"Future World" 1986-1987
"Future World" 1986-1987
Lovegames was the first song that was written for the album that eventually became Future World. It was written late '84 just about the time when Red, Hot and Heavy was released. During the spring of '85, Rodeo and Yellow Rain were the next songs to be penned. It was a bit of in between rehearsals for playing festivals and the ongoing promotion for Red, Hot and Heavy which was released in Europe at that time. Some time in late summer '85, Hammer and I were hanging out in his apartment listening to records which we regular did and I remember that in particular LA bands like Ratt, Rough Cutt and in particular a band from Arizona called Icon (especially their second album: Night of the crime) had quite an impact on us back then. But on that day we listened to the first King Cobra album and one of the songs from that album, can't remember which, did actually inspire us to write the title track for the forthcoming album. First it was in fact entitled Afterworld but of course later named Future World.
To this day, I personally would state that if I had to pick one song from our entire back catalogue as the best one, it probably would be Future World since it simply contains all the ingredients that identify the band at its best, a great guitar riff, good vocal melodies and nice keyboards. The mixture of all that is what does it for me. Though I think we've written a lot of good stuff since that, I still see Future World the song, as something unique. On top of that it's one of the songs that I still enjoy to play live. With 4 songs almost finished in the can, plus a couple of riffs and ideas, we spent the rest of the year more or less on the road promoting our then current album Red, Hot and Heavy. In late November '85 we hooked up with Tommy Hansen again to do some demos of the new materiel. We recorded Future World, Yellow rain, Lovegames, Rodeo and a brand new song called Too Much Too Fast (it eventually ended up as Youngblood in a slightly different version on the Jump the Gun album). Anyway ET and an A&R guy from CBS in Copenhagen came over and listened to the new stuff, and they liked what they heard and wanted to hear more songs. In February '86 we lent a summer residence on a little island called Samsoe in Denmark. We brought our gear and some rough ideas and got on with the songwriting for a week or two. As soon as we turned up the amps, we immediately were approached by a local neighbor who obviously thought a nuclear bomb was brought to explosion on his cozy little island, just to realize that it was a bunch of longhaired youngsters out to have a good time. He told us to lower the volume right away. We did, until he left. We had a real good time while being there though there was absolutely nothing going on there in the middle of winter. Of course the ideas weren't popping up all the time so when we running on empty we would either play video games, watch movies (mostly porn movies though) or just party on. But we were quite productive. At least We Came to Rock and Needles in the Dark were both written in that period and as I remember, we finished off Loud and Proud as well.
Around March/April we did some very rough demos of these songs plus some more or less unfinished songs with the working titles Empty Streets and Bringing on the Bad News once again with Tommy Hansen. Now CBS international were starting to show interest in the band and the Americans as well. Partly due to the sales of Red, Hot and Heavy but also because of the new materiel that were send to them. Now was the time to start looking for a producer and the right place to record it. CBS in London came up with a guy called Tony Platt with whom we met in Copenhagen In may, but I guess the chemistry wasn't there. Tony was a kind of in house producer for CBS London at the time and we weren't amazed by his works. Our top priority and wishes in the band were guys like Beau Hill, Peter Collins, Chris Tsangerides, Tom Alomn and of course John Mutt Lange (though we knew that was an unrealistic wish). None of these were apparently possible to get involved, since they were either too expensive or simply not available in the summer of '86. CBS international wanted us to have a household name to produce the new album and so did we. The choice fell on Eddie Kramer who was available and willing to take on the job. Kramer who made his name working with such artists as Jimi Hendrix, Led Zeppelin and Kiss just to name a few. However it was his involvement with Icon's, Night of the Crime album that actually caused our attention. What we didn't know was that when we hired him he had apparently been sacked from the last three or four projects that he'd been involved in, due to personal problems with the bands, as we later found out. Kramer suggested that we recorded the album in America and we had no obstructions to that idea. Before the deal with Kramer, who after all was pretty expensive, was signed, CBS wanted us to put our signatures to a new deal. It was a bit of, if you don't sign this piece of paper the whole deal is off. And as we didn't care much for the financial side of the rock 'n' roll business, as long as we just had money enough to get by on a daily basis. We signed it and were hung up on a very bad deal for our part, the next seven years. And let me add that in those seven years we sold a lot of records.
