An early promo shot of Danish band Mabel with a shirtless teenage Michael Trempenau (aka Mike Tramp of hair metal band White Lion) second from the left.
Hailing from a part of the world that seems to produce more blonde-haired people than anywhere else, Danish glam band Mabel got their big break sometime in the mid-70s when their vocalist Gert Von Magnus caught the eye of Tam Paton—a man who was overseeing the burgeoning career of the Bay City Rollers and got the band the opening slot for his teenybopper idols at a gig in Copenhagen.
Mabel, 1978.
But poor Magnus never got to taste the success Mabel would go on to have as he was quickly replaced by another Dane, fifteen-year-old Michael Trempenau who was going by the name “Mike Tramp.” And if that name has got your heavy metal bells ringing it’s for good reason as Tramp would eventually go on to front early-80s hair band White Lion. With Tramp’s addition to Mabel the band started their slow slide toward a more disco sound—a move that made the band a hugely popular attraction in Germany and Spain. In the late 70s Mabel moved their operation to Spain after gaining more notoriety when their catchy number “Boom Boom” was chosen as the official Danish selection for the Eurovision Song Contest in 1978. Things were going well for Mabel but their young vocalist wasn’t super into the band’s pop-music vibe and was instead digging heavily on bands like Van Halen and AC/DC. Tramp convinced his bandmates to switch things up by changing their name from Mabel to the more manly sounding “Studs” and trying their hand a more rock-oriented sound.
Mabel, 1979.
In an interesting twist of fate Tramp would actually cross paths with one of his idols, David Lee Roth in Spain during Van Halen’s 1981 Fair Warning tour. Roth told Tramp to get the band to the States and lose the name “Studs” because apparently to Roth it made the band sound too much like the “Village People.” The band became “Lion” and within six-months of their arrival in the U.S. were back on Danish soil and the band called it quits.
I’ve posted a couple of Mabel’s best glammy-disco hybrids, the tracks “I’m Only Here to Rock ‘n’ Roll” and their hit “Hey, I Love You” that I think you will agree are addictive bits of ear candy. I also included footage that I can’t seem to get enough of—Mabel’s 1978 award-winning Eurovision entry “Boom Boom” performed in their native tongue with a full orchestra backing them up.
Mabel ‘I’m Only Here to Rock ‘n’ Roll’ 1978.
Mabel ‘Hey, I Love You’ 1976.
Mabel performing ‘Boom Boom’ at Eurovision, 1978.
H/T: Classic Rock
Previously on Dangerous Minds:
1970s glam rockers Cuddly Toys cover ‘Madman’ a song written by David Bowie & Marc Bolan