ROMEO’S DAUGHTER – Spinning Around Elm Street

1.The band has been known mainly from their contribution in the OST of the movie Nightmare On Elm Street, how did this happen and what do you remember from that era?

It was a hugely exciting time for us as a band as the Nightmare on Elm Street films were hugely successful then. It came about that they used Heaven in the Back Seat as our publishing company Zomba was producing the soundtrack to the film and quite a few Jive/Zomba bands were used on the album. I remember that the early 80’s were a great time to be in the music industry, but by 1988, when we released our 1st album, the industry had changed drastically. Melodic Rock bands were slowly being passed over for Grunge bands and it was incredibly difficult to get any radio play. I still woundn‘t change it for anything though – it was a fantastic experience

2. What was your connection with the wife of Mutt Lange and how did she help you?

Olga Lange was our manager and the ex-wife of Matt Lange. He was an incredibly busy at the time with producing bands like AC/DC and Bryan Adams to name a few, but he heard one of our songs called Stay With me Tonight and really liked it. He was only meant to produce a few tracks but went on the do most of the album and John Parr did the others .

3. How did Bonnie Tyler, Chrissy Steele and Eddie Money decide to cover songs from your catalogue?

I am not sure how they heard the songs but it was probably through Zomba, our publishing company. It was incredibly complimentary , especially when Heart recorded Wild Child – that was our favourite cover!

4. Do you think that being a song writer is more profitable than recoding your own tracks?

Only if your songs are covered by a very sucessful artist! There are lot of frustrated song writers out there who dont have bands to play with so i think that Craig Joiner ( who is the supremely talented song writer and guitarist in RD) always gets huge enjoyment out of being able to play his songs live – its not about the money

5. What is your opinion about the music streaming services?

I am in 2 minds about this topic as even though the artists and bands might not get paid for their songs to be streamed and there seems to be very little control over the different sites, it is a great way of getting our tracks heard as it is so incredibly difficult to get radio play here in the UK. I think that it is a necessary evil and there is no going back to the old days when the only way to hear your favourite bands music was to buy the album!

6. How was your relationship with Music For Nations during your second album?

It was very good but pretty short! It was in a phase of our career that we were pretty dissilusioned about the music industry we were in and the people that were advising us – we had waited too long inbetween albums so had lost most of our momentum – we broke up pretty soon afterwards which was a great pity

7. What is your opinion about the re-issue of your first album by Rock Candy Records?

I think they did a fantastic job on the re-issue and it sparked off a lot of interest in the band again.

8. What about the new album Spin?

It is released on Monday 20th and we are very proud of it – think it stands up against the past albums and who knows, it might be our best one yet!

9. How did you decide to come back?

We were asked to play at The Firefest festival in 2009 which we decided to do even though we hadnt palyed together for 18 years – it was a big gamble as we didnt know if anyone would remember us but they did and it was fantastic! Thats when we decided to get back together and record another album which was Rapture in 2012

10. Are you still performing live?

Yes very much so – we are just about to go on tour with FM on the 1st May where we will be palying around the UK and Scotland, and every year we do our own small headline tour.

11. What are your future plans about the career of the band?

We hope that ’Spin’ gets out to a bigger audience and that we are invited to play at gigs and festivals in Europe and around the world wherever there are Romeo’s Daughter fans!

Info: www.romeosdaughter.co.uk