The average life expectancy for most rock bands is somewhat short of ten years, probably closer to five – hell, even the greats only have a limited shelf life, and the names only really live on through the musical legacy bequeathed to posterity. In that context then, its seems somewhat remarkable that Denmark's PRETTY MAIDS are fast approaching their 25th anniversary, even more so that they're still regularly churning out great records to boot. Their latest offering ‘Wake Up To The Real World' comes after a longer than usual (for them at least) lay off, but is once again a fine effort cast in that classic Maids' style. DAVE COCKETT talks to vocalist RONNIE ATKINS about the renewed focus and energy in the band. The last Pretty Maids opus (the altogether heavier ‘Planet Panic') hit the streets in the spring of 2002. This was followed by a small European tour, and then a live effort (‘Alive At Least')... but since then, very little. It was almost as if the band had sunk without trace. Ronnie picks up the story.

"Well, when we finished the ‘Planet Panic' tour," he explains, "we wanted, or I should perhaps say I wanted, to take a year off. I felt that we were beginning to repeat ourselves, and I just wanted to take a break from songwriting. Actually, when you think about it, we had been pretty productive up until that point. In the 80's we had something like 2-3 years between albums, which in itself was too long; but right through the 90's we had a new album out almost every 18 months or something like that. And I just felt that we'd done three albums in a row that were all pretty similar to each other, so I needed to get away from that."

"That was one thing," he continues, "the other thing was that I just got so goddamned fed up of the business side of things. We were having problems with our management company, a lot of problems... and towards the end of 2002 they went bankrupt. They'd been involved in something called The Wig Wam Tour, which had basically cost us an awful lot of money. Since then we haven't really had any management organisation behind us, which hasn't helped to speed things along. That's partly our own fault I guess, but you know, with what happened we kind of lost faith in all of that. We do have representation again now but that's more like an agency thing. So basically, what with one thing and another, Pretty Maids ended up in some kind of limbo for a couple of years. We never intended to call it a day, I think I really just needed to take a break from it,. and then one thing after another stopped us from getting it going again for a while."

At one point, it certainly looked as if the band might be destined never to get back together again.

"For a while it was just down to me and how I felt about it all, " admits Ronnie. "We'd been doing it for so long, and I felt we were getting stale... and then the thing happened with our management which hit us really hard. So I just wanted to step back and take stock, and think about what I wanted to do. And eventually, I decided it was just too important a part of my life, but when we started writing again, other things started happening to get in the way. Ken had a heart attack at the end of 2003 which obviously set us back a bit, then our bass player went through a messy divorce, and on top of that, our drummer decided to leave. One thing just seemed to lead to another, ha-ha! We'd been doing a few recording sessions on and off, but things just kept happening and it basically went on like that until last summer when Michael (Fast) left the band."

Fortunately, their luck was about to change for the better.

"When Michael left the band," says Ronnie, "it meant that we had to find ourselves a new drummer (former Royal Hunt man Allan Tschicaja), and when he came into the band it brought a whole new energy to Pretty Maids .. and that's how we finished off the album. His arrival gave us the fresh start we needed, primarily because he played in a completely different way to Michael. Most of the material was written between November last year, and April this year. We'd had quite a few song ideas over the last three or four years actually, but in the end, we only used a couple of them, most of the album is totally new stuff."

With Michael being part of the band since the ‘Sin Decade' album, parting company can't have been easy.

"Well," muses Ronnie, "in the end, being with Michael socially was getting to be a drag, and when you play with a guy who doesn't really want to be in the band then it starts to get complicated. And in many ways, I can't really blame him for getting frustrated because we spent a lot of time on and off just writing ... I guess he just got fed up with waiting. That's probably the main reason, but I don't think he felt comfortable in the band any more. He has his own thing, some kind of promotion agency that he runs, and he wanted to concentrate more on that."

Michael isn't the first casualty in the Pretty Maids camp, and chances are he won't be the last. As long as both Ronnie and guitarist Ken Hammer remain, the band will remain viable... at least in the eyes of the fans.

