Biography
Active from 2017 to 2025, Wild Romance was a rock 'n roll band based in Amsterdam, The Netherlands, featuring former band members of the legendary Herman Brood & His Wild Romance, the most legendary one being Brood's co-songwriter, guitarist Dany Lademacher. Herman Brood himself died in 2001. The new Wild Romance (initially called Dany Lademacher's Wild Romance) was essentially a re-established version of his backing band. They performed Herman Brood classics, but also recorded and released new material.
The band was, remarkably, established by Amsterdam business man Jan 't Hoen, a Herman Brood fan and amateur drummer whose dream it was to be the drummer of a revived Wild Romance. Having made a fortune in real estate, money was no issue and 't Hoen decided to make his dream come true and 'buy the band': he hired former Wild Romance guitarists Dany Lademacher and David Hollestelle, plus Brood's former manager Koos van Dijk, and 're-formed' the band in 2013, initially as Romanza Brava.
Read full biography ↓
The fantastically bumpy first year of this motley crew of aging rockers was documented in the documentary Buying The Band (2014), which - upon completion - was turned down by several film distributors and documentary festivals in The Netherlands, before going secretly viral online, notably amongst Dutch musicians, in 2017. Music platform, 3voor12, brought the film to the public's attention in early 2018 and it became an instant online cult hit.
Well before the Buying The Band documentary took off online, however, Romanza Brava had changed its name into Dany Lademacher's Wild Romance, undergone several line-up changes, toured internationally (including a string of performances with German star, Nina Hagen) and recorded an actual studio album, 2016's Out Of Heaven.
Their second studio album of mostly original, new material, entitled No Time (2018), was the first under the name Wild Romance. Another album was written and set for release in early 2025, but it was post-poned... and then, on 3 July 2025, guitarist Dany Lademacher died, the band's heart and soul from the Herman Brood days. By the time Too Much Is Never Enough (2025) was posthumously released, guitarist David Hollestelle had also left the fold.
Upon the album's release, frontman Jo de Roeck announced a name change: Wild Romance will carry on as Romanza Brava, A Wild Romance Legacy.
Biography text from Last.fm, available under CC BY-SA.