Eddie Kramer arrived in Denmark in the middle of June and we got straight into preproduction for the forthcoming album. Eddie who was a very nice and gentle fellow seemed very enthusiastic to begin with. He didn't exactly carry the image that we had of a rock 'n' roller and looked quite the opposite. However we spend the first couple of days playing the songs over and over in our rehearsal room and then booked ourselves into a little studio in Aarhus (DK) to see if we could come up with another song or two. One night out of the blue came Eye of the Storm, which was the last song to be written for the album. In the beginning of July we flew to America. Once we arrived at the JFK we were picked up and taken straight up to Woodstock, one and a half our north of New York by car. We were set up in two cottages with a nice swimming pool in the back of the garden. The Bearsville studios were based in the middle of the woods, on a very beauty full nature site indeed. Woodstock the town, Was a very cozy little village, and some of the Hippies and flower power people from '69 when the festival took place was still hanging around there, they never left. And there we would spend the next four months. A normal day would turn out like this: Get up at around 10 am and eat breakfast, meet in the studio at around noon, work for about 10 to 12 hours. Then straight down to the Woodstock pub and getting ourselves shitfaced in gallons of Budweiser's and Jack 'n' Coke. From there we normally went back to the cottages and continued the party at the pool with the entourage that we picked up at the pub (or somewhere else). That was a pattern we followed more or less every single day during our stay there.
We immediately picked up on the American life style and enjoyed it to the full. One night at one of our parties I picked up a giant watermelon the size of an atom bomb and dropped it on the floor, I can't remember weather I did it on purpose or not. Anyway the result looked like something out of the Texas Chainsaw Massacre and when the studio owner found out the day after he went totally ape shit. The guy named Ronnie Lyons had quite a nasty reputation, which we did not know about at the time. But the next day he approached us in the studio hallway and said to Kenny, if you guys don't behave I'm gonna shoot you in the knee caps. Then he looked at me and said: But not you Ronnie, I'm gonna cut your throat so you can't sing, and he looked like he fucking meant it. The fact that he always carried a gun made us take him rather seriously. A real loonie. Well into the recordings Eddie called up Graham Bonnet and Jimmy Waldo of Alcatrazz with whom he had worked with recently, to come over to New York and help out with respectively backing vocals and keyboard sounds. We flew them in from Los Angeles and spent a couple of exiting days with them. Bonnet who six years earlier was the singer of Ritchie Blackmore's Rainbow were of course an excellent choice of a backing vocalist, since we were all huge fans of Rainbow and grew up with them. This relatively little fellow with his James Dean haircut and his Hawaiian shirts had probably the loudest and most powerful voice that I'd ever heard, incredible real and besides that a very nice guy too. But the recordings what so ever seemed to take forever and Eddie started to get on everybody's nerves (including the studio personal). He demanded that everybody was speaking English during the process but when we spoke between us, we usually spoke in our native Danish since it seemed natural. But Eddie was so curious in every sense and absolutely hated when he missed something. And of course the more pissed of he got, the more Danish we spoke. Apart from that Eddie defined himself as one of rock 'n' rolls absolutely all time great producers, but the truth was that he didn't know shit about modern day technology. On top of that he couldn't stay awake during the night sessions when I did my vocals. On more than one occasion I'd come out of the vocal box and into the control room where Eddie were laying bent over the mixing council and say: Well Eddie, so what do you think, was it okay or???, and Eddie would often with his eyes half way open reply, yeah it was great Ronnie, but could you do it again? Something had to go and it was Eddie.
A guy came over from the record company and took a listen to what we'd achieved so far and wasn't too pleased. Eddie Kramer was fired right on the spot from one day to another. But due to his contract, still got paid his 40.000 US dollars for something like four or five weeks work, not such a bad deal for Eddie in fact. He might have been a hot shot producer in the early seventies, but in '86 he was over the hill, History! Me, Hammer and Owen carried on finishing the project with the engineer, Cris Isca, with whom we went along fine. When it came to the mixing of the album some of the producers and engineers who we'd met during our long stay at Bearsville studios were considered. The studio had two separate studios and the other one were occupied by such big names as Tina Turner, Huey Lewis and Simply Red, while we were there. At the end of the day we ended up with Chris having a go at mixing it, and in late October it was completed and we returned to Denmark. Back home and after a couple of weeks off, we started listening to what we'd done in America. We sort of knew the songs were there but the mixes simply did not come out of the speakers as we wanted it. CBS weren't too happy with it either so we decided to remix at least some of it. We booked ourselves into the Easy Sound Studios in Copenhagen and once again dragged Tommy Hansen in to handle the buttons. We spent nearly two weeks there working at night, with no result. It just didn't sound right, still wasn't there. At the same time Swedish hard rockers Europe were hitting it big time with their song The Final Countdown. Europe were as we signed to Epic Records (a subdivision of CBS) in America, and they suddenly saw us as the next big potential coming out of Scandinavia. They suggested that longtime Journey and recently Europe producer Kevin Elson mixed some of the more melodic tracks of the album, and that we found someone to mix the heavier stuff. Flemming Rasmussen who by now had made his name producing Metallica lately was approached and was willing to take on the job. Flemming, who we would work with several times in the years to come, was an easy going guy, a nice person in every sense and he really brought some energy into the tapes. In December we checked into the Sweet Silence Studios and mixed 5 of the songs with him in charge, and we were happy with the outcome.