"We take the final decisions when it comes down to it," Ronnie agrees, "but it's still a fairly democratic process when we started recording or stuff like that. Everybody in the band is encouraged to offer their opinion, particularly when it comes around to scheduling shows or tours, but when it comes to overall decisions, in the end, it falls to Ken and me and the other guys respect that. If Ken was to come up to me one day and tell me he wanted to quit, that would be the end of the band. He's such an essential part of what makes Pretty Maids for me, I can't see it continuing without him being part of it, and I guess he feels the same way. I can't answer for him, but we're still the songwriters, just like we were in the old days. You could say that we were the two egos that made the band what it is today, ha-ha! Back then, we definitely didn't give too much room to the other guys in the band, but it's hard to let go if you have such a strong focus and similar goals. So, I guess it was natural that we would continue to control the band, but that doesn't mean we wouldn't listen if one of the other guys came up with a good idea."

Taking a step backwards, it makes a refreshing change to hear a musician admit that he felt the band were starting to repeat themselves.

"Although I love ‘Spooked'," says Ronnie, "and I think it's still probably the best album we've done in the last 10-15 years, that whole four album run up to ‘Planet Panic' was starting to sound the same to me. Okay, ‘Planet Panic' was a little different because we tried to experiment a bit on a couple of the tracks, and it's probably a heavier album overall, but it still sounded like Pretty Maids. And really, I'm not complaining about that because that's our identity, that's who we are... even when we try to sound like somebody else, which we have done in the past, its still ends up sounding like Pretty Maids. It was just a personal thing. I needed to take a break from it all and refocus, and I think taking that break really helped because I realised that even though I was feeling fed up of the whole thing, I could never really give it up. I did for a little while, but then I began to miss it all, so I picked up a guitar and started writing again."

"I think that's something you're born with," adds Ronnie, "something deep within you that never really leaves you. You can try to keep away from it, but at the end of the day, you always come back. I mean, give me a couple of beers and I'll start writing a song, ha-ha! Somebody once said it's like an antenna or something. I don't really know where it comes from, but if Kenny and I sit together, he takes his guitar and I take mine and we start to write songs. A lot of our songs are written on two guitars actually - if he plays a riff I'll come up with a melody, or vice versa. Sometimes I'll come up with a riff, or an idea for a riff, but of course I can't play them like Kenny so I give them to him to work with, After all these years, we each know how the other person thinks!"

Listening to new album ‘Wake Up to the Real World', the first thing that strikes is that melodies seem to be back big time. If ‘Planet Panic' was the heaviest Pretty Maids album since ‘Scream', then this one comes across as a real throwback to the 80's and albums such as ‘Future World' and ‘Jump The Gun'.

"A lot of people have said that," Ronnie nods. "We never really intended it to be like that when we started writing, and to be honest it wasn't until I started to hear the feedback from journalists and the fans that I actually started to think that way. We just wanted to make a good Pretty Maids album, and in some respects I think it's perhaps a little too commercial, although the positive thing is that we seem to have pleased the people who like that side of the band. It was never our intention to consciously move back towards the 80's stuff, but some of the songs definitely have what I call the primitive touch, ha-ha! I don't mean that in a negative way ... I guess you could say that it's just come full circle."

Since their major label deal came to an end in the mid 90's, most Pretty Maids albums came out via Massacre, but with Frontiers picking up ‘Wake Up...' that association seems to have run it's course.

"I never really felt too good about those guys to be honest," says Ronnie frankly, "especially on the business side of things. It all actually started with our old management, and there was lots of stuff that happened that I didn't particularly like ... I never really felt that I could trust those guys, you know. But when we started to spread the word that we had a new album, there were a lot of companies interested, it wasn't like we really had to try that hard to shop the record. We played at the Rock Hard festival last year and when I got back home we actually received quite a lot of offers... not from everybody of course, I mean we're not Iron Maiden, ha-ha! We were actually pretty close to signing with another German company when Frontiers contacted us out of the blue at the last minute. Basically, they just came in with a better offer and we had a gut feeling that it was the right thing for us to do. And so far I'm pretty pleased with them, they certainly seem to have a pretty good marketing set up judging by the number of interviews I've been doing! It's a one album deal with an option, which is exactly what we were looking for."

