I would appreciate some of DU's good vibes or

[highplainsdem]

Last edited Sun Nov 12, 2023, 09:33 PM - Edit history (3)

prayers or healing energy or whatever you want to call it (I don't think the name matters).

This request isn't for myself -- I'm fine -- or for a family member. I know how good you all are at offering support, but I also have some RW relatives who know I post here but don't know my handle, so I don't post anything too identifiable.

I'd appreciate vibes/prayers/healing for a musician I've admired for decades, who was diagnosed with ALS a little over a year and a half ago, and who just gave his first interview and update since the diagnosis was announced, because he has a new album out of songs recorded years ago.

The musician is George Kooymans -- founder, lead guitarist, main songwriter, and sometimes lead vocalist of the Dutch group Golden Earring, best known for their international hits "Radar Love" in the 1970s and "Twilight Zone" in the 1980s. though they had an extremely long string of hit albums and singles in the Netherlands, and they didn't disband till last year, 60 years after the first version of the band was founded.

Lead singer Barry Hay had given an update several months ago where he said George was still traveling, going out with friends, enjoying himself -- and that sounded encouraging. Their bass player, Rinus Gerritsen, who's also George's brother-in-law, said a couple of months ago that George was doing "as well as could be expected," which didn't sound quite as encouraging, but I'd still been hoping that doctors had found or would quickly find an effective treatment,

George did a radio interview this morning, partly to talk about his new album with American guitarist Frank Carillo, whom he'd recorded one earlier album with, more than ten years ago -- they put together a new album from songs they'd been working on for years -- and partly to finally talk about how he's doing.

He said the doctors have been telling him the disease is progressing slowly for him, but to him it feels like a rapid deterioration.

He has trouble walking. He has trouble controlling his fingers -- can no longer play guitar (and he'd been an award-winning guitarist), can't really use a computer very well though he can move the mouse. He talked about software that might let him write music using eye movements.

This was heartbreaking news, and it sounded all too familiar, since someone I'd met and come to know online, back in the 1980s, had been diagnosed with ALS about 15 years later and died only a couple of years after the diagnosis. Ernie Wallengren was a writer/producer, and he'd also enjoyed coaching high school boys basketball. It was while playing basketball that he first noticed the symptoms of ALS. His illness made the news and he also agreed to some filming of his deterioration, which was so painful to watch. (EDITNG here to link to a site with more about what Ernie went through, and the filming. He was one of three people using wheelchairs filmed for that documentary, the only one with ALS. See these links: https://www.thirteen.org/rolling/discover/ernie-wallengren/ for a bit of background on Ernie, and https://www.thirteen.org/rolling/thefilm/ for a page with three videos. In the first video, the first segment on Ernie starts at 5:40. I learned that Ernie had ALS via a TV news magazine a couple of decades ago. We'd chatted and emailed for a while in the mid-1980s, but didn't stay in touch after I left that online platform after a couple of years, partly because I was thinking I might return after a break, but didn't. The diagnosis was just as tragic for him as it was for George. If it weren't for ALS, Ernie would probably still be writing, producing, and maybe coaching boys basketball.)

[Necessary 11/12/23 edit because the thirteen.org web pages linked to above no longer exist, giving some of Ernie's background and showing the documentary he was filmed for. But you can find a lot about his background in the industry on his IMDb page, at
https://www.imdb.com/name/nm0908997/ . And at https://archive.sltrib.com/story.php?ref=/ci_7881299 you'll find a long Salt Lake Tribune article from 2008 on Ernie's life and battle with ALS and the role his faith played, and that article has some information on the award-winning documentary I'd linked to above. EDITING AGAIN, hours later, since I just found a very brief clip from that documentary on YouTube. See reply 135 below.]

George was also athletic -- played a lot of tennis, ran marathons. He's 74 now (Ernie was only 50), but we all know people can often maintain health and creativity into their 80s or older. We have a great example today with Paul McCartney turning 80, while on tour again.

I'm still hoping for a miracle recovery for George Kooymans, but today's news, which I found when I checked Google for articles on Dutch websites, wasn't good.

Some old videos below. The music video for "Radar Love." Video of "Vanilla Queen" live at Winterland in 1975 -- look at the guitar solo a little after 3 minutes in and the outro starting around the 8 minute mark, to get some idea of why George is considered a great guitarist. A live performance of "Twilight Zone" -- George wrote both the music and lyrics for that, with no help from Barry Hay on lyrics (though Barry wrote most of their lyrics since English was his first language) and it was their biggest hit ever. And a performance for a crowd of nearly 200,000 on the beach near the Hague in 1993.

[MLAA]

1. You got it, vibes going out to George K.

Love Radar Love.

[highplainsdem]

10. Thank you!

[CrispyQ]

2. Thank you for that bit of rock history.

I'll definitely check out those solos!

So sorry to hear of his troubles.

[highplainsdem]

11. You're welcome, and thank you! The band's history

would be continuing and they'd probably have done a 60th anniversary tour by now if George hadn't been diagnosed with ALS. They'd had no plans to retire, and all the members of the band had also sometimes been doing solo projects or working with other musicians. Always creating new music, not just doing oldies.

[highplainsdem]

37. Btw, the guitar on "Twilight Zone" is amazing, too, but I've been

assuming most people know that. I just wanted to call some attention to "Vanilla Queen."

[SheltieLover]

3. Healing vibes on the way! To George 💓💓💓

Ty for sharing his plight with us.

[highplainsdem]

13. Thanks, SheltieLover!

[SheltieLover]

31. Yw!

Poor guy.

[NNadir]

137. All else aside, it's good to see you here.

[highplainsdem]

138. I'm so sorry I didn't see your reply to SheltieLover's very old message when you posted it last month, after

I'd posted a reply here about Golden Earring fans raising money for ALS in honor of George Kooymans, since he's been battling ALS for three years now. That message I posted had kicked this old thread, which I've been keeping updated.

As far as I can tell from her profile, SheltieLover hasn't posted or recced a message here since March. Nine months ago today. She can return - she wasn't FFRd, just left - and I hope she will return.

I miss her, and so do many others here.

[tanyev]

4. Oh, that's too bad.

I saw them open for Pat Benatar early 80s.

[highplainsdem]

14. {{{{{tanyev}}}}} Thank you!

[Lochloosa]

5. Radar Love is the ultimate driving song. Turn it up and GO!

[highplainsdem]

15. I agree, and I'm sure a lot of other DUers would, too. A

classic. When they played that song all over the Netherlands during rush hour on George's birthday last year, honoring him and the band with both radio stations and church bells playing the song (and of course all the fans), the average speed on Dutch roads probably went up at least a few kilometers an hour.

[debm55]

70. Totally agree.

[appalachiablue]

6. Many positive vibes for George, thanks for posting.

[highplainsdem]

16. Thanks, appalachiablue!

[Glorfindel]

7. Healing vibes and much love for Mr. Kooymans

I have loved Golden Earring for many years. "Twilight Zone" is one of my favorite songs ever.

[highplainsdem]

17. Same here re Golden Earring and "Twilight Zone." Fell in love with the band

the first time I heard "Radar Love."

Thanks for the healing vibes for George!

[BootinUp]

8. Healing vibes nt

[highplainsdem]

18. Thank you, BootinUp!

I believe every thought/intent like this helps, and I appreciate this response so much.

[Karadeniz]

9. Damn, what a tragedy. Thanks for bringing him to our attention... good thoughts en route!

[highplainsdem]

19. I think it's tragic, too. Well, ALS is tragic for everyone who's

suffered from it, but to think of a guitarist and songwriter that talented who can no longer play guitar and is wondering about software to help him write music by moving his eyes...

I felt I had to ask DUers to send any healing energy they can. Thank you!

[Deuxcents]

12. Positive thoughts for your Friend so far away.

And for you. Your love for music has been enjoyed by me and thanks for sharing.

[highplainsdem]

23. Thanks, Deuxcents! I don't know George, though -- I'm a

fan of his music -- and I don't even know anyone I'm sure has worked with him (though I'm not 100% sure of that, either). He's one of my favorite guitarists, in one of my favorite bands.

I did mention a friend with ALS in the OP, and I'm sorry if that was confusing. Ernie Wallengren was a writer/producer. He was a really sweet guy.

George Kooymans is reportedly a really nice guy, too.

I wish we had a cure or preventative for ALS, that no one ever had to suffer from it. It's such a cruel disease.

[StarryNite]

20. Sending healing energy to George.

[highplainsdem]

25. Thank you, StarryNite!

[DFW]

21. It is always a tragedy when this happens to a fellow musician

Although I have not toured in MANY decades, and only done a few live performances since the 1980s, I used to love doing it, and I can feel from here the cruel realization when Mother Nature comes to tell a musician his life as a performing artist is over. I hope he is allowed the possibility to compose and communicate his ideas for a time longer.

"Strange as it seems, his musical dreams
Ain't quite so bad"

From "Amazing Journey" from the Rock Opera Tommy by Pete Townshend/The Who from over 50 years ago

[highplainsdem]

27. Thanks, DFW!

My very first thought when I heard about the diagnosis was how terrible it must seem for a guitarist. I hope you never have to deal with anything like that.

Golden Earring were friends of the Who, and opened for them on at least one tour. And though the members of the Earring were several years younger than the members of the Who, the Earring had formed nearly as early, in 1961 (George had learned to play guitar when he was 8 or 9 and was giving lessons by the time he was 13, in 1961). They'd already had a number of hits in Europe by the time the Who's Tommy came out in 1969.

Including this one, a concert staple and one of my favorites:

George looks so young there, but he was 21.

[iluvtennis]

22. Sent up a prayer for his healing. Keep us posted. n/t

[highplainsdem]

28. Thanks! And I'll try to keep you posted, but this update

from George is the only detailed one that's been given since his diagnosis. There were no real details when the diagnosis was announced and the band announced their 60-year-career had come to an end, that they wouldn't be continuing without George. And the updates from Barry and Rinus since then were very vague.

I will post any updates I get, though.

Thanks for the prayer for George!

[LoisB]

24. Sending good vibes out to The Universe for George. Hopefully, the progression will be slow

enough that science will come up with something to halt the progress of this terrible disease.

[highplainsdem]

29. Thank you! I keep praying for the same thing, that there's time for a successful treatment

to be found.

I believe the vibes you send out help, and I really appreciate them.

[LuckyCharms]

26. All the best to George! Radar Love is one of my favorites.

Hang tough, George!

[highplainsdem]

30. Thanks, LuckyCharms! "Radar Love" is about telepathy, and they've done at

least one other song about telepathy (with a number of others with lyrics that seem to hint at it). I believe positive energy can be sent (and unlike some treatments, it can never hurt), and I hope all of George's fans are sending him positive energy, however they can.

[Skittles]

32. wishing the best for Mr. Kooymans

life can be so cruel

[highplainsdem]

34. Thanks, Skittles!

It is a horribly cruel disease.

Life had been pretty kind to George for most of the last 74 years, though he should probably get most of the credit for that, since it wasn't just luck. He went from childhood dreams of being a rock star to being a rock star in his teens. Kept a band together for 60 years (and though the band did some experimenting with drugs at a time when drugs were killing a lot of musicians, they managed the avoid the sorts of disasters that destroyed other careers and lives). Married his childhood sweetheart and they're still married -- another successful 60-year relationship. Two kids, now around 40, whom I haven't heard much about (so no scandals there) who have some musical talent (his son's a musician, his daughter sings) though I don't know if they've made a living from their music. Enough talent as a songwriter and producer to not only do most of the songwriting/producing for Golden Earring, but to have launched the careers of other Dutch artists starting when he was still a teenager, and later salvage the career of a Dutch rocker who hadn't had a hit for years. And besides his work with American guitarist Frank Carillo, he'd been performing and recording with two other famous Dutch singers -- one who's been a star as a folksinger starting in the '60s (maybe the closest Dutch equivalent to Bob Dylan) and another who'd been with a very popular '80s band, so this new trio was a Dutch supergroup -- and they'd still been doing concerts when Covid hit in 2020 and everything shut down.

And then several months later George noticed the first symptoms of ALS, and the diagnosis was confirmed in November of 2020. And after 60 years it was all over for Golden Earring.

George said in yesterday's interview, talking about his declining health, that he's "waiting" -- there is of course no way to know what will happen next -- but he also said he's seizing every day. (The translations I ran across mangled that part of what he said. He'd used the Dutch verb pakken, which can mean pack, but can also mean grab or seize, so I saw translations saying he was packing every day, packing his bags every day, etc., and I wondered what he'd meant till I found that pakken can also mean grab or seize -- and that made sense and finally cleared it up.)

He's doing the best he can under horrible circumstances.

[Skittles]

38. oh dear

I have to say though, that having a love of your life by your side through the decades is like hitting the jackpot.....

I try to think of how I would react to such a diagnosis and I want to believe I would have that "seize the day" sentiment.

That old saying, "a lot of fine people are denied the privilege of growing older" comes to mind.....and while you always have to play with the cards you are dealt, you can improve your technique.

