Darrin Raffaeili

[Guy Herremerre]

What did
Darrin Raffaeili do for the Donnas in the early stages? Did he really invented most of their songs then? Or did he write the songs the Donnas made on music paper? He was a bit like their svengali - I always wanted to know: he's credited a lot on their first album and on American teenage rock'n'rol machine...

 

[sk]

I'm not entirely sure how the story goes... but I think Darrin had made a bunch of songs that was best suited for a girl band, since it was songs about boys and stuff, and he approached The Donnas and asked if they where interested to record some of his songs.
The Donnas, known as Electrocutes back then, accepted his offer but didn't want it to interfere with their 'real' band since it was a quite different style. So instead they invented this other band called The Donnas and recorded some 7" vinyls that later ended up on their self titled album.

When they realised that this new band seemed much more popular than Electrocutes ever where they dropped the old band and continued as The Donnas instead.

So sure, I think they can thank Darrin a lot for their early success. But you must remember that they had existed as a band long before that and had already done some recordings, with original material, both as Ragady Anne and Electrocutes. So it's not like he created the band or anything like that. Have seen lots of people that seems to think so though, which I think is unfortunately.

 

[Guy Herremerre]

Thanks for reply. I never heard the Electrocutes album, although I have seen it in some shops. The Donnas seemed always to0 independent to me to have someone pulling their strings. I am not bothered how they started or if they had some help: they turned out just fine.