And when I talked about Studs, Dave told me: ‘You gotta go to the States. David Lee Roth comes out looking like fucking Goliath, and the first thing he says to me is: ‘Got a joint?’ I was with them for three days. “And because we had the same record company, I got sent to pick them up at the airport. “Van Halen came to Spain on the Fair Warning tour,” he says. He restyled Mabel as a hard rock band with a new and suitably macho name: Studs.Īnd in 1981 came a meeting with a hero that would change Tramp’s life. A fan of Slade and Sweet in the early 70s, he was now into AC/DC, Van Halen and the New Wave Of British Heavy Metal. But after the group moved to Spain, where they were also hugely popular, Tramp tired of the boy-band shtick. Mabel represented Denmark in the Eurovision Song Contest in 1978 with the song Boom Boom (they finished 16th out of 20 entries, with just 13 points). And at 15, Mike joined Danish teenybopper act Mabel after seeing them open for The Bay City Rollers in Copenhagen. Born Michael Trempenau in Copenhagen on January 14, 1961, he made his recording debut at 13 when he and his elder brother, billed as Dennis & Michael, cut a single for EMI.
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“From that moment on,” Tramp says “people started talking about Vito and I getting a band together.”Īt 21, Tramp was already a veteran of the music business. “I thought, Holy shit – we’re 10 years behind!” And Tramp wasn’t alone in thinking that he and Bratta would make a great team.
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Backstage, Tramp was amazed when he watched Bratta warming up by playing a note perfect version of Eddie Van Halen’s guitar show piece Eruption. Tramp’s Danish band Lion, having recently relocated to New York City, were playing second on the bill to Bratta’s group Dreamer at the famous rock club L’Amour in Brooklyn. It was in 1982 that Mike Tramp first met Vito Bratta. When the going was good, White Lion winning at the New York Music Awards, 1988 (Image credit: Getty Images)