*PS I got my first speeding ticket jamming to Radar Love......can't believe that was almost 50 years ago!!!

[highplainsdem]

40. Re that speeding ticket: It's a shame you weren't dealing with a cop like the

retired cop who posted on YouTube that he NEVER gave out speeding tickets -- just warnings -- if someone caught speeding had been listening to "Radar Love."

[Skittles]

41. awesome!

I got a ticket jamming to Wheezer's "Hash Pipe" too

[malthaussen]

33. Vibes en route:

-- Mal

[highplainsdem]

35. Thanks for the healing vibes for George, Mal!

[highplainsdem]

36. I've edited the OP to add links to info and videos about

the only person I've known who had to battle ALS, since his battle with it made news and was filmed. What Ernie went through will give you some idea of what George Kooymans is having to deal with now, or might be having to deal with soon, if a successful treatment can't be found quickly.

[Swede]

39. I loved Golden Earring since way back when Radar Love hit the air.

Moontan is a beautiful album. All their stuff just hits you right where it should.

Sorry to hear this and I do send vibes to George Kooymans health a well-being.

[highplainsdem]

42. Thanks for sending those vibes to George, Swede! And we feel the same

way about Golden Earring's music. "All their stuff just hits you right where it should." Beautifully put.

[highplainsdem]

43. Mirage, George's new album with American singer/songwriter/guitarist Frank Carillo,

was released a few days ago, and according to some charts I've seen for the Netherlands, it's been at least briefly in the Top 10 there. As high as #2 on some of the charts I saw, briefly ahead of artists like Drake and Harry Styles.

The Kooymans/Carillo albums (the first one, more than 10 years ago, was On Location), like Golden Earring's albums, have English lyrics. The only time George recorded songs with Dutch lyrics was when he was working with Boudewijn de Groot and Henny Vrienten, both very successful for many years in the Netherlands, when they formed the Dutch supergroup Vreemde Kostgangers, a name which literally translates to Strange Lodgers, but colloquially means All Sorts. There may still be another VK album if Henny Vrienten's widow (Henny died in April) agrees to it. George mentioned that possible release on Saturday.


This is my favorite track off Mirage, at least so far. The video below this one is a single from the first Kooymans/Carillo album, another beautiful song. Beautiful, and melancholy.

[highplainsdem]

44. Found a good review of George's new album, Mirage, with Frank Carillo.

Although the album was briefly near the top of the Dutch charts, some of the reviews referred to it as "old man's rock" and "grandfather's rock," which both made me wince and made me aware that the reviewers weren't very bright. If youth determined how good music (including rock) is, then we should just hand toy instruments to toddlers and record them, maybe with a bit of autotuning.

The review is at

https://www.ad.nl/show/plezier-klinkt-door-in-vakwerk-van-kooymans-en-carillo~a27af5da/

and for some reason clicking on the Translate Page link in Google didn't bring up the translation, so I copied the Dutch original paragraph by paragraph into Google Translate myself.

Pleasure resounds in the craftsmanship of Kooymans and Carillo


George Kooymans (74) and Frank Carillo (71) are old friends from other parts of the world. Musically they fit well together, as they proved in 2010 with their album On Location. Now that everything has changed - the covid pandemic, Kooymans' ALS diagnosis - there is the successor, Mirage. What hasn't changed: their craftsmanship. Once again, the Hagenaar Kooymans, who lives in Belgium, and the American Carillo do a good job.

The two had been working on and off for years on this latest project, which partly took shape during cooking, a hobby of both. It was not the starting point, but Kooymans and Carillo produced so much that it led to a complete album. The duo received help from guest musicians, who they sometimes found close to home, such as Golden Earring bassist Rinus Gerritsen and Kooyman's singing daughter Cassy.

The result: a fine, varied and nicely arranged album in which pleasure resounds. Den of Thieves, Sweet Revenge, Ticket to Heaven, all worth listening to. Inevitably, while listening, you now and then think of the debilitating illness that struck Kooymans and which meanwhile prevents him from playing the guitar. Fortunately, Mirage is not his swan song, as there is another album with De Strange Kostgangers (Kooymans, Boudewijn de Groot and the now deceased Henny Vrienten) on the shelf. - Alexander van Eenennaam

Note -- that other group, George's second side project while he continued to work with Golden Earring, is Vreemde Kostgangers, which translates to Strange Lodgers, or colloquially to All Sorts, as in "it takes all sorts to make a world." Last.fm page on VK: https://www.last.fm/music/Vreemde+Kostgangers/+wiki .

I had no idea who the reviewer was, so I googled him and found his Twitter account -- https://twitter.com/avaneen?lang=en -- and saw that he's no kid, which helps explain why there were no condescending remarks about "old man's rock."

Anyway, it was nice to find a good review.

I'm still reeling from the horrible news about Roe being overturned, which I woke up to.

But I will be turning to music later to help me cope, as usual. And as usual I checked Google quickly to see if there was any more news about George, especially with a new album out, and I was pleased to find this review -- one that wasn't stupidly condescending because he and Carillo aren't kids any more.

[highplainsdem]

45. There's an article on George in the Dutch magazine Oor (Dutch for Ear), the oldest

music magazine in the Netherlands. It's out in their special summer issue, and I have no idea what sort of lead time they had for that issue, for the main stories, so the interview it's based on could well have been done before the 6/18 phone interview for Dutch radio that I posted about in the OP. I'm not sure -- have seen some quotes from the Oor article, but none giving the date of the phone interview they did with him.

The magazine's Twitter account posted this on the 30th, shortly after the issue went on sale -- and this is the English translation from Google Translate:

The muscle disease ALS took the guitar out of his life, but George Kooymans remains combative. He even has a new album out. In the summer edition of OOR he tells us about his life now.

Combative is a good thing, when you're fighting a chronic illness, especially if you're continuing to work, to create new music.

The description of that part of the summer issue, Google Translated from Oor's website, says this:

Mirage is the name of the record that George Kooymans made with brother-in-arms Frank Carillo. And it's anything but a mirage, full of gangsters, guns and adventure. Yet the boys' book that the Earring guitarist always lived has taken a turn: the muscle disease ALS marked the end of the guitar in his existence. George Kooymans himself provides text and explanation.

Photos I've seen of the magazine pages show part of the interview is about Henny Vrienten, one of George's bandmates in the Dutch supergroup Vreemde Kostgangers. Henny died in April.

Other quotes have George talking about how slowly he gets things done now, when he used to be able to do things quickly. And about trying to maintain a fairly normal life, including going from his home in rural Belgium near the Dutch border to The Hague, his and his wife's home town (they grew up on the same block, and her brother is Golden Earring's bass player), so she can go to her favorite hairdresser and they can eat at a favorite seafood restaurant there.

If there are any more specific details on how he's coping with ALS, I haven't run across them in tweets from people posting about the article. And again, the interview for Oor might've been done before June 18th.

I'd've happily subscribed to Oor to be able to get to the full text of the article, but their website allows subscriptions only using Dutch bank account numbers, not credit cards. I could use VISA to order that special issue of the magazine, but not only was there no info on how long that issue would take to reach me (probably at least a couple of weeks, maybe much longer), but I would then have a LOT of text, in Dutch, to type into Google Translate (I could just copy and paste if I could subscribe and get to the premium pages that way). I hate transcribing. I can type about 80 wpm just typing my own thoughts, but I probably type about 20 wpm, if that, copying from a book or article, and that's in English. It's a small fraction of that if I try to copy Dutch text, typing instead of copying and pasting. And then I have to catch Google Translate's errors. (For the lastest example, when I copied those few sentences of text from Oor's website to Google Translate, the Dutch word for brother-in-arms was translated as brother-in-law (which I knew was wrong), both times I copied the entire quote -- but when I copied only the single word, Google Translate got it right. Not the first time I've run into that problem with online translations, and chasing down the right translation of foreign slang can get really time-consuming.)

I am curious about the article, though, especially with the reference to boys adventure books in that quote from the Oor website, and with the caption on one photo of George there: De Aller Laatste Cowboy. The Very Last Cowboy. I can't recall anything I read about George that referred to a fascination with cowboys, with Old West type adventures, but I found out just recently that the lead singer of Die Toten Hosen loved novels about the Wild West when he was a kid, and I've heard it isn't an odd fascination for Europeans. I was surprised when I first heard that, though my own maternal grandfather worked as a cowboy for a while after emigrating from Germany.

At least it doesn't sound as if George is planning to ride off into the sunset any time soon. One quote I saw from the article was him saying, "You haven't got rid of me yet."

Great attitude.

[highplainsdem]

46. George did another radio interview yesterday with classic-rock NPO Radio 5 in the

Netherlands, the same public radio station that had the interview on June 18 that I posted about in the OP.

Unfortunately there wasn't video (of the DJ; these were phone interviews) for this one, as there was for the one on the 18th -- video that was captioned so I could use that as a transcript, even though it was in Dutch and I had to copy most of it to Google Translate. I can't follow rapidly-spoken Dutch well enough to attempt a transcript of yesterday's interview myself, but there were some quotes on the station's page that linked to the audio.

George did sound slightly out of breath at times, as he had for the previous interview. But he was laughing a lot, sounded quite happy. So I'm guessing the good reviews for his new album with Frank Carillo, and the fact the album was at least briefly at or near the top of the Dutch charts, have made him feel better.

Two quotes from the interview, excerpted by the radio station, that I found particularly important:

Playing the guitar is no longer possible, singing still a bit. It's just shit! It's my life, and now I can't do this anymore. They can't predict it, there are people who have it for ten years or more. I'm now in the second year and everything is getting less.

He isn't exaggerating that playing guitar and singing have been his life. I'd posted in another thread here -- https://democraticunderground.com/10181677219 -- that George had been playing guitar by the age of 8 and was hooked on rock music even earlier. See this photo on a web page for a book about him at https://www.facebook.com/georgekooymansboek/photos/a.309608799196864/575760755914999 , where he's holding a guitar about as big as he was then. Playing guitar and singing, creating music, really have been his entire life.

But music is still helping him. Another quote from yesterday's interview:

Music is therapy and is always good!

This is something I agree with completely. As I've said in any number of posts here, in various forums.

And it was good to hear him laughing and sounding pretty happy for much of the interview.

[AZSkiffyGeek]

47. I don't know if it's just that we're hearing about it more, but it seems more musicians...

Are getting ALS
In the past 10-15 years there have been several I'm fans of who have been diagnosed or passed.
Other than Kooymans, off the top of my head:
Bassist for Zac Brown
Mike Porcaro (Toto)
Eric Lowen (Lowen & Navarro)
Kim Shattuck (Pixies)
Dan Toler (Allman Bros)
Jason Becker has been fighting it for 30+ years now. And is still composing music!

[highplainsdem]

48. Billboard article from late May on John Driskell Hopkins of the Zac Brown Band:

https://www.billboard.com/music/country/zac-brown-band-john-driskell-hopkins-als-battle-goals-1235074703/

He was diagnosed in 2019, a year or so before George (who got the official diagnosis in November 2020), but he's doing better than George, can still play and sing. He's 23 years younger than George, which might be part of the reason he's doing better. But my friend Ernie Wallengren, mentioned in the OP, was diagnosed at 48 and died two years later, only 50, so being younger doesn't always help.

Mike Porcaro fought ALS for nearly 10 years before dying when he was ony 59.

Eric Lowen also fought ALS for neatly 10 years before dying at 60.

Kim Shattuck (a member of the Muffs, the Pandoras and the Beards, as well as the Pixies) was only 56 when she died of ALS in 2019, only two years after she was diagnosed.

Dan Toler was 64 when he died, a couple of years after the ALS diagnosis.

And as you said, Jason Becker's been fighting ALS for more than 30 years, since he was 22. Sadly getting ALS very young, like Stephen Hawking. But there is an early-onset, slow-progressing form of ALS.

George is older than all of these, and I think it's encouraging that he's doing as well as he is -- and I'm still hoping for a cure to be found soon to help everyone with ALS now, everyone who might get it in the future.

I'm guessing it seems more common among musicians now simply because there probably are many more professional musicians now than there were before the explosion of popular music in the 1960s.

There's a chance that a common problem like high cholesterol (high LDL or bad cholesterol) is increasing the risk, too, according to this NIH page:

https://www.nia.nih.gov/news/high-cholesterol-other-factors-shown-increase-risk-als

I know George had high cholesterol by his 40s because he mentioned it in an interview where he was talking about his dad dying of heart disease. I don't know if he ever got the bad cholesterol levels under control later.

[highplainsdem]

49. I posted Golden Earring's stunning acoustic cover of the Byrds' "Eight Miles High" in

Music Appreciation last night -- https://democraticunderground.com/103478167 -- and realized I probably should have included it in the OP for this thread last month, since it's such a fine example of how great a musician George is -- how great all the members of the Earring are.

So I'll just add it in this reply.

Live in Amsterdam in 1992:

[Baggies]

50. Vibe

[highplainsdem]

51. Thanks, Baggies, and welcome to DU! Not sure how long you've been

reading here before registering, but we do have a very long tradition of vibes/prayers/etc for those who need them. So if you ever need them, don't hesitate to ask. This is a great community.