In the beginning of January, Hammer and I flew out to sunny California to mix the remaining songs with Kevin Elson. CBS saw Lovegames, Rodeo and Long Way to Go as radio potential songs and we spend a little week in the San Francisco area finishing these songs with Elson. After that we went to Los Angeles and stayed there for a week at Jimmy Wado's flat out in Sherman Oakes. Jimmy showed us around the LA circuit and took us to some parties where we hung out with bands such as Rough Cutt and Keel. The front cover for Future World was drawn by a guy called Joe Petagno who was living in Copenhagen. Petagno was mostly known for his work with Motorhead and we thought he did a real good job on the Future World thing, we were pleased with it. I guess that's more than you can say about the back cover, more specific the photos. CBS in Copenhagen had hired a stylist/designer to come up with the clothes we were to wear and I guess we ended up looking like some mix between Prince and a modern day version of Star Trek. Not exactly what we aimed at, but I guess it was all right back then. The next thing that happened was that we decided to bring in a second guitarist to the band once again. During the German leg of the Saxon tour we met a guy called Angel Schleifer who then played in a band called Vamp and who was really into the stuff we did. In '87 he played in anther German band called Sinner, who was on tour in the beginning of the year. They happened to play in Hamburg which isn't too far from where we live, so we went down to check him out. We liked what we saw and invited him up for an audition and he stood the test by really having his shit together, a real flash guitarist and a very nice guy too. So finally in April '87, Future World was released worldwide and a lot of promotion were waiting just around the corner. The album had great reviews and receptions everywhere and started selling right away. Epic records in America ordered us back to New York to shoot videos for the use of MTV. They now seemed to finally give us the priority that we all wished for and hired the guy who'd done the recent Bon Jovi videos for Slippery When Wet among others. The video for Lovegames were shot on the top of a skyscraper just next to the empire state building. Future World were shot in a studio in NY and partly in California. During our stay in N.Y we were followed by a Danish TV crew who wanted to do a TV special on us, which was going to be broadcasted later that year. We stayed at the Hilton hotel right in the middle of Manhattan for about ten days and had our first real taste of what it meant to be rock stars in America. We were being transported around in limo's, did tons of phoners, Magazines and radio interviews and at late night we were taken out to eat at some of the best and fashionable restaurants in New York city. It was our first experience of what a real extensive promotion tour was all about, something we'd go through a lot of times in the years to come.
Back in Europe, Hammer and I carried on with the promo thing. The album was now really taking of especially in Germany and France. First we spend a couple of days in Cologne where we did the German press, then straight off to Paris, where we were based for a week and then travelled out to all the bigger cities either by plane or train to do the French part of it. After that it was time for Scandinavia where we decided to go by car, me, hammer and ET (our then manager). But faith would have it that on the boat from Stockholm to Helsinki, we of course had nothing else to do than drink our brains out. The problem was that when we arrived in Helsinki and drove off the boat at least ET's brains wasn't fully restored or let's just say that he hadn't got writ of all the alcohol he consumed the night before. And of course we were stopped by the police and poor ET had to walk backwards down a 100 meter line so they could check his balance. On top of that they wanted him to count from hundred to zero in German, ha ha ha, me and Hammer were sitting in the car almost pissing our pants. What a fucking laugh!!! For some reason situations like this would always happen to poor ET and of course they took his drivers license. However it didn't knock our ET, who after all thought it was quite funny too. Coincidently, ET had Manowar touring Scandinavia at the same time and it just happened to click with our promo route, so we jumped onboard their tour bus and spend a couple of day with Joey Di Mayo and the guys, really cool dudes and a lots of fun to be with. Everything just seemed to go our way that year. Future World was now on the American billboard charts and the videos went on heavy rotation on MTV in America. At the same time we were offered to go out with Deep Purple in late summer, on a four week European tour playing stadiums and the biggest halls. The tour also included to two Monsters of Rock dates in Germany with Purple headlining with such other acts as Metallica, Dio, Ratt etc. But before the European tour was to take off, ET suggested we did a warm up tour in Hungary of all places to tighten up the band and it seemed like a good idea. That was in the days of the Communist regime and you never really knew what to expect when you went to an Eastern European country. I think we were supposed to play something like 10 gigs but only ended up playing 5 or 6 due to totally bad organization. For instance on the day before we played the first gig, we picked up a local newspaper and found out that the gig we were gonna play that same night had already been reviewed as if we had already played the gig. It was supposingly a good review, so we really had something to live up to, ha ha. The only city I actually remember by name was Budapest, there we played a big outdoor thing with some local bands supporting us and it was really great. I mean the Hungarians were so hungry to see and listen to a western band, that you felt really sorry for them that they so rarely had the opportunity to do so.
