MH18: One quetion from the past: why did you use nicknames when you formed the band?
Ronnie Atkins: My real name is Paul Christensen, this is Dannish name. We signed with an English company back in 1983 and we were told not to use our Dannish names, but use english names. I would never have done this today.

MH18: What are your final words for the fans in Bulgaria?
Chris Laney: I am the biggest fan ever, I am a fan too and I am a fan of PRETTY MAIDS and I am a just a lucky guy to be in the band now. I can’t wait what the future has to bring, it’s going to be fun.
Ken Hammer: We love Bulgaria, it is great coming back here!
Ronnie Atkins: I love playing here, I have been in Bulgaria the last two years with PRETTY MAIDS and AVANTASIA – f*** amazing audience! It is great to play here because we never had the chance to do it in the 80’s and the 90’s. I love the Bulgarian people because it is a good rocking ground.

MH18: Hope to have back here again in Bulgaria. Thank you!