[Baggies]

52. I'll keep that in mind

[Different Drummer]

53. Man, that's rough!

Healing vibes going out to George from my laptop!

[highplainsdem]

54. Thanks! It really is rough, and I can't offhand think of any other musician whose

serious illness simultaneously affected not just the rock band he'd formed 60 years earlier, but both a duo and a trio he was in with other singers/guitarists -- all still working then -- plus whoever else he was writing or producing songs for, as he's done for other artists in the past. He definitely wasn't retired, or considering retiring.

[highplainsdem]

55. George did another interview, this one with Radio Veronica in the Netherlands,

Last edited Wed Jul 13, 2022, 12:37 AM - Edit history (1)

giving an update on how he's doing. (Editing to add that this was July 8, part of the three-hour Soundz Live program on Friday nights there.)

He'd said in earlier interviews that he was having trouble walking, was moving slowly.

In this one he said he tries to use a walker now (indicating he can still try to walk without one), to lessen the risk of falling since he has so much trouble getting back up. If no one can help him get back up, he has to have something nearby so he can pull himself back up.

And he recently bought an electric wheelchair, apparently partly because he's planning on going on vacation soon and it would be too difficult to use the walker for very long.

I couldn't read that without remembering the film I'd seen of Ernie Wallengren, the friend with ALS whom I'd mentioned in the OP.

Anyway, I want to thank all of you again for the vibes/prayers/energy for George, which I hope will continue.

There was more to the interview than just an update on his health. He talked about the unreleased album he'd done as a member of Vreemde Kostgangers (Strange Boarders), the Dutch supergroup (a term they hated but which was typically used) he'd formed with two other well-known Dutch singers, one a folksinger and the other one famous for his ska/reggae band (the supergroup's name translates colloquially as "All Sorts" as in "it takes all sorts" ). Every track had been recorded, but it still has to be mixed, something they didn't get done before Henny Vrienten fell seriously ill. Henny died in late April (see https://democraticunderground.com/103474844 ). George said they had kept hoping Henny would recover, since there's always hope, but "reality is cruel." I'd heard something earlier about them also needing permission from Henny's widow to finish and release the album, and I don't know if they have that yet.

George had some surprising comments about Golden Earring, comments suggesting the band might not have stayed together much longer than the 60 years they'd been together when they disbanded early last year, after his diagnosis.

There apparently weren't any disagreements among the band members, but they'd drifted apart musically, all doing other creative work outside the band. They had released a new single in 2019, and their final concert, a year before George was diagnosed with ALS, had been late that year, with the shows planned for spring of 2020 canceled because of Covid. But it doesn't sound as if they were workin on any new music for Golden Earring, though they were working on other projects. George admits to "a bit of fatigue" since they kept doing the same songs, and he said it had become "jukebox-like."

It's likely that after doing so many of the old fan favorites with Golden Earring for several decades, working on something new with different musicians was more energizing than another Earring concert, even though they still sounded great. Lead singer Barry Hay had worked with a number of other artists including JB Meijers, with bass player Rinus Gerritsen joining them at least at times (see https://democraticunderground.com/103474591 ). Drummer Cesar Zuiderwijk has had a variety of side projects including performing and recording with the rock band Sloper.

And George had both his work in a duo with Frank Carillo -- I've posted about the album they released a couple of weeks ago -- and the Vreemde Kostgangers, work he seemed to really enjoy, judging by a 2016 documentary on the trio, where you can tell George and the other two (Henny, and Boudewijn de Groot, who'd been sort of the Dutch equivalent of Dylan) are all clearly having a great time.

Skip the first 7-1/2 minutes, since it's all Dutch commercials. The documentary starts then, with a section starting at 8:30 showing them driving, interspersed with video clips of them as young men.

And I'll add a video of the trio singing "Jimmy," which had been a hit for Boudewijn in 1973. Old song for him to perform, but new for George and Henny.

It has to have seemed less "jukebox-like" to George. It's a shame he's so ill now he hasn't been able to keep making new music with these musicians. (Henny should have had more time, too.)

[highplainsdem]

56. Another interview/update + a good review of his new album with Frank Carillo.

The Dutch magazine Gitarist has an interview with George in their new issue, and there's a brief teaser, apparently the start of the article, on their website:

https://www.gitarist.nl/nieuws/artikel/26-27220/george-kooymans-en-frank-carillo-lachen-en-gitaarspelen

Translated page:

https://www-gitarist-nl.translate.goog/nieuws/artikel/26-27220/george-kooymans-en-frank-carillo-lachen-en-gitaarspelen?_x_tr_sl=nl&_x_tr_tl=en&_x_tr_hl=en&_x_tr_pto=sc

Although the title includes the words "Laughing and playing the guitar" -- obviously about some of the work on the album; George and Frank have been friends for decades -- the paragraph of the interview quoted in the teaser, which links to info for ordering the magazine, is wrenching to read:

"I haven't played for a year," said George Kooymans. “Two fingers of my pick hand are paralyzed. Not my thumb and my index finger, but I can't really grasp anything anymore. With my left hand yes, but those fingers are bent again. Before the diagnosis played a role, we were already a bit busy finishing everything. I recorded Crystal Cracking and Ticket To Heaven here in my studio with Rinus ( Gerritsen ) on bass and Dave Menkehorst on drums. But that happened live, so it went pretty quickly.

There's a link below that to click on to subscribe or just order that issue of the magazine, but when I tried clicking on the link for the specific magazine on the page that teaser linked to, I couldn't get it to open to the cart at first, and then when I finally did found multiple copies of the magazine plus other magazines from the publisher I hadn't clicked on as far as I could tell, totalling nearly 200 euros. I clicked the links that were supposed to remove the items I didn't want, and that didn't work. Couldn't get far enough to even find out if it was possible to order without a Dutch bank account, which another site I'd wanted to order from had required. Maybe some more quotes from the article will eventually turn up on Twitter, as happened with the other article I couldn't get to.

I don't know when the interview for this magazine was done, how much of a lead time it has, but it was a surprise to read that George hasn't been able to play guitar for a year. He'd said in recent interviews that he can no longer play, but nothing I'd heard or read indicated he'd been unable to play for that long, since merely months after the diagnosis. His having lost the ability to play guitar that early does help explain why he gave no updates at all on how he's doing, following the announcement of the diagnosis early last year, until he started promoting the new album last month (which at least gives him that accomplishment to talk about, rather than only health updates).

That page also links to a review Gitarist did last month, when that Kooymans/Carillo album, Mirage, was the magazine's album of the week (not sure how I missed it then, but I'm glad to find it now):

https://www-gitarist-nl.translate.goog/muzieknieuws/artikel/2-27108/release-van-de-week-kooymans--carillo--mirage?_x_tr_sl=nl&_x_tr_tl=en&_x_tr_hl=en&_x_tr_pto=sc

I just wish I could get the current issue of the magazine. One thing Amazon should do is set up a way to subscribe easily to more magazines in other countries, including digital subscriptions so pages can be translated easily online.

[highplainsdem]

57. Another interview, this time for a radio station.

I was glad to find it this morning after not being able to get to the full interview in Gitarist magazine. (Though I did some checking late last night and discovered Readly.com does include Gitarist, so I'll sign up for that later today. Unfortunately, although Readly lets you read thousands of magazines, the other Dutch magazine I mentioned in a reply above, Oor, isn't one of them, and that's the magazine that requires a Dutch bank account number for subscriptions.)

This radio interview was with Radio West in the Netherlands, just last Friday. Link to the web page about the interview, where you can also click to get the translation:

https://www.omroepwest.nl/nieuws/4605583/ernstig-zieke-gitarist-golden-earring-mist-optreden-nog-iedere-dag-het-is-klote?_x_tr_sl=nl&_x_tr_tl=en&_x_tr_hl=en&_x_tr_pto=sc

I also listened to the audio of the interview, which was several minutes long and wasn't fully summarized in the article. But I don't understand spoken Dutch nearly well enough to attempt to translate even a small part of it.

It was encouraging to hear George laughing at times.

The machine translation in the translated page above isn't very clear in places, either. When George talks about how the Netherlands responded early last year to the news that he has ALS and Golden Earring was disbanding -- it not only was a huge news story, but "Radar Love" was played by fans, radio stations, and even church bells across the Netherlands at the same time on his birthday last year, March 11 -- the translated article says, "The farewell did not leave him in the cold clothes." That's a literal translation, and I had to check some more sites to discover that the Dutch expression -- which we'd say as "really touched" -- refers to something very emotional that gets past the layers of "cold clothes" or outerwear for cold weather.

George said he still misses Golden Earring every day. They'd been performing almost every week for decades, and he said "it sucks" not to be able to do that any more, but "at some point you have to accept it, there's nothing else."

He mentioned again in this interview that he lost the ability to play guitar fairly early after the diagnosis (this still seems surprising to me, since he'd said in another recent interview that he was still able to drive -- unless that was a mistranslation).

He said he can still sing well enough to do some additional recording for the still-unreleased Vreemde Kostgangers album (encouraging to hear that, and it's also good news that the album apparently will be released eventually).

He said he hopes to be able to continue writing songs for a long time. "I'm going to try to find a mode. When you write, it's useful if you can play an instrument, but maybe it can also be done with a computer or something."

Re his songwriting -- I'm going to post a link here to an OP in Music Appreciation with a song that was one of GE's biggest early hits, since that thread contains info on another artist whose career he also launched, writing and producing songs for her when he was still a teenager: https://democraticunderground.com/103478690 . George also wrote the first hit for the Dutch group Earth and Fire, about the same time. He's written songs for other artists and produced albums for others, including Dutch rocker Herman Brood, whose career George salvaged in the1980s (producing Brood's most successful album in nearly 10 years). The response in the Netherlands last year to the news of his illness wasn't just because he'd founded Golden Earring and kept them together for 60 years.

The final paragraph about Friday's interview on that website:

Would the band have continued for a long time, if this had not happened to Kooymans? 'You know that at some point after such a long time there will be an end. Whether by death, bad luck or what happened to me, you can't predict that', says the musician. 'But of course we've always been one of those tough guys, we've always kept going.'

And as I mentioned above, lead singer Barry Hay has said George was the toughest/strongest guy in the band.

[highplainsdem]

58. As I mentioned in reply 57 above, I found out that the magazine subscription service Readly

includes the Dutch magazine Gitarist that I'd written about in reply 56 (it had a new interview with George, but very little from that interview on the magazine's website).

I discovered yesterday that having a Readly subscription isn't the same as a digital subscription. What you get is an image of every page of the magazine. Which is great if you just want to read and you know the language, but not a lot of help if you need to use Google Translate, since you can't just copy and paste. Sigh

Most of the article was about the gear used by George and Frank as they recorded Mirage, which is what I'd expect in a guitar magazine, but you don't need all those details, and tbh after copying a couple of paragraphs about gear into Google Translate, I decided to skip the rest of the paragraphs on that subject.

There wasn't any additional information in the article about how George is coping with ALS. Just what I already quoted above.

I did like the last couple of paragraphs, though, since those shed light on their long friendship and how it started. The paragraphs below are from Google Translate's translation.

Carillo remembers meeting Kooymans as if it were yesterday: "I've been coming to the Netherlands since the early 1990s, when I worked with Annie Golden. We mixed the first Golden-Carillo album at George's house. George walked in and asked: do you want something to eat and I thought: wow, George Kooymans is going to make me breakfast? After dinner George and I casually picked up some guitars to sing Everly Brothers songs.

After the tour, Annie wanted to go home. I had no home to go to. I had just gotten divorced, my daughter was in college, so George thought I should stay. And what else should we do? Laughing and playing guitar of course!"

That sounds like what else I've read about George. His attempt at 13 to teach guitar to a neighbor a few years older didn't work out in terms of Rinus's older brother becoming a guitar player -- he didn't have any aptitude for it, apparently -- but he became the band's manager later, and he gave the guitar to Rinus, who became George's bass player for the next 60 years, and their sister married George several years later and they're still married. And Frank Carillo went to George's home studio in Belgium to mix an album, was invited to stay, and they've been lifelong friends and collaborators since then. Unlike a lot of musicians, George does not have a long list of bandmates and girlfriends and wives who were dumped along the way. Very nice guy. Very steady and reliable.

And, unfortunately, very unlucky the last couple of years, getting ALS. But I'm still hoping for a miracle, for a cure to be found.

Thanks again for all the good wishes, healing vibes and prayers for him.

[highplainsdem]

59. Good review of the new Kooymans/Carillo album Mirage at Outsiderrock.ca:

https://outsiderrock.ca/2022/07/24/kooymans-carillo-mirage-a-review/

For the most part Mirage is a collection of largely acoustic based, roots rock, a bit of blues, and a bit of a country feel on many tracks as well. The lead off (and) title track is easily likeable, a smooth acoustic based country flavored tune highlighted by slide guitar and lead vocals from George, as well as vocals from Casey Kooymans, along backing vocals from Frank, who also adds piano, and there’s a bit of banjo provided by Paul Orofino. There’s a few good upbeat cuts like “If I Go There”, “Den Of Thieves” and “Crystal Cracking”, which is probably the most ‘classic rock’ track here, with it’s slide guitar and hammond organ, and Frank’s vocals.

