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Sven Dohrow and Ronny Schreinzer created The Twins in 1980. Their first single The Desert Place turned out to be a real dancefloor-smasher in Germany. Among their hits, Ballet Dancer, which was recently covered by Master Blaster feat Turbo B.

by Zeljko Vujkovic 

The Twins : Hi there. My name is Ronny Schreinzer, born 1958 in Berlin, singer for the band "The Twins"

Hmmm.... actually when people ask me for a favour in most cases I say "O.K. I can help you", which sometimes puts me in trouble, because I'm a very busy person and I don't have the time to satisfy everybody. As you can see, it took me long time to answer your request for this interview.

We met each other back in school in the seventies, in Berlin. Sven was a guitar player and I played the drums. We had many discussions about music and musical equipment in general, but we never played together. After we finished school around 1976 we accidentally met again (in a disco where Sven was a frequent guest and I was working as a DJ). Sven asked me if I would like to play drums in a band he just joined. I agreed and we played together in this band for about three years. When the band split up (sort of), we thought this would be a good opportunity to try somethinhg new. Sven had bought two or three synthesizers and we started making music together. It took us a couple of days to compose and arrange our very first song "Desert Place". Actually we were very surprised that the song was so catchy and that it was so easy for us to make that sort of music just on our own.

Ronny


Sven

When we finished our first few songs, we thought about sending the demos to a few record companies but we still had no name. We had just finished a little photo session where we had the same sort of leather jackets and the same sort of of hair styling (can be seen on the front cover of our first album "Passion Factory"). So we had a little brain storming. The plan was to come up with a name that describes the fact that we are just two band members, with identical musical taste and by coincedence we sort of looked very much the same on that first photo. So we came up with the name "The Twins".

Actually we never saw ourselves as a "disco" band. We liked music made by Gary Numan, Human League, Roxy Music and Depeche Mode and a few other bands. Our musical style was very "electronic". If you listen to Passion Factory our first album you know what I mean. The next answer explains how we added the "disco feeling" to our style...

When we signed our first record contract, the record company wanted us to produce a maxi version (called "Super-Sound-Single" back in those days) of our first official 7" "The Desert Place". So we thought, if it's going to be released on a 12", chances are good that it will be played in a lot of discos because DJ's really much liked to play 12" mixes because of the better sound and punch. We created a long version of "Desert Place" where we added a few additional parts (for example the drum part in the middle of the song), changed some of the original synthesizer sounds and mixed it to be very fat and punchy. The result was very satisfying for us. DJ's all over the world really liked this 12" and they still play it today.

The plan was simple : making music that we really like, earn money for a living, meeting girls : !!!! (I think you would get the same answer from 99% of the musicians on this planet, no? :-)

It's an up-tempo song with a neat and catchy melody... I can't come up with more!

We were totally surprised about the success in Italy, it was like a dream suddenly come true. We had to go to Italy many times, to appear in TV shows and to play on open air disco events.

We only met Freddy Naggiar (Baby Records) two or three times. He was a busy man back in those days and so our meetings where very brief.

We had a few TV shows toghether with Gazebo. Paul is avery nice and friendly person. He always had a grin on his face. We went to a few clubs together and we had a few very nice chats together.

Thanx for the compliments. I would say some have the talents and some don't. We can compose songs, sing and play but other people can paint a nice picture (which I definitely can't). Personally I can say that it was a big surprise for me when people told me that they really like my voice and my singing. I really felt that this is some sort of gift that many other people don't have and will never get.

"Love System" is one of the very few songs that where not entirely composed by The Twins. We had a keyboard player in our live band back in those days named Michael Gerlach. He gave me a tape with a few demo songs he made. I really liked the refrain melody of one of the songs and we sat down together and arranged and added some additional melodies for the verse and the bridge. I programmed a new drum arrangement for this song and the result was "Love System". Our lyric writer Tim Dowdall came up with the words for this song and when we rehearsed the vocals for the first time, Tim always added the part with the telephone voice (or radio voice if you will). So we found that it would be funny if we would use Tim's voice for this part, which was a good idea as you can hear.

Nothing special to mention here. Tim wrote or translated most of our lyrics, Michael Gerlach co-wrote "Love System" and "Fantasy". Sven co-wrote "Time will tell" and one or two other songs together with a guy named Bernd D. We also produced other artists named "IKO" and "My favourite toys".

I have to make this very clear (and I can speak for Sven here as well). We really don't like the aforementioned artists and their music very much and we don't see ourselves in the same line with them. They may forgive us our ignorance. (Although I must say that we met Bad Boys Blue and Thomas Anders on a few occasions and we had a few nice chats together, both are very friendly persons especially the guys from BBB)

I am not familiar with Italian Disco Music so I can't make any statements here

I really liked Gazebo, Ryan Paris and Den Harrow (not sure if he was Italian)

No we haven't tried. But it is a little known fact that we received some additional help by Christopher Franke of "Tangerine Dream" when we recorded the long version of "Desert Place". He supplied the sound of the main Bass sequence with his Prophet-5 synthesizer and gave a helping hand during the recordings.

Simply put... I don't know. Our goal allways was to come up with a catchy melody and to put it in a compact arrangement. This is our secret if you will.

Well... we had our up's and down's too. We always thought that "The Twins" project can only continue to exist if we both supply ideas that both of us can aggree to. As usual between musicians we had many arguements about a couple of things but at the end of the day we always came up with a good solution to every problem. This a strong talent too, if you will...

You may be right...

Oh yes, we went to a few concerts together. I still remember a concert in a small venue with Duran Duran back in 1981. This was a very great experience.

The concert in Sweden was a great experience too because swedish fans are very frenetic. The CD has been released in August 2005, a DVD will follow in about two months.

We have plans but nothing I can talk about right now.

We are always interested if young musicians want record or remix some of our old songs. In fact we have sent melody and vocal samples to a few artists for remixes in the past years.

Simply put, we have established our own label to re-release our old albums. Our new CD's, like the Live album was also released on our own label simply because we can decide everything ourselves (like artwork, title selection etc.)

Actually I never liked the video shootings because it has so little in common with making music and sometimes it was boring too. Today I feel a bit different about the whole thing. I tend to like it bit more. Mostly because it brings back memories and you can have a good laugh when you watch the stuff twenty years later ;-)

Sven and I still like good food and wine. Sven does a lot of jogging and playing golf. I like jogging and swimming. Recently we found that it is a lot of fun watching movies in our home theatres (surround and loud if you understand). I work for a film company doing sound design for TV and Film very often and Sven still produces music with other artists in his studio.

There is one important thing to say. 25 years of The Twins wouldn't have been possible without our fans. People who like our music and coming to our concerts are the power behind everything. Thanks for your ongoing support.

Thank you too...

© August 2005 Zeljko Vujkovic - All rights reserved
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