The tour which took place in June is definitely one of the most memorable ones. There were so many funny moments that it deserves a chapter of its own. On the last night we held as usual a big party. We had so much of the local money which we couldn't bring out of the country and didn't have time to spent anyway. So into the early hours of the following day after gallons of champagne and booze and beers we (led by ET) started to throw all these money out of the window of the hotel, which caused an absolute roar on the street underneath us. People were jumping up and down to get some of it. The hotel direction wasn't too pleased with us since a couple of TV sets had obviously got out of the windows too, so ET was presented with quite a heavy bill for all the damage done. In fact it wasn't the first time we'd had trouble with hotel managers. In '85 we were banned for eternity after a water fight that obviously caused severe damage at the Novotell hotel chain in Germany. In another incident (the same year) we damaged an entire floor going crazy with a fire extinguisher, that incident was pretty costly. But that was part of the game the way we saw it, that was Rock 'n' roll and need I say ET himself always took part. On August 13 the tour kicked off. We first played a couple of gigs on our own in Denmark and then hooked up with Deep Purple some days later in Helsinki. Everything just went smooth and we simply enjoyed being out on the road with some of our absolute heroes. We were treated very nice by the Purple organization, both by the band and their crew and even Ritchie Blackmore invited Hammer and myself to attend his entourage after the concerts, where he used to do little magic tricks and gags. Ritchie who only communicated with the other guys in Purple through his personal assistant, had his own dressing room, stayed on separate hotels and had his own flights booked when he travelled. So he was indeed as the rumors have it, a strange and mysterious guy, but friendly though, at least to us. During daytime we used to play a lot of soccer with him and the locals in whatever city we were.
The highlight of the tour was the Monsters of Rock festival in Nuremberg playing in front of 60.000 people. We were the first to go on and I remember that I was as nervous as I've have ever been looking out facing this enormous crowd gathered there. It took several rolls of toilet paper prior walking on stage that particular day but as soon as the words: Would you please welcome CBS recording artist PRETTY MAIDS!!!, and a mighty roar came back from the audience, we knew we were about to have a great experience. We got out there played a relatively short but effective set and had a fantastic reception. I have clips of it on video and it still gives me goose bumps when I watch it today. The next day we were supposed to play the second of the two Monsters of Rock appearances, but for some reason the truck with all our backline gear and instruments got stuck in some cue line on the motorway and didn't make it in time. We had to cancel and it was a major blow to everyone, all we could do was to stand at the festival site and watch the other bands go down a storm. Real bad luck. The last leg of the tour with Purple was in Italy, where we never had played before. The first stop was in Milan, where we played two nights at some big hall. The first day we went out to have a look around and found a nice bar in the city square. The weather was fantastic and we started drinking pitchers and in true Maids style we continued until we were more or less shitfaced. Time flies when you're having fun and we nearly missed the sound check. That first night was really up the hill since we were all pretty fucked up after our daytime drinking session and really had to fight for every single applause. That day we promised ourselves never to drink before a concert, a promise that we have actually kept ever since apart maybe for on or two occasions. We ended the tour with Deep Purple at the mighty arena in Verona, a fantastic place. After the Purple tour, we continued the tour for a couple of weeks headlining ourselves. We played a string of dates in Germany and France and finished the whole thing by playing a bunch of completely sold out shows in our home country of Denmark. Future World had been a massive success, an overall breakthrough for us in particular Europe. When we finished the tour it was still selling strongly and today I regret that we didn't stay on the road a little longer. We were young, riding on success and the band was firing on all cylinders. In July we had an offer to go out with Whitesnake for three weeks in America, but at that time we had already committed ourselves to the Purple tour. I would really have loved to have a crack at America at that time. But it was decided that we went straight back into rehearsals to write a quick follow up to Future World and so we did. However, faith would have it that it wouldn't turn out as easy as we would have wished for.
Comments
Posted On
May 13, 2010Posted By
Robert DAntonioGreat read Ronnie!!! i remember first hearing "Future World" back in 1988 here is the states and I was completly blown away. Still a big fan at 41.
Posted On
Sep 02, 2010Posted By
patrikso cool to read this...hey, was the King Kobra song called "Hunger" or "hungry" or something similar? Cheesy but good tune.
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