Gone are the days when record companies could lock bands into lengthy deals, and then manipulate them as they saw fit.

"That was pretty much our life back in the 80's and the beginning of the 90's," recalls Ronnie. "We were stuck with that from about '83, to '93 on CBS Sony. Every time we wanted to do a new album we had to do demo's for them, and they would say ‘We like this', or 'We don't like that', ‘Change this, do that ...' ... it was all very frustrating. Nowadays I don't want anybody to tell me what to do, we're the best judges of what does or doesn't work for the band. Then again, it won't be released if people don't like what we're doing, but basically what I'm saying is that we want to do our own thing... people should know what we're all about by now anyway."

As ever, the band are keen to get back on the road to support the album, but with the festive season fast approaching, the reality of that is that it's likely to be several months down the line.

"We have a couple of one off gigs here in Denmark in December," confirms Ronnie. "It's something that we've done a couple of times now, just to see if we can remember what to do, ha-ha! But that's not the real tour, the real tour comes up next spring and it's being worked at right now. I'm not sure exactly when it will happen but we definitely want to tour to promote the album and maybe play a few festivals too. We do however have to consider the financial aspects of it because we've all got families to take care of. It's been four years now since we last toured and there's nothing I'd rather do than get back out to play for the fans again, but I'm a realist. There seems to be lots of tours going out now with three bands, so obviously they're the ones that are passable, so maybe we could do something like that. Or maybe if there was a possibility to do something with one of the bigger bands, that would be fantastic. Not from the financial side of things maybe, but just to go out and get the promotion and get the chance to perform for a lot of people again... like we used to in the 80's."

"Something like that would be really cool," he continues, "but then again, I wouldn't mind playing the clubs ... maybe the bigger clubs with a support band. You have to grab whatever opportunities you can whilst they're there but we need to see what's possible first. I just want to give the fans the opportunity to see the band play live again .. in the UK as well, we haven't played in the UK since 1985 when we toured with Saxon. We haven't played in a lot of countries in Eastern Europe and stuff like that... there's a lot of places I'd still like to play."

Perhaps this is the start of a renaissance for the band?

"I dunno," ponders Ronnie, "let's see what happens. It's hard to predict, but also I'm not naïve, I think I'm pretty aware of how the scene is right now. I know if you've got a new album out and there are a lot of good reviews, it all sounds very romantic, but I mean... let's see what happens. It's not the same focus as it was back in the 80's, and of course there's not the same money involved. I look back now on the 80's as something unique ... at the time I don't think I realised just how fortunate we were. I mean, we went to America, we were making videos and there was a lot of money spent on the band. And we did a lot of stupid things too, you know, which is the reason why we are where we are, ha-ha! But it was great really... I had so much fun, it was fantastic. And looking back on it now, I just have fond memories of it all. We've been riding up and down now for 25 years, and even the downers had their good points. I think that's the way you have to look at it..."

Whilst tour plans are still hazy at the moment, one thing that is on the agenda is a live DVD.

"That's very much in the planning stages right now," Ronnie confirms, "and I think I can say with almost 99% certainty, that we're gonna do a live DVD next year. There's never really been any visual from the band before... and if you look at us, you know why, there's a good reason for it, ha-ha! But for the last few years, since the DVD medium really broke, we've had lots of requests for it from the fans. And we've also talked about using some of the old video's we did back in the 80's as bonus material. I think the last video we did was for ‘If It Ain't Gonna Change' from the ‘Stripped' album back in '93 – that was recorded in Stockholm, but we haven't done anything since then. We've done a few Danish TV appearances and stuff like that, but if you call them up and say ‘Can we get a copy of this?' ... jeez, they know how to fuckin' charge! The idea was there like 3-5 years ago when we did the 20th anniversary tour, but I just remember it being so expensive. But still, it would be a lot of fun to get some of those old videos and TV appearances... that would be something for the hard core fans, definitely."

So, with Pretty Maids now seemingly back on track and with their best album in a decade under their belts, the next twelve months look fairly promising to say the least. And, if you want to see the band come over to the UK and play, you know what to do... over to you guys!