The best picks for me tho’ are a few of the ballads, particularly “I Wish You Were Still Here”, which is just a very memorable song – if there was a hit single from this album, this would be it. As well the short “Christmas In Gaza” stands out as well. Mirage also features the light country rock tune “Ticket To Heaven” written by Eddie Seville, this one includes violin. The ‘bonus’ track here is “Seasons”, which is just George and John Sonneveld (who programs the drums and bass, adds flute and hammond organ) . It is a song George wrote decades ago and gave to Dutch band Earth & Fire, who had their first hit with it in 1969.

Lots of excellent lead vocals and shared vocals here that go so well together, great productions, and a few guests – such as Rinus Gerritsen on couple of tracks. Would be curious to know if Kooymans and Carillo might have anything left in the can. For Golden Earring fans that won’t be expecting anything further from the band Mirage is definitely something you’ll want to pick up.

As I said in one of the replies above, "I Wish You Were Still Here" is also my favorite track on the album.

[highplainsdem]

60. Ran across an interview IN ENGLISH with George Kooymans and Frank Carillo.

Unfortunately it isn't for their new album. It was done 12 years ago, when they were promoting their previous album, On Location. It's the sort of interview they'd almost certainly be doing now, if George was healthy, as he was then. George was 62 then, Frank was not quite 60, but they were obviously happy about recording new music and touring to promote the album. I've seen a number of more recent interviews George did with the other members of Vreemde Kostgangers, his supergroup trio, about their music, but those were all in Dutch. This 2010 interview was for Parkpop, a Dutch music festival, and I'm not sure why it's in English when Carillo almost certainly speaks Dutch fairly well after working in the Netherlands so often. I'd wonder if it might have been intended for a British audience (Parkpop is a huge festival, draws hundreds of thousands of people), but the video has George's last name spelled Kooijmans, a Dutch spelling I've seen only occasionally, and the text I saw on that channel was in Dutch.

Anyway, it's an enjoyable interview, showing how well they get along -- they'd already been friends for nearly 20 years when this was done.

[malthaussen]

61. Vibes...

-- Mal

[highplainsdem]

62. Those are great vibes, Mal! Thanks!

[highplainsdem]

63. There haven't been any new interviews or updates for a month. I'm not going to pretend this

Last edited Thu Aug 18, 2022, 12:47 AM - Edit history (1)

doesn't worry me. Again, I appreciate your vibes/prayers/energy for George.

I was checking Twitter for any news about him the other day when I ran across a post from a Golden Earring fan in Missouri:

Link to tweet

The video that fan posted isn't showing up here on DU (though I can see it on Twitter). It isn't one of my favorites anyway. I want to post video of the the finale of Golden Earring's concert in Voorburg in June 1979, which was broadcast by the Dutch TV show Countdown. The song is "Just Like Vince Taylor," with music by George and lyrics by lead singer Barry Hay, who's singing about one of his earliest girlfriends, who wanted him to copy a British rocker -- https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Vince_Taylor -- who was also very famous throughout Europe (and then later went crazy and became part of Bowie's inspiration for Ziggy Stardust).

[highplainsdem]

64. Finally ran across a new interview with George, a month and a half since the last ones. But

unfortuntely it's in a Dutch magazine - https://lflmagazine.nl - that doesn't offer any digital subscriptions so I can get to the article and copy it easily to Google Translate (or maybe find the translated page on their website after logging in). And they want subscription payment from Dutch bank accounts (apparently standard payment in the Netherlands, with people giving out their bank account numbers casually).

This is a magazine that covers mostly music, and the new issue has articles on Kate Bush, Yes, Oasis, and rising blues star Christone Kingfish Ingram as well as the one on George.

The headline for the article has a quote from George that's translated as "I want to get the most out of every day," and the description of the interview says he talks about how he intends to keep writing songs, as well as his new album with Frank Carillo, Golden Earring disbanding, and the comfort he gets from music. All of which he'd talked about in earlier interviews, and there's no opening paragraph from the interview to give any indication of whether this newly published interview was done much more recently than the ones I already posted about. I thought possibly I could order that issue (and then have to type the article into Google Translate), but not only is it likely that page would also demand a Dutch bank account number, the website won't even let me add it to the cart (possibly because I'm not in the Netherlands). Nor is it available through the magazine subscription service Readly that I tried briefly for another Dutch music magazine.

I'm hoping for a new radio interview soon, some real news on how he's doing -- and, I hope, news that the final album he did with two friends in Vreemde Kostgangers is being finished and will be released, since he'd been hoping for that.

Thanks again for the good vibes, prayers and healing energy for him.

[highplainsdem]

65. An update on George via an article on Golden Earring's drummer today.

Most of this article on Cesar Zuiderwijk - an English translation of the original article in Dutch, which is on several sites -

https://netherlands.postsen.com/live-style/69448/Cesar-Zuiderwijk-touched-by-illness-and-loss.html

is about Cesar's work with another band, Sloper, work that had started before George was diagnosed and Golden Earring disbanded, and about some theater shows he's now doing, a retrospective on his life and career (Rinus Gerritsen, Golden Earring's bass player, has done something similar recently).

This is the paragraph on George:

Cesar also has a lot of contact with the sick George Kooymans. “George is doing okay,” Cesar says. “He can’t play anymore, that’s a shame, but he can still communicate. I often visit him, we remain friends. I also see Rinus a lot, the three of us spend a lot of time together. We see Barry less, because he lives on Curaçao. That’s a lot more difficult. No, a comeback is out of the question. It is not possible for the three of us to continue.’

It was good to read that George, Cesar and Rinus are spending a lot of time together. Unlike the others, George lives in Belgium. Sometime in the early 1970s he bought an old hunting lodge in a forested area not far from the border with the Netherlands. For about ten years he and his wife spent more time at their place in the Netherlands, but then they made that old lodge home when they started their family. I think Cesar and Rinus still live in The Hague, though I'm not positive of that. As Cesar said, Barry now lives on Curacao, though he makes frequent trips back to the Netherlands.

Still no update, though, on that Vreemde Kostgangers album George was hoping to finish and see released...

[highplainsdem]

66. No news - I wish there were some good news to post - but I wanted to link to

a thread I posted in Music Appreciation a couple of days ago.

https://democraticunderground.com/103483104

The song there is a good example of one of the hits Golden Earring had in the Netherlands with a song where George took the lead vocal. This one was from a 1994 album that made the Dutch Top 10, and "Hold Me Now" was the lead single and reached #11 or #12 on the charts there.

The OP also includes the rehearsal video, which sheds some light on just how much George was the leader of Golden Earring. Something journalists and fans always thought seemed obvious, though George always denied it, saying they didn't have a leader.

They did.

[highplainsdem]

67. Ran across an article on a Dutch band doing free concerts if

the audience will consider donating to ALS research. The band's leader had met George more than 40 years ago, when a different band he was in then was opening for Golden Earring. He and George had started chatting about '50s music and became lifelong friends.

I'm not sure how I missed this article when it was published in late June, since George had just started doing interviews again, with the release of Mirage, and I thought I'd been googling daily for any news about him in the previous 24 hours. But this one slipped by me then, and I found it only because Peter van Dorst, another friend of George's, had been posting in 2011 in a Les Paul guitar forum where I'd found some info on a famous guitar George had bought, which I'd posted about in the thread on Indorock and the Tielman Brothers: https://democraticunderground.com/10181711813#post4 . I hadn't heard of Peter van Dorst before, so I'd googled him and found his Twitter account, with the most recent tweet one in late June, about this article.

https://www.bndestem.nl/breda/gratis-optreden-en-dan-met-de-pet-rond-voor-als-onderzoek~acec09f6/

Computer translation:

Free performance and then with the hat around for ALS research

BREDA - A special gesture from the Breda band Jack Bakkers & De Grensgevallen. The four gentlemen offer themselves for free for performances. Provided they are allowed to go around with the cap afterwards. The proceeds go to ALS research.

Bandleader Bakkers, born in Oudenbosch and living for years in Tuinzigt in Breda, had been running around with the idea for some time. "Initially, the plan was to do this for the Daniël den Hoed Fund, which raises money for cancer research. That had to do with the fact that I had cancer myself, on the back of my tongue."

The plans changed when Bakkers heard that his good friend George Kooymans of the Golden Earring has ALS. Bakkers was more than 40 years ago with the band Kondoomz in the support act of the Earring. In the dressing room he got talking to Kooymans. From their mutual love for the fifties and rock 'n' roll came a close friendship for life. "When George got ALS, I thought: cancer is not fatal in all cases. IF it does. That's why I shifted my plan."

-snip-

The band's been around since 2007 and released at least one CD. When I googled the name of the band I found a blurry video of the band in 2011, with George jamming with them for one song.

[highplainsdem]

68. Some news this morning, though no update on George's health.

Checking Google, I found a number of stories on Dutch news sites about plans underway for a monument to Golden Earring in The Hague. A sculptor has been chosen, and he's submitted general plans for the design, but the exact design and location haven't been determined yet.

https://www.omroepwest.nl/nieuws/4635749/golden-earring-krijgt-metershoog-monument

Not the first time they've been honored in their native country. There's a street named after the band, there was a tile on a Sony Records-sponsored walk (those tiles are now in a museum), and they've been on postage stamps.

There was also news this morning about the remastering and reissuing of the first solo albums by both George and lead singer Barry Hay.

https://forums.stevehoffman.tv/threads/george-kooymans-jojo-remastered-cd-release-25th-november-2022.1157252/

https://forums.stevehoffman.tv/threads/barry-hay-only-parrots-frogs-angels-remastered-cd-release-25th-november-2022.1157253/


Re honors for the band...

The most notable one occurred on George's birthday, March 11, of last year, just weeks after the news that he'd been diagnosed with ALS was made public in early February, 2021.

As I mentioned in reply 15 above and in an OP about his birthday this year in the Music Appreciation group - https://democraticunderground.com/103471740 - radio stations and church bells all over the Netherlands played "Radar Love" at 5:15 in the afternoon, rush hour, to honor George and his band on his birthday.

But I found out recently it wasn't just radio stations and churches.

A football stadium got involved, too.

Three tweets below, from that day.

The first, from that football team in The Hague, was tweeted exactly at 5:15 in the Netherlands to everyone following that account. It shows the music video for "Radar Love" (the one in the OP here) playing on the stadium's two screens. The Twitter video shows the entire song, so they'd played it earlier to capture that video, then had probably kept it playing, at least through the designated time. There was a rainstorm going on then, and you can hear it before and after the music video, and sometimes while it was being shown on those screens.

The second tweet, posted at 5:20 by a political journalist, shows the rainbow that had appeared at exactly 5:15 over The Hague, the city where George was born.

And the third video, posted at 5:30, shows what was going on at 5:16, 3/11/2021, for everyone listening to radio in the Netherlands, as someone checked different radio stations.

Link to tweet

Link to tweet

Link to tweet

[highplainsdem]

69. A bit of news, and a CBS video about another musician with ALS.

Last edited Wed Oct 26, 2022, 12:18 PM - Edit history (1)

The news is that George gave some help to his friend and Vreemde Kostgangers bandmate Boudewijn de Groot for Boudewijn's new album, which will be released next month. I haven't found enough details to know exactly how much help George gave Boudewijn, a folksinger and social critic who in the '60s and '70s was the Dutch equivalent of Bob Dylan, and whose new album's debut single is about damage we've done to the planet. (I don't know if George played on that track, haven't been able to find those details yet. EDITING: I've added the video at the end of this message.) I'm still hoping to hear that the final VK album will be mixed and released, a project George was talking hopefully about months ago.

The main reason I'm posting today is that CBS's morning news show had a story on John Driskell Hopkins of the Zac Brown Band, who's also fighting ALS. I'd posted a link to an article about him in reply 48 above, in response to a post from AZSkiffyGeek. As I said there, Hopkins was diagnosed a year earlier than George but has seen the disease progress more slowly, possibly because he's more than twenty years younger than George.

This is a very touching story on the challenges he's facing, and the effect on his family:

I was especially touched to see him recording messages he'll be able to play for his daughters later, if he reaches the point where he can't talk.

Nothing I've read or heard has provided much information on how George's family is coping. His wife is a year older than he is (she was an older woman of 15 when they fell in love). His son is 40 and has at least one child, but I have no idea where he lives. His daughter is 36 and was teaching at a school not far from George's home in Belgium, so probably she's helping him now (just a guess; I have a cousin who gave up teaching to take care of her mom). His daughter provided some vocals for George's last album with Frank Carillo.

Seeing John Driskell Hopkins talking about his family in that CBS story this morning was a wrenching reminder of the extra pain for people with ALS as they watch the effect, the years-long effect, on their families, and wish they weren't putting them through this.


As long as I'm posting a new message here, I want to include the video for Boudewijn de Groot's new single, "Aarde" (Earth). Again, I don't know if George helped with this particular track.

[debm55]

71. I remember the songs. Sending good vibes to George.

[highplainsdem]

72. Thanks, Deb!

[highplainsdem]

73. George's former bandmate Boudewijn de Groot, as mentioned in reply 69 above,

has a new solo album out, which George gave him some help with. Boudewijn has been doing some interviews to promote the album, and in one he talked about George and Henny Virenten, the other two members of the supergroup trio Vreemde Kostgangers (Strange Boarders):


https://www.volkskrant.nl/cultuur-media/stoppen-stoppen-vind-ik-problematisch~b590be71/

-snipping the earlier paragraphs, including the one about how Boudewijn himself was the one to end the Vreemde Kostgangers touring because he found it made him anxious to do live performances-

And so he decided that the Strange Boarders tour of spring 2020 should be his final farewell to the stage. Thanks to the coronavirus, it ended after only a handful of performances in February 2020. Lockdown. It would no longer come from a resumption or catch-up dates: in February 2021, George Kooymans announced that he suffers from the debilitating nerve disease ALS and could no longer perform. In September, Vrienten was also found to be seriously ill. Lung cancer, it became known at his death on April 25 of this year.

'It was all very unexpected', says De Groot. 'That was actually the worst thing: that abrupt. It broke something off. George and Henny weren't done yet, they were busy. Two fantastic composers, songwriters with enormous drive.'

-snip-

Three days before Henny Vrienten, Jan Rot died, with whom De Groot wrote songs and shared stages. Rot also had cancer. Colleague Rob de Nijs, who received his songs about illustrious figures such as Malle Babbe, Jan Klaassen the trumpeter and Sister Ursula from De Groot, has Parkinson's disease and had to stay in his wheelchair at his farewell concert in June.

-snip-

"Well, what do you have to say about it? It is a hopeless state to want to make music so badly, but not be able to do it anymore. In any case, Jan Rot and Henny Vrienten no longer have to witness their own decline. George Kooymans and Rob de Nijs experience their decline in their full mind. That is appalling. And me? I'm healthy for the time being, but I'm also just getting older. At some point I won't be able to do it anymore. That's life. Incurable diseases are miserable, but 'just' getting older is the natural state of affairs.'

-snip-

Unfortunately, some of the Dutch news sites that did stories about this interview and a few quotes from it left out the positive things Boudewijn said about George and ran their stories under headlines like: "Boudewijn de Groot: horrifying how George Kooymans and Rob de Nijs are deteriorating"

https://www.telegraaf.nl/entertainment/535801855/boudewijn-de-groot-afschuwelijk-hoe-george-kooymans-en-rob-de-nijs-aftakelen

The headline of the original Volkskrant story/interview had been something Boudewijn had said about himself and not retiring yet: ""Stop? I find quitting problematic'"

As someone I believe is a Golden Earring fan said on Twitter, you don't just make a headline of only what Boudewijn said about George and Rob de Nijs deteriorating.

I still haven't found more details on exactly what help George gave Boudewijn with his new album, but I'll keep looking.

[highplainsdem]

74. I've finally found some info on how George contributed to Boudewijn de Groot's new album,

Windveren.

One of the songs, anyway, for which George wrote music for Boudewijn's lyrics. (I'll post about more of George's contributions if I find out more.)

The song is "The Closer I Get" - "Hoe Meer Ik Dichterbij Kom" - and it's about getting close to death. Its lyrics are also about Boudewijn's mother, who died in a Japanese internment camp during WWII, a year after giving birth to him.

There had been info about this in the Volkskrant article I posted about in my last reply, but I'd skimmed past the mention of George in that section of the long article. That section explains that Boudewijn knows his mother only through a few photos. He's written a couple of songs about her for earlier albums - songs bringing her to him, as he put it. But in this song he wonders about a reunion after death, a reunion his mother believed in.

Some of the lyrics, in English translation:

The closer I get, the more I think about you/ Maybe it will happen, I don't know/ and you will be pleasantly surprised when you see/ that I am beckoning to you.

It's a beautiful song, thanks to George's melody, and he also did the arrangement and sang on a demo he did for Boudewijn.

As I found out from a post on Boudewijn's Facebook page:

https://business.facebook.com/pg/boudewijndegrootofficial/posts/

English translation below, before the original Dutch - and I want to emphasize that the last line of the English translation, which sounds like an insult aimed at George, was badly mistranslated on Facebook. As you can tell, Boudewijn preferred the demo where George was singing, after he'd written the music for Boudewijn's song, but George refused to let his vocals be used. (Even though this had originally been intended for a still-unreleased album by their supergroup Vreemde Kostgangers (Strange Boarders, also mistranslated om Facebook) rather than a solo album by Boudewijn.) When I used Google Translate to check that last sentence, I got "Only you should not hear George's performance wrong" which is also awkward, but echoes what Boudewijn said earlier. He loved George's vocal on this song, and believes his own is inferior - wrong.

Boudewijn has just released a new song by "Windferen". The final chord of the album, called "The More I Get Closer". The song features lyrics by Boudewijn and music by Golden Earring singer and guitarist George Kooymans. Boudewijn himself about the song: “We were supposed to record the song for the Strange Costgoers album at first.” I wrote the lyrics during a period when composing music was not my big deal. So I sent some pieces to Henny and George, hoping they would get on with it. "The closer I get", ended up with George like this. I got it back complete with an elaborate arrangement. He also sang it himself. So beautiful it gave me goosebumps. His version hit me hard. So I actually thought it should be on the Strange Costgoers album like this too. George did not agree with that. The text was so personal, especially since it was about my mom. Only i could sing that one. Eventually I had to admit that he was right. I also decided to put it on my own album. It took me a while to grasp the melody, because it was written in a style I would never do myself. I'm not saying itgave me sleepless nights but I've been at it for a long time. Practice a lot especially, at home. In the studio the sweat was still in my hands. But I had to. I had to do it right now. Well, so this is what it has become. It's not that bad. Except you don't have to hear George's performance anywhere. "

“We zouden het nummer in eerste instantie opnemen voor het album van de Vreemde Kostgangers. Ik schreef de tekst in een periode dat het componeren van muziek mij niet zo lukte. Ik stuurde dus wat stukken naar Henny en George, in de hoop dat zij er verder mee konden. ‘Hoe Meer Ik Dichterbij Kom’, kwam zo bij George terecht. Ik kreeg het terug, compleet met een uitgewerkt arrangement. Hij had het ook zelf ingezongen. Zo mooi dat ik er kippenvel van kreeg. Zijn versie raakte me enorm. Ik vond dus eigenlijk dat het zo ook op het album van de Vreemde Kostgangers moest komen. George was het daar niet mee eens. De tekst was zo persoonlijk, vooral omdat het over mijn moeder ging. Alleen ik kon die zingen. Uiteindelijk moest ik erkennen dat hij gelijk had. Ik heb toen ook besloten het op mijn eigen album te zetten. Het duurde een hele tijd voor ik de melodie te pakken had, want het was geschreven in een stijl zoals ik dat nooit zelf zou doen. Ik wil niet zeggen dat het mij slapeloze nachten bezorgd heeft, maar ik ben er lang mee aan de slag geweest. Vooral veel oefenen, thuis. In de studio stond het zweet nog altijd in mijn handen. Maar ik moest wel. Ik moest het nu goed doen. Enfin, dit is dus wat het geworden is. Het is niet slecht. Alleen moet je de uitvoering van George er niet naast horen.”

This is the song:

I hope that someday George's demo for this song, with his vocal, will be released, especially since Boudewijn said it was so beautiful it gave him goosebumps.

[quaint]

75. + + +

[highplainsdem]

76. {{{{quaint}}}} The song, and the background on it, brought tears to

my eyes, too.

Especially when I imagine George singing it, his plaintive vocals, so perfect for some songs.

Like the one below, a song about having to hitchhike home, a hit when it was released in 1969, and a fan favorite that he'd do not just for Golden Earring concerts for the next 50 years, but a few years ago with Vreemde Kostgangers, too (and that's his friend Henny Vrienten, who died of lung cancer 6 months ago, at the start of the video;you don't get a quick closeup of Boudewijn there till 1:21).

[quaint]

77. TY

[highplainsdem]

96. The demo George did of that song co-written with Boudewijn WILL be released

as one of the tracks on the third, and final, Vreemde Kostgangers album, which will be released March 17.

Just found this info on Facebook:

https://facebook.com/profile.php?id=100057843091699

https://facebook.com/permalink.php?story_fbid=pfbid0XXc5phPLj2aTTFqiw89vZhXxQwEBxESN3uYv2f2v7fHeggPNKTmxyRit8dw24qAZl&id=100057843091699

This is also evident now, in the thirteen songs of Mist. Hoe Meer Ik Dichterbij Kom is a very personal song by Boudewijn about his mother; he put it on his album Windfeathers. The music is George's. “He sang the demo at home so terribly well that it deserves to be known. His version is now on the third album of Strange Kostgangers. That makes the song for everyone who can identify with it.”

Dat blijkt ook nu weer, in de dertien songs van Mist. Hoe Meer Ik Dichterbij Kom is een heel persoonlijk nummer van Boudewijn over zijn moeder; hij zette het op zijn album Windveren. De muziek is van George. “Hij zong de demo thuis zo verschrikkelijk goed in dat die het verdient bekend te worden. Zijn versie staat nu op de derde plaat van Vreemde Kostgangers. Daarmee is het lied voor iedereen die zich ermee kan identificeren.”

See reply 95 below, which I posted a couple of days ago, for more about the VK album, plus YouTube video of the first single from it.

[highplainsdem]

78. I found a good English translation of the Volkskrant article

mentioned and quoted in replies 73 and 74 above. This just showed up on Google this evening:

https://news.trenddetail.com/euro/226032.html

With this more readable translation, I finally noticed a couple of very short paragraphs, near the end of the long article, saying the final Vreemde Kostgangers album should be released next year. "It just needs to be mastered," Boudewijn said. But George was saying the same thing back in June. And there's no info on when this will be done, how early next year it might be released.

[highplainsdem]

79. George was in the news again today, but not because of his health or his recent music. The lead

guitarist, and one of the lead vocalists, of a band he had helped, long ago, has passed away. Chris Koerts, one of the founders of the Dutch group Earth & Fire, died yesterday, a month before what would have been his 75th birthday. Chris and his twin brother Gerard formed Earth & Fire in the '60s, with Gerard on keyboards, Hans Ziech playing bass, Cees Kalis on drums, and Jerney Kaagman the female lead singer after another singer left soon after the band was formed.

They were supporting Golden Earring at some shows, and George gave them a song he'd written - "Seasons" - which became their first hit, reaching #2 on the Dutch charts in early 1970 and staying on the charts for months.

Found old video of Earth & Fire from 1969 or 1970 on YouTube. That's Chris singing the first verse.

George never recorded or performed the song with Golden Earring, but did perform it with Vreemde Kostgangers. Video from 2019:

And he recorded it for Mirage, the album he did with Frank Carillo, released last summer:

[highplainsdem]

80. I was really happy this morning to discover there was a new podcast about

George - one I hoped would have some update on his health and maybe an interview - on NPO Radio 2, public radio in the Netherlands.

But I couldn't get the podcast to play on my tablet, which I was using at first, and can't get it on my laptop either. Only the first 13 seconds of 34 minutes would play, and then it stopped.

I finally paid more attention to those 13 seconds, which I discovered were on other podcasts there that I also couldn't get to play completely, and noticed the words "alleen voor Nederland" - only for the Netherlands.

I thought I'd post the links here, though, in case anyone else here can listen to the full podcast and is interested:

https://www.radioviainternet.nl/podcasts/top-2000-a-gogo/2022/george-kooymans

https://www.nporadio2.nl/podcasts/top-2000-a-gogo/81040/4-george-kooymans-s04

I hope that if this did include new interview clips, I'll be able to find info about them elsewhere, maybe on Twitter, where I've sometimes found quotes from articles in Dutch magazines I can't get.

[highplainsdem]

81. George's name popped up in another news story today, though this one was

mostly about the girlfriend of the son of his old friend and bandmate, Golden Earring drummer Cesar Zuiderwijk. Cesar's son Casper's partner of 8 years is Joy Renaud, a 34-year-old hospital dietitian who has had MS since her late teens, Cesar, former Golden Earring bassist Rinus Gerritsen (who's also George's brother-in-law), keyboardist Robert Jan Stips who was a member of the band for a short time in the 1970s, and several of their musician friends will be giving a concert to help raise money for an expensive treatment that gives Joy a good chance of remission.

https://www-denhaagcentraal-net.translate.goog/nieuws/zorg/cesar-zuiderwijk-organiseert-benefietconcert-joy-tegen-ms-in-musicon/?_x_tr_sl=nl&_x_tr_tl=en&_x_tr_hl=en&_x_tr_pto=sc

Big names from the (inter)national rock world, such as Cesar Zuiderwijk, Rinus Gerritsen, Robert Jan Stips, The Clarks, Mario Goossens, Fabio Canini and Nicko Christiansen, act selflessly to finance her stem cell operation in Mexico.

“Super cool that all those musical champs come together in this unique line-up. All this to enable my stem cell transplant in Mexico next year. I love music and parties.” Joy Renaud's elated laugh will often be heard throughout the conversation. Cesar Zuiderwijk (74), father of Joy's partner Casper (38) and organizer of the concert: “We also want to raise awareness of MS to promote treatment options. George (Kooymans, affected by ALS) made it clear that most people know little about serious illnesses that turn your life upside down.”

Joy notes that MS and ALS show some similarities, but MS often has a slower course and symptoms that vary. In addition, life-enhancing – albeit costly – medication exists for MS. And MS is more widespread. “In the Netherlands, about fifteen hundred people have ALS, where one in a thousand people is affected by MS. A huge group. I started having symptoms when I was eighteen and was diagnosed with relapse remitting MS two years later. After that I was able to hide it for a long time, until the disease revealed itself more firmly. Nowadays I have to be very careful with my energy and I often have complaints such as tingling and headaches.”

-snip-

She resolutely focuses on the treatment. "I look forward. In terms of treatment of MS, Mexico is more advanced than the Netherlands. The health insurance does not reimburse the treatment – ​​from March 6, 2023 in a private clinic in Pueblo – and the associated trajectory of 75,000 euros. The treatment takes a month: my own stem cells are 'harvested' through an infusion, after which I undergo four rounds of chemotherapy. When I get my stem cells back, I experience a rebirth, as it were: I start with a new immune system. The chance that the MS will stop is eighty percent. A happy number.”

-snip-

The benefit concert is this Sunday in The Hague.

I just did some googling and found out they are starting to do stem cell treatments for ALS as well. George is 40 years older than Joy, and one scientific paper I glanced at mentioned an upper age of 65 in one trial, but I saw other articles saying there really is no upper age limit. But there might be other health factors that would make him less likely to try this.

And the cost is really daunting.

Despite being successful for several decades, Golden Earring's members never became as wealthy as some rock stars. And much of their income in recent years was from concerts, which ended in late 2019, with the concerts planned and sold out for early 2020 having to be canceled because of Covid, then the band finally retiring after George's diagnosis. I hope finances weren't a consideration in George not trying this treatment. I'm guessing age probably had more to do with it, if he ever considered it. Plus the stem cell treatment for ALS may simply slow the progression of the disease a bit, rather than reversing it at all.

I hope the treatment helps Joy Renaud get a much better quality of life, after 16 years of dealing with MS, since her teens. I know Cesar Zuiderwijk has stayed close to George, visiting him frequently, since that's been in the news, but I had no idea Cesar's son's girlfriend was battling MS for all the time they've been together. This has to have been difficult for Cesar, too, with two people so close to him this ill.

[highplainsdem]

82. I keep running across more info on artists whose careers George has helped,

even when I don't expect to.

I was checking Google today for any news about George, and one of the results was a YouTube video of Henk Westbroek with George in a 2009 performance. Wikipedia on Westbroek:

https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Henk_Westbroek

I'd never heard of Westbroek before. He wasn't named in the video title, but the song title was there, and the name of the band, Het Goede Doel, that Westbroek was best known for. I hadn't heard of the band, either, but according to Wikipedia it was one of the most successful Dutch-language bands of the 1980s. Westbroek also had a successful solo career after the band broke up in 1991.

George had helped him launch his solo career, writing the music for Westbroek's first hit single in that solo career, and playing guitar and providing backing vocals.

The first video below, with the hit George helped him write, is the one I found unexpectedly today, video of a 2009 reunion concert with George singing along and playing guitar (including a nice guitar solo). Below that is Westbroek's performance of the same song on the Dutch TV show Countdown in 1992, with George not on stage with him then.

While I was googling this, I also ran across a tweet from Westbroek in February of last year, shortly after the terrible news of George being diagnosed with ALS was announced:

Link to tweet

George Kooymans wrote the music, sang along and played guitar on my first solo single. Title: Where she walks

via @YouTube

[XanaDUer2]

83. Healing thoughts nt

[highplainsdem]

84. Thank you!

[highplainsdem]

85. Just realized I never included a link here to a thread posted

in August about another hit song George wrote and gave to another band, this one a very Beatles- sounding tune that was a Top 10 hit for the Dutch band Smyle in 1972:

https://www.democraticunderground.com/10181692992

[highplainsdem]

86. I want to quote some of the reviews of Golden Earring's last album, a

live album with their last concert, in November 2019, since these reviews help show why it's such a shame that George isn't still healthy and they aren't still doing concerts and recording new music in their 70s.

From Oor, the top music magazine in the Netherlands, Google's machine translation of the Dutch text:

https://oor.nl/albums/you-know-we-love-you/

On November 16, 2019, the Golden Earring performed in Ahoy. Nothing indicated that this would be the last performance of the largest and most important Dutch rock band. The band was in shape, had even just released a new single and had a big tour planned for the coming summer. But then came corona and a short time later the message that guitarist / singer George Kooijmans suffers from ALS, which makes it impossible for him to continue playing. Continuing with a replacement after so many years was obviously not an option, so the show in Ahoy appears to have been the farewell performance.

Lucky in an accident is that the performance was recorded in image and sound, so that we can all enjoy that last time. Ahoy was treated to a greatest hits show, as we were used to from the band: a party for young and old. Another 45 Miles, Long Blond Animal, When The Lady Smiles, Twilight Zone, Going To The Run, Radar Love and She Flies On Strange Wings were sung along loudly. Rinus Gerritsen's bass solo and Cesar Zuiderwijk's drum solo were enthusiastically received. Singer Barry Hay looked cool as ever and had a fantastic voice. Their performance proves that rock & roll is the elixir of endless youth. It also shows that in the sixty years that they were active, the Earring had all the links well together: everyone was exceptionally good on their instrument and they had fantastic songs. And every show contained a few surprises. This time, for example, Vanilla Queen from classic Moontan, three songs from the album Face It and the new single Say When. In any case, the band that was on stage at the end of 2019 was still very much alive. The Golden Earring is no longer there and that is a great pity. But up to and including their last performance they were of great class.

From the Dutch magazine Lust For Life, a 5-star rating...and the text is also from Google Translate:

https://lflmagazine.nl/cd-recensies/golden-earring-you-know-we-love-you-recensie

When Golden Earring played in a sold-out Rotterdam Ahoy on November 16, 2019, nothing indicated that this would be the very last performance of the band ever. In fact, the concert agenda for 2020 was already full. We know what followed: first the corona crisis that paralyzed everything and at the beginning of 2021 the dramatic news that George Kooymans was forced to stop due to illness. It also marked the end of the band. More by luck than wisdom, both projected images and sound were preserved. They formed the basis for this impressive document.

The sound is great, the video atmospheric. However, it is mainly the band itself that makes a big impression. While most contemporaries - if still active - stumble to the finish line in a battered composition, the Earring banged again as usual. You Know We Love You! contains energetic and inspired versions of songs like Don't Stop The Show, I Do Rock 'N' Roll, Long Blond Animal and the classics Twilight Zone and Radar Love. The line-up, which had been together for almost fifty years at that time, had not yet surrendered anything musically. Just as the vocals of Barry Hay and George Kooymans had at most a pleasant rough edge. The end was sudden, the occasion very sad. However, this final chord is worthy of this Dutch legend. And try not to get a lump in your throat when you hear George Kooymans sing Hold Me Now again from his toes.

A review published in English, though this is on a Dutch music website with contributors from all over the world:

https://www.headbangerslifestyle.com/music/reviews/review-golden-earring-you-know-we-love-you/

-snip-

With a discography bold as brass, the Dutch band has countless songs to dig from. Golden Earring delivers, as they always did. The band’s intense interaction and timeless music is transferred to their fans instantly. Opening with knuckle busters ,,Don’t Stop The Show” and ,,I Do Rock ‘n Roll” the band shoots into gear. Senior citizens in the meantime, they are living prove age doesn’t matter. Radiating confidence and pleasure, it is a pleasure to watch them perform. The interaction is tremendous, with a crowd going wild. Just check crowd pleasers ,,Another 45 Miles” with George on vocals, and the masterful live cracker ,,Long Blond Animal”. Intense and displaying the band’s key features; Hard rock, memorable melodies, nesting hooks and classic thrive. It rocks hard and it swings with swagger!

Cezar Zuiderwijk’s solid and versatile drumming in combination with Rinus Gerritsen’s dynamic bass playing is the very foundation of the band’s hauling live sound. George’s guitar playing is pristine, laying down snarling riffs and slick melodies, topped off with classy solos. His voice is also in fine form, barely affected by 60 years of gigging and his age, he pitches high and mighty.

,,Twilight Zone” packs energy and swagger, with George singing like in his prime. A rousing arena rocker standing firm and tall 4 decades in. From those successful melodic rocking eighties ,,When The Lady Smiles” and ,,The Devil Made Me Do It” come storming by, displaying their impeccable talents. Arena rockers with modern edge adding a sophisticated lustre to the band’s varied repertoire.

New songs like ,,Liquid Soul” fall into place easily, bearing all typical ingredients of the band. Fused with their wide varied tastes it displays soulful swing and rocking vigour at the same time. The instrumental jam-sections add to it, with Rinus going all in, shaking his head left to right ferociously, pumping out the low groove. Though composed recently, it adds to grandeur of tunes like the 50 years old psychedelic progger ,,Vanilla Queen” (1973). The setlist is constructed around their long spanning career with variety and class.

-snip-

Much more at the link - this album has the complete concert plus DVD, so it's a long review - with the reviewer saying the performance of "Radar Love" was "a masterclass in performing a classic" and concluding, "Underlining their pitch perfect live performance, the added DVD displays the band as a solid rocking machine with intense chemistry and comradery."

EDITING to add video of "Liquid Soul" from that concert - video recorded by a fan and uploaded to Youtube the next day - so you can hear just how good Golden Earring sounded that night, for what sadly turned out to be their final concert.

Btw, although whoever wrote the third review above called it a "new" song, it was from their 1994 album Face It - which was still 33 years after George founded the band, and 29 years after their first Top 10 single.

[highplainsdem]

87. I was checking Google for any news of George and found a New Year's message his friend and

bandmate Boudewijn de Groot had added to the home page of his website yesterday:

https://www.boudewijndegroot.nl/

George and folksinger Boudewijn, along with pop singer Henny Vrienten, had formed the supergroup trio Vreemde Kostgangers (Strange Boarders) in 2016, one of George's side projects. Henny sadly died of cancer last spring. Boudewijn released a solo album recently, one that George had helped him with, and you can find several messages about it above: replies 69 and 73-78.

From Boudewijn's New Year's message, Dutch first then English from Google Translate:

Het voorbije jaar was er een met pieken en dalen, om maar met een cliché in huis te vallen.

Maar de dalen waren dan ook zeer triest en de pieken ongelooflijk stralend.

Allereerst natuurlijk het overlijden van Henny, met wie Nederland een fenomenaal muzikaal talent heeft verloren en ik een dierbare vriend. Daarnaast de ziekte van George, waardoor gitaarspelen voor hem voorgoed onmogelijk is geworden. Gelukkig is hij er als vriend nog en even positief en energiek als altijd. Voor mij een voorbeeld van mentale kracht.

-snip-

Naast deze twee producties werd er uiteraard ook nog gewerkt aan de derde cd van de Vreemde Kostgangers. Deze staat gepland voor maart dit nieuwe jaar.

-snip-

The past year has been one with peaks and troughs, so to speak with a cliché.

But then the valleys were very sad and the peaks incredibly radiant.

First of all, of course, the death of Henny, with whom the Netherlands has lost a phenomenal musical talent and I have lost a dear friend. In addition, George's illness, which has made playing the guitar impossible for him for good. Fortunately, he is still there as a friend and as positive and energetic as ever. For me an example of mental strength.

-snipping paragraphs about Boudewijn's book and solo album-

In addition to these two productions, work was of course also being done on the third CD of the Strange Boarders. This is scheduled for March this new year.

-snip-

Emphasis added.

I was glad to find this holiday message from Boudewijn. It was very good news that George is as positive and energetic as ever. Good news, too, that the third Vreemde Kostgangers album, which George was talking about last summer, will be released in a few months.

[highplainsdem]

88. Google is usually pretty reliable, including when you narrow search results to

those from the last 24 hours, as I usually do when checking for any news about George. But a few days ago it gave me a link to a Facebook page, a post from the account for Dutch public broadcaster NTR, and as far as I can tell it doesn't have anything recent added to it.

https://m.facebook.com/ntromroep/videos/1197521733616852/

That's about a documentary from NTR about Vreemde Kostgangers, the same 2016 documentary I posted a YouTube video of in reply 55 above...but the Facebook post links to the documentary on the NPO website

https://www.npostart.nl/het-uur-van-de-wolf/29-12-2016/VPWON_1259657

and that video has one advantage over the one on YouTube. On YouTube, you couldn't view any subtitles.

With the documentary I linked to above, you can. You have to click on Instellingen (settings), then Ondertiteling (subtitles), then choose Nederlands f0r Dutch subtitles as the only choice offered.

That still helps since it gives me text I can type into Google Translate to understand at least some of the conversation that sounds most interesting. Though I had to do some extra checking of Dutch slang on other websites. Dutch spoken rapidly doesn't always sound much like the few Dutch words I'm familiar with from translated text and some YouTube languange lessons, so having the subtitles is great.

It's an entertaining documentary, with lots of old footage from their separate careers as well as 2016 rehearsal footage and conversation about themselves and each other and their songs, with that newer footage from meetings and rehearsals at what I think is George's estate in Belgium, just a few miles over the border from the Netherlands.

And it's fun to see how much they're enjoying themselves. Even though they come from very different backgrounds, as Boudewijn comments early in the documentary.

There are some parts that are bittersweet because of what's happened since then.

Henny Vrienten talks about how, even though they're men "of a certain age" - he and George would have both been 68 then, and Boudewijn was 72 - the music keeps them feeling young. Henny died of cancer last year.

And Henny says at one point, after a discussion of whether they should perform standing or sitting down (which Boudewijn as a folk singer was used to), that George "never sits down" because he's "such a rocker" - and he reminisces about the first time he saw George, whom he describes as a long-haired guitar god with an "insanely beautiful" guitar, singing and playing beautifully. Henny was only feet away at that show, but said he felt George was lightyears away from him...and only later did he find out that George was close to his own age, only a few months older. At this point George cuts in to say that Henny was also very good, early on (though I know from Wikipedia that Henny didn't record his first single and album till 1977, while Golden Earring started recording in 1965).

While Henny's talking about George as a young rocker - someone who still at that time, 2016, can't sit down onstage - you're shown footage of George decades earlier, playing his guitar behind his back, dancing on stage and jumping off to get closer to the audience.

None of them imagined then that Henny might have only five more years to live, and George would be diagnosed with ALS four years later. While the oldest member of the trio, the one who would have liked to sit down for shows, is still healthy and recording new music...with some help from George.

But I'm glad Boudewijn, at least, is still well, and still a close friend of George's.

[highplainsdem]

89. Great article on Boudewijn's latest album (which George helped him with, as

explained above), here:

https://www.de-lage-landen.com/article/boudewijn-de-groot-balanceert-tussen-weemoed-en-speelsheid

https://www-de--lage--landen-com.translate.goog/article/boudewijn-de-groot-balanceert-tussen-weemoed-en-speelsheid?_x_tr_sl=nl&_x_tr_tl=en&_x_tr_hl=en&_x_tr_pto=sc

If you click on the first link, be sure to click on the link to translate, unless you know Dutch.

[highplainsdem]

90. Article IN ENGLISH - with new photos - about George being made an honorary citizen

of Rijkevorsel, the town in Belgium he's lived near most of his life.

The article is at https://netherlands.postsen.com/music/131774/George-Kooymans-74-of-Golden-Earring-honorary-citizen-of-Rijkevorsel-Playing-guitar-is-no-longer-possible-due-to-ALS-Rijkevorsel.html

There are three photos, two showing his family as well. In the first one, where they're standing around George in his wheelchair, that's George's daughter and her partner and their daughter on the left, And on the right are George's son and his partner and their two daughters, with George's wife - who's the younger sister of Golden Earring bass player Rinus Gerritsen - standing behind the oldest grandchild. You can see some of his family in the second photo, too.

From the article:

The municipality of Rijkevorsel has a twelfth honorary citizen. Guitarist and composer George Kooymans (74) of the Dutch rock group Golden Earring was presented with the certificate and several gifts on Saturday. He has lived in the Kempen village for fifty years. Unfortunately, due to the muscle disease ALS, playing the guitar is no longer possible, but Kooymans can look back on a rich career. “You only now realize what you have achieved.”

Kooymans was born in 1948 in The Hague. At the age of thirteen he founded Golden Earring with some friends. RadarLove, Twilight Zone and When the Lady Smiles are some of the group’s best-known and international hits. Kooymans co-wrote most of the songs they recorded. After sixty years, Golden Earring put an end to it in 2021 because Kooymans has been diagnosed with ALS. “Playing guitar is no longer an option,” says George Kooymans. “My fingers are too crooked. Singing is still possible. Everything is limited by the disease. My days mainly consist of listening to music and reading. And every week we get together with some friends. A career in music happens to you, you only now realize what you have achieved.”

George’s friends knocked on the door of the city council to declare him an honorary citizen. “When that news became known, we received a lot of positive reactions in Rijkevorsel,” says friend Stanny Van Ostaeyen. “With his oeuvre, George has moved a stone in a musical river. Yet he and his family have always remained ordinary people without delusions of grandeur. After a performance for 20,000 fans abroad, you could see him standing in line at the checkout of the supermarket a day later to pay for his groceries.”

George Kooymans received a certificate of honorary citizenship from the municipality of Rijkevorsel, together with a few gifts. There were flowers for his wife Milly. Their two children and three grandchildren were also there in the council chamber of the town hall. “It is a very great honor”, ​​says George Kooymans. “We have lived in Rijkevorsel for almost fifty years and feel at home there. Actually, we ended up here quite by accident. The intention was to move to the United States in the early 1970s, but that was not easy. That is why we went to Rijkevorsel to look. I have lived here for more than half my life, yet I have remained Dutch. I have not adopted the dialect.”

-snip-

[highplainsdem]

91. Linking to a separate, much shorter thread I posted 5 days ago about the honorary-citizen award that

George was given, with some video including clips from a new interview done then:

https://democraticunderground.com/10181762906

It was sad to see, in those new photos, how much ALS has affected him. But the video showed he was still pretty positive, as his friend Boudewijn de Groot said in the New Year's message I quoted above.

[highplainsdem]

92. News this morning of a Golden Earring reunion that will take place next week:

Dutch news article, with the machine translation:

https://www.rtlnieuws.nl/entertainment/artikel/5360751/golden-earring-komt-dinsdag-samen-voor-50-jaar-radar-love

https://www-rtlnieuws-nl.translate.goog/entertainment/artikel/5360751/golden-earring-komt-dinsdag-samen-voor-50-jaar-radar-love?_x_tr_sl=nl&_x_tr_tl=en&_x_tr_hl=en&_x_tr_pto=sc

Golden Earring will hold a small reunion next week: 'Hope it's not a goodbye'


The four members of Golden Earring will meet for the first time in a long time on Tuesday for a small reunion. Singer Barry Hay (74) tells this on Saturday in the NPO Radio 5 program 'FM op 5'. They come together with guitarist George Kooymans (74), who suffers from ALS.

"It's really cool that the four of us are complete again," said Barry. The singer lives in Curaçao, but has now been in the Netherlands for a few weeks to participate in the concert series De Vrienden van Amstel LIVE. "We'll sit down and drink wine and talk. It's really a thing that we're together again. I hope it's not goodbye."

This will also be the moment when the four men celebrate the fiftieth anniversary of the song 'Radar Love' and the album 'Moontan'. The gathering of the musicians takes place in the same week that the Metropool stage in Hengelo dedicates a special evening to the iconic song and album. Bassist Rinus Gerritsen will be present live.

-snip-

I hope it won't be the final time they meet, either...and I also wish Barry would be a bit more thoughtful before he says things he shouldn't say (not that he's ever been; Golden Earring would have been better off in terms of PR, especially in the US, if Barry hadn't been the only member for whom English was his first language, and the one who seemed to enjoy media attention the most). He made a similar comment to some journalist before he went to visit George last summer, saying it might be the last time he'd see George, and he was wrong then.

Thankfully Rinus, and drummer Cesar Zuiderwijk, still live close enough to George to visit him regularly. Probably just as well Barry's in Curacao most of the time.

But I am glad they're having a reunion, and I hope there'll be news stories and maybe some video.

[niyad]

93. Vibes for best outcome, please keep us posted.

[highplainsdem]

94. Thanks, niyad! I really appreciate the vibes for him.

As I mentioned in a reply above, there is a fairly new stem cell treatment for MS that can also help some people with ALS (this wasn't available when my friend Ernie Wallengren died of ALS two decades ago), but George apparently has not tried that, though I'm not sure why.

I think he's holding up amazingly well despite the limitations (and probably the physical pain) caused by the illness.

But it's such a cruel disease, and I keep hoping for new treatments, and a cure, for everyone with ALS.

[highplainsdem]

95. The first single from the third, unreleased Vreemde Kostgangers album is out, new music

from the last album recorded by George with Henny Vrienten and Boudewijn de Groot, and it's good. Ran across it this morning in De Volkskrant's Tracks of the Week:

https://www.volkskrant.nl/cultuur-media/tracks-van-de-week-deus-nostalgie-punkrap-en-luie-liefde-met-vreemde-kostgangers~bcb4145b/

That article links to Spotify but also has a YouTube video:

From De Volkskrant, translated with the help of Google Translate:

Henny Vrienten has passed away, George Kooymans has ALS and Mist (March 17) is the farewell greeting from Strange Lodgers, their trio with Boudewijn de Groot. "Lazy Love" makes you shiver.

Another article on the new release:

https://www.entertainmentbusiness.nl/muziek/excelsior-recordings-brengt-op-27-maart-derde-vreemde-kostgangers-album-uit/

Translation with the help of Google Translate:

"Mist is a worthy final chord for an illustrious trio,” says Boudewijn de Groot. With the late Henny Vrienten and George Kooymans he formed Strange Boarders. Kooymans and De Groot already met on the stages of the sixties before the start of Strange Kostgangers. Heny Vrienten and Ernst Jansz played in Boudewijn de Groot's band for a while in the 1970s, after which they founded Doe Maar.

-snip-

Strange Kostgangers was created during the birthday party of Earring drummer Cesar Zuiderwijk. During that party, Vrienten, Kooymans and De Groot performed together, after which it was decided to continue that musical outing. As Strange Boarders, the trio released two albums in 2017. The debut Strange Kostgangers came in at first place in the GfK Dutch Album Top 100 and was eventually awarded gold. The second album Nachtwerk achieved a creditable ninth place in the album chart.

-snip-

This was followed by extremely successful tours with sold-out venues. After a performance in Arnhem on March 7, 2020, the trio's tour had to be stopped prematurely due to corona. What nobody knew at the time turned out that Arnhem would be the very last concert of Strange Boarders. On February 5, 2021, it was announced that George Kooymans had the muscle disease ALS and on April 25, 2022, Henny Vrienten died of lung cancer.

-snip-

The recordings of a third album were already largely finished by then. Henny Vrienten worked on it in his studio, George Kooymans was still recording until July last year and Dave Menkehorst produced the album. In addition to the three Strange Boarders, Jasper Slijderink (keys), Rick van Wort (drums) and Henny's son Xander Vrienten (bass) will also be present at Mist.

-snip-

The article goes on to quote Henny's son Xander saying that the new Vreemde Kostgangers album has some beautiful songs by his father that are "almost accidental words." I'm not quite sure what he meant by that, but I'm guessing he meant some lyrics are especially touching, considering how soon Henny passed away after the songs were written and recorded.

Btw, I'm guessing from the YouTube description with the single above that it was written by George and Henny, but I can't tell from that whether one composed the music and the other wrote the lyrics or they collaborated on both.

Xander "will release an album dedicated to his father that he recorded with Trijntje Oosterhuis and the Residentie Orkest tomorrow" and the article says it was Henny's wish that both albums be released.

George has been talking about the final VK album, too, and has wanted it released.

[highplainsdem]

97. Another release from the upcoming VK album. George singing about his Strat.

Here's a review from a Belgian music site, then the video of the new single:

https://www.dansendeberen.be/2023/02/17/nieuwe-single-vreemde-kostgangers-fender-strat/

Dutch first, then the Google translation to English:

Boudewijn de Groot, George Kooymans en Henny Vrienten brachten in 2017 als Vreemde Kostgangers hun eerste twee albums uit. Met zo’n bandbezetting kan je niet anders dan fantastische muziek maken en dat bewezen de Nederlanders toen ook. Zowel Vreemde Kostangers als Nachtwerk werden zeer goed onthaald en zes jaar later krijgen we met Mist eindelijk het derde deel van wat een triologie blijkt te zijn. Mist verschijnt op 17 maart, maar helaas heeft dit laatste album wel een wrange nasmaak, gezien het overlijden van Henny Vrienten vorig jaar.

“Fender Strat” opent alleen met elektrische gitaren en een prachtig klinkend Hammondorgel, waardoor het instrumentaal wat doet denken aan bands zoals The Grateful Dead, Genesis en hun landgenoten van Nits. Zoals de titel al doet vermoeden, is deze single een ode aan de Fender Stratocaster, die voor velen de ultieme gitaar is. Het is dan ook niet onlogisch dat we doorheen het nummer een meer dan redelijke portie gitaarsolo’s krijgen, maar ook de fantastische zang van Kooymans weet de aandacht te trekken. De tekst is, zoals bij Vreemde Kostgangers wel altijd het geval is, lichtjes geniaal. Deze keer blinkt het uit in de ludieke manier waarop Kooymans zingt over hoe hij een Fender Strat zou verkiezen boven eender welke gitaar, maar ook boven eender welke vrouw. “Fender Strat” heeft alles wat we kunnen verlangen van Vreemde Kostgangers en levert zo een meer dan geslaagde single op.

Mist verschijnt op 17 maar_

______

Boudewijn de Groot, George Kooymans and Henny Vrienten released their first two albums in 2017 as Strange Kostgangers. With a band like that you can't help but make fantastic music and the Dutch proved that at the time. Both Strange Costangers and Nachtwerk were very well received and six years later, with Mist, we finally get the third part of what turns out to be a trilogy. Mist will be released on March 17, but unfortunately this last album has a bitter aftertaste, given the death of Henny Vrienten last year.

“Fender Strat” only opens with electric guitars and a beautiful sounding Hammond organ, making it instrumentally reminiscent of bands such as The Grateful Dead, Genesis and their compatriots from Nits. As the title suggests, this single is an ode to the Fender Stratocaster, which for many is the ultimate guitar. It is therefore not illogical that we get a more than reasonable portion of guitar solos throughout the song, but Kooymans' fantastic vocals also manage to attract attention. The text is, as is always the case with Strange Boarders, slightly genius. This time it excels in the playful way in which Kooymans sings about how he would prefer a Fender Strat to any guitar, but also to any woman. "Fender Strat" has everything we could wish for from Strange Boarders and thus delivers a more than successful single.

Mist appears on March 17.

[highplainsdem]

98. Another review of the new single, "Fender Strat" - this one from a Dutch site:

https://www.nieuweplaat.nl/rock/vreemde-kostgangers-fender-strat/

Dutch, then English via Google Translate:

Het laat zich makkelijk raden welk type gitaar prominent aanwezig is op de nieuwe single van Vreemde Kostgangers. Fender Strat is swingende track, die vliegend van start gaat dankzij een Hammondorgel. Je hoort gedurende het hele nummer dat Boudewijn de Groot, Henny Vrienten en de zingende George Kooymans plezier hadden tijdens de opnamen. Het is na Luie Liefde de tweede single van het album Mist, dat op 17 maart wordt uitgebracht.

-------

It is easy to guess which type of guitar is prominently present on the new single by Strange Kostgangers.Fender Strat is a swinging track, which gets off to a flying start thanks to a Hammond organ. Throughout the song you hear that Boudewijn de Groot, Henny Vrienten and the singing George Kooymans had fun during the recordings. After Luie Liefde, it is the second single from the album Mist, which will be released on March 17.

[highplainsdem]

99. Another good review of the new album:

Dutch original at https://www.maxazine.nl/2023/02/27/vreemde-kostgangers-mist/ .

English translation, machine translation, at

https://www-maxazine-nl.translate.goog/2023/02/27/vreemde-kostgangers-mist/?_x_tr_sl=nl&_x_tr_tl=en&_x_tr_hl=en&_x_tr_pto=sc

-snip-

Yet there was still a third album on the shelf. Partly recorded separately during the corona pandemic, and not yet fully finished when Henny died. Yet it was his emphatic wish that the album would still come. Now that album has been released with 'Mist'. An album with a painful edge with the knowledge that this will probably be the last musical activity we will hear from Henny Vrienten and George Kooymans.

Boudewijn, however, called it 'a worthy final chord' in the announcement, and that can only be emphasized when listening to the album. All three gentlemen once again bring out the best in themselves on the album. George Kooymans sings fabulously beautifully in 'De Liefde Kent Geen Tijd', written by the late Thé Lau, and rocks as usual in 'Fender Strat' and 'Lippen'. Henny's lyrics suddenly sound a bit wry in the title track and 'Tijd Tekort', but together with 'Not Wederzijs', he still delivered beautiful pearls in his oeuvre at the end of his life. Boudewijn de Groot also adds new gems to his oeuvre on the familiar-sounding 'I Play Guitar' and the uptempo 'The End of Maybe' that was previously recorded by Rob de Nijs on his latest album 't Is Mooi Geweest' from 2020. In the closing track,

In addition to 'The End of Maybe' there is another song by de Groot that appeared earlier. Although in his own version, his album 'Windveren' already released the emotional 'Hoe Meer Ik Dichterbij Kom' last autumn, a tribute to his prematurely deceased mother. George Kooymans wrote the melody for this. Because Boudewijn was so enthusiastic about Kooymans' sung version, the song ended up on this album in his version. Yet Boudewijn's own previously published version comes across as purer than Kooymans' version.

But all in all, Boudewijn's earlier words can only be underlined. It's great that Henny's last wish has been fulfilled with this. It is a nice tribute to the musical footsteps of three Nederpop legends. (9/10) (Excelsior)

[highplainsdem]

100. Today is George's 75th birthday. I hope he's having as good a day as possible, surrounded

by loved ones.

NPO Radio 2 in the Netherlands has marked the day with an article on the other artists he's helped over the years.

The original article in Dutch is here (and you should also see a popup asking if you want to translate the page)

https://www.nporadio2.nl/nieuws/top2000/4c66b6e4-f664-4c37-b144-c85e08f004b1/van-anouk-tot-westbroek-de-muzikale-uitstapjes-van-george-kooymans

and the translated version I got clicking the "Translate this page" link on the Google search results page is here:

https://www-nporadio2-nl.translate.goog/nieuws/top2000/4c66b6e4-f664-4c37-b144-c85e08f004b1/van-anouk-tot-westbroek-de-muzikale-uitstapjes-van-george-kooymans?_x_tr_sl=nl&_x_tr_tl=en&_x_tr_hl=en&_x_tr_pto=sc

Some versions of the translated page I got had little notification boxes in place of the YouTube videos saying you have to click on the link to allow social media cookies. Most times I didn't get that, but then I don't usually block those cookies.

One of the videos isn't appearing for me at all, a video of an Anouk song, and there's a notice that "The uploader has not made this video available in your country."

There's even a video from a Dutch artist I'd never heard of before, Guus Meeuwis. I do keep hearing about more and more artists George helped over the years by writing and/or producing hits for them.

Anyway, it's a nice recognition of George's decades of contributions to popular music.

And this is the Anouk song he wrote and recorded with her that first got her attention in the Netherlands, a live performance of the song that apparently is the one that won't display in this country in the video NPO had used:

And just in case you can't get any of the other videos to appear, here they are, in order:

[highplainsdem]

101. A new interview with George's VK bandmate Boudewijn de Groot has some great comments on

George and their late bandmate Henny Vrienten. And this article, originally published in Dutch at

https://www.trouw.nl/cultuur-media/laatste-album-is-noodgedwongen-sluitstuk-voor-vreemde-kostgangers-we-haalden-het-beste-in-elkaar-naar-boven~b6924b48/

is in English at https://news.trenddetail.com/euro/amp/361409 .

Well, sort of in English. The translation seems awkward in places, but the original Dutch article requires registering if not subscribing to get the full text, and with the translation I found elsewhere I won't bother with that yet.

The title given in English isn't complete, though. The original Dutch title, translated via Google Translate, is:

Interview
Boudewijn de Groot
Last album is forced to be the closing piece for Strange Boarders: 'We brought out the best in each other

With the knowledge about the fate of Henny Vrienten and George Kooymans, some songs are played Fog unintentionally a wry edge. Like in Too little time in which Vrienten sings about his urge to want to do as much as possible: “Will I ever be able to get used to lying down / I have to keep going because I’m short of time” and “A person has eighty years / well I can’t handle that /I want a century or two to finish everything.”

Or the title track, again sung by Vrienten, which not only describes a weather condition, but also the last phase in someone’s life. Also wry: George Kooymans in Fender Strat heard him sing full of passion and love about the love for his guitars, the very instrument that he can no longer play due to his ALS muscle condition.

But Boudewijn doesn't want that to be the focus for people listening to the album: "We can talk about Henny’s death and George’s illness, but it shouldn’t immediately become a soggy melodrama." He said that people unaware that Henny died of cancer soon after much of the album was finished, and George was diagnosed with ALS, will hear a very positive, lively album that's fun to listen to. "Hear how George and Henny sing and join in the positive feeling and emotion of the lyrics. As a listener you should not dwell on the situation of the singer behind it."

De Groot: “Our division of roles was very pleasant. Henny in the middle, who spoke and he thought it was fantastic to do. He was very good at that too. And George and I on the side. That felt like a huge relief to me and made it very relaxed. From that feeling you naturally have much more fun than when it feels perfunctory or tense. We had the greatest fun on stage. I still enjoyed performing that way. As long as it’s with people I know, like, get along with and love.”

-snip-

His time as Strange Boarder has ‘opened his ears in a way’ says De Groot. “It was an enrichment. I could write songs that I probably wouldn’t be singing very quickly myself, like Fender Strat or I hate the blues. I got even more admiration for Henny and George. I thought Henny was already the Paul McCartney of the Low Countries, and that was confirmed once again. And I found out that George is the best Dutch-speaking singer there is. With Strange Boarders we brought out the best in each other and were able to inspire each other.”

[highplainsdem]

102. There's a new, fairly long interview with George, with lots of photos, in the

Dutch newspaper De Volkskrant. I've translated it thanks to Google Translate. I did see a couple of English language news stories based on the interview, but they were just snippets.

https://www.volkskrant.nl/kijkverder/v/2023/interview-george-kooymans~v667061/
Archive page - https://archive.ph/Ahdqt - with the photos oddly cropped. The recent photos were taken by Cassy Kooymans, George's daughter.

The headline is "The disease has taken away from me what I loved to do most."

This interview is apparently being done now not because of his 75th birthday, but because of the release this week of Mist, the final Vreemde Kostgangers album.

Which has the song "Fender Strat" - which is basically about George's love for all of his guitars, all 88 of them. Which he can't play any more. Playing guitar was his life, he says, and ALS has taken that away, but he has to accept it.

Rock journalist Menno Pot, who did the interview, says George still looks pretty good for someone who's had ALS for years (first symptoms the summer of 2020, definite diagnosis that November). He's cheerful, laughing regularly during the Zoom interview though occasionally seeming sad.

"Of course it's not going well, but it's still doable. I can eat, drink, read, watch TV. Walking is not so good anymore. You have to do that with a walker. I have to be careful not to fall. Picking things up is tricky. My head still wants to go fast, but I'm slowing down in everything. And it doesn't get any better."

Since George had been in a wheelchair in January for a ceremony awarding him honorary citizenship in the Belgian town he's lived near, it was good news that he is still able to use a walker. And in one of the photos you can see a stairlift on the stairs behind him.

But later in the interview he says that the Lagoon studio in his home in Belgium, where he produced so many albums for Golden Earring and a lot of other artists over the years, is gone, with that space being remodeled to include a kitchenette and shower for when the disease worsens and he can no longer get upstairs.

He'll still have a very small studio, equipped with a laptop with ProTools-style software and a few speakers.

He reflected on Vreemde Kostgangers - Strange Boarders - and his friendship with bandmate Henny Vrienten, who died of cancer last April.

"Strange Boarders has brought me a lot," says Kooymans. "Fun outside my comfort zone. Friendship. We had a great time, almost always went for good food around the performances. Then we talked. Henny and I already knew each other well, but we really became friends. I learned so much from him. He was a brilliant guy.”

Menno Pot mentions earlier interviews, in 2012 and 2017, when George had told him Golden Earring should have done things differently, especially right after their greatest success in 1974 with the album Moontan and "Radar Love" being the worldwide hit they're still best known for. Their record company had wanted a similar followup album and hit. Golden Earring chose instead to follow that hit with very different albums, which George had previously told the journalist was "a bit stupid, in retrospect."

Now he says he doesn't worry any more about the mistakes, and though the band didn't "really become world famous" (to which Menno objects, and George says they "pushed it, but didn't hold it" ), Golden Earring had been successful and he has no regrets.

Menno writes:

Why would you if you recorded 25 studio albums with your band, won 'gold' and 'platinum' more than thirty times, wrote two world hits and some European hits and were in the top 10 in the Netherlands 29 times, of which five times to number one, good for a total of 389 weeks net in the Top 40. Golden Earring did ten long tours in North America between 1969 and 1984.

Barry Hay was allowed to act as Earring eye-catcher. Kooymans preferred to remain silent, but was the creative pivot, the driving force, the man who - when it came down to it - slammed the table with the flat of his hand.

Menno writes that the farewell in 2021 - just announcing the ALS diagnosis and the group disbanding - was "tragic" since they'd lost control of their farewell after six decades.

George disagrees: "A big farewell concert would not have suited us very well." And he explains that the reason the ALS had come to light was that he could no longer hold his guitar pick and play properly, so "it was already too late for a farewell concert."

I have seen an interview Barry Hay did where he said he wishes they had been able to do a farewell tour. But as George pointed out there, he would