The Donnas The Rise & Fall Of The Band Behind "Take It Off" & “Stay The Night”

The Donnas: The Rise and Fall of the Band Who Wrote "Take It Off"

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During the peak of their fame the all girl group the Donna’s were described by Spin Magazine as every mother’s nightmare, every schoolboy’s dream, their the coolest band in America “ Rolling Stone Magazine referred to them as America’s reigning rock & roll queens. Was this all hype and whatever happened to this late 90’s/eary 2000’s era band? Stay tuned for the full story.
The Donnas started out in their early teens from the age of 13 playing music together. All 4 members of the band were born in the same year, 1979 and were all self taught musicians. Hailing from Palo Alto, they were one of two all female bands from the City.
While the media labelled them as punks or pop punks their roots were not just in bands like the Ramones as they also found something ti like in groups like Kiss the Runaways, L7, Alice Cooper, Def Leppard and the Scorpions. Early in their career, the members did took a cue from The Ramones whose members all took the same surnames. The Donnas would take a different approach al adopting the same first name.. During live gigs the members would wear T-shirt that read “Donna,” followed by the first letter of her real surname: Donna R. (Allison Robertson), Donna C. (Torry Castellano), vocalist Donna A. (Brett Anderson) and bassist Donna F. (Maya Ford).
Before becoming the Donnas the girls started out as a speed-metal act called Ragedy Anne and then Electrocutes. It was around this time an acquaintance of theirs named Darin Raffaelli had written some songs he wanted them to perform. This resulted in the birth of the Donna’s. Originally the members of the Donna’s thought they would head back to their speed metal act , but Darin’s song’s resulted in a more accessible and mainstream sound. Rafaelli would produce the band’s first record their self titled album, which would be put out on his label Superteem records. While the girls liked the direction Darin’s music was going they still wanted more creative control with guitarist Donna R (or Allison Robertson) telling LA Times “We didn’t want to be stuck in some band where some dude wrote the songs for us,” . They also wanted a harder-rocking edge than was reflected on their early releases. But the ladies were at a crossroads almost breaking up early in their career because they enjoyed playing the electrocute’s songs more Roberson would reveal to MTV
I think after we got home from a two week thing in Japan where we played like four shows we were saying we were going to break up... just kind of let the Donnas fizzle out,"But then we realized that that was kind of sad because people were going to the Donnas shows we just felt weird playing songs we hadn't written. Then we just realized, 'Why don't we just write the songs now, and then we can keep the name? We can keep the style and we can put what we like into it.'
As the band began writing their own material they got signed to California punk label Lookout Records.while they were still in high school who put out their 1998 album American Teenage Rock 'N' Roll Machine.".Despite having what looked like a promising carere in music the members opted to still go to college during the making of their . An album that was only recorded in ten days with most of the songs being put to tape in just one take.
In 1998 the band soon started making cameos in movies landing their roles in the movies Jawbreaker, Drive Me Crazy in addition to the TV show. In fact their appearance on Drive Me Crazy would see them play aband called the Electroctues that lands a gig playing a high school prom, paying homage to their roots. The music press soon started to take notice of the band around this time quickly winning praise from magazine’s like Rolling Stone who would claim “Hanging with the Donnas is like being in detention with all your best friends,” while Spin haile the band’s “good-time cave-girl feminism.”
The Donnas would release two more records on Lookout including 1999 Get Skintight and 2001’s The Donna’s Turn 21. In late 2001 the band was on the cusp of touring and 9/11 happened jeopordizing their planned live shows.. Brett Anderson would tell Vice what happened around this time that changed the bands life revealing