Dec 14

Golden Earring

GOLDEN EARRING
 
 
Golden Earring  is a Dutch rock band, founded in 1961 in The Hague as the Golden Earrings  (the ‘s’ was dropped in 1969).  They achieved worldwide fame with their international hit songs “Radar Love” in 1973, “Twilight Zone” in 1982, and “When the Lady Smiles” in 1984.  During their career they had nearly 30 top-ten singles on the Dutch charts; over the years they produced 25 studio albums.  The band’s lineup currently consists of co-founders Rinus Gerritsen (bass and keyboards) and George Kooymans (vocals and guitar), along with Barry Hay (vocals, guitar, flute and saxophone) and Cesar Zuiderwijk (drums and percussion).  All musicians in the present lineup of the band have been continuous members of the band since 1970.  (More from Wikipedia)
 
 
There are two covers on the Index album: “You Keep Me Hangin’ On” (more the Vanilla Fudge version than the Supremes version) and the Byrds’ “Eight Miles High” (speaking of great psychedelic songs).  If there was ever a song that cried out for a really extended treatment, it was “Eight Miles High”; and I still remember well the first time I heard a long version of “Eight Miles High” at a party while I was in college.  The artist turned out to be Golden Earring, a Dutch band that has been around about as long as the Rolling Stones; they went on to have two giant hits – both of which I still love – “Radar Love” and “Twilight Zone”.
 
(March 2011)
 
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I was first introduced to the raw 1960’s sounds of Dutch rock when I was fortunate enough to find a copy of a compilation album called Searching in the Wilderness in about 1987 in a fondly remembered basement-level New York record store called Underground Records in the Village.  (There was at least one and maybe two other record stores in that same space over the years).  Though much of the early output from Dutch bands was heavily influenced by Merseybeat sounds almost to the point of aping them, that was most definitely not true of two of the tracks on that album:  “Chunk of Steel”, an early single by Golden Earring; and “For Another Man” by the Motions, which included the future bandleader of Shocking Blue, Robbie van Leeuwen.  Wilderness was also my first introduction to other excellent Dutch bands, like the Outsiders (not the American band called the Outsiders that is best known for “Time Won’t Let Me”) and Cuby & the Blizzards. 
 
Golden Earring (originally known as the Golden Earrings or the Golden Ear-Rings) formed in 1961 and are still together – yes, you read that right:  before the Rolling Stones formed, and before Ringo Starr joined the Beatles.  The band had numerous hits in their native Netherlands throughout the 1960’s.  The first time I heard Golden Earring was at a party while I was in college (around 1970), where someone was playing their cover of the Byrds’ “Eight Miles High”, a song that simply screamed out to be given a side-long extended jam like the one that this band put together. 
 
Golden Earring later had an international hit song in 1973 with “Radar Love”, one of the great road songs that I still hear regularly on the radio.  In 1982, they had another big hit with “Twilight Zone”; their fabulous, high-concept video intermingled a spy story that featured a topless model, callous treatment of a dead body, and a brutal injection of some sort of drug by a dancing vixen; along with concert footage and several arty shots.  The video for their follow-up hit in 1984, “When the Lady Smiles” was just as controversial; it featured a sexual attack on a nun that showed black lingerie under her habit.  I probably have a dozen of their albums, and they are all enjoyable. 
 
 
(January 2013)
 
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As I have mentioned many times before, I am a major fan of Dutch rock music from both the 1960’s and 1970’s.  Some of the bands have non-English names, like Ekseption (which is not the Dutch word for “exception” as I had always assumed), Groep 1850 (also known as Group 1850) and Bintangs (which means “stars” in Arabic, I’m told) – the latter band being a future UARB (as it turns out, I waited too long; Bintangs have a nice Wikipedia article now) – but most have English names (or just initials) and perform in English also, with some of the biggest being Golden Earring, Shocking Blue, Focus, Q65, and the Outsiders. 

 

(April 2013)

 

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The life of a rock band is analogous to people’s experiences with going to college.  Sometimes you don’t get out of the first semester, other times the thing dies away after a couple of years.  The average life of a successful rock band is probably the four or five years that it takes to get a degree.  And occasionally, one is able to, ahem, stay in academia for a lifetime – witness the Rolling Stones, Golden Earring, and KISS. 

 

(April 2014)

 

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I am a big fan of “Eight Miles High”; besides the original by the Byrds (the song was written by bandmembers Gene Clark, Jim McGuinn and David Crosby), Golden Earring recorded a side-long extended treatment of “Eight Miles High” that I simply love, and past UARB Index covered “Eight Miles High” on their first album. 

 

(July 2015)

 

Last edited: March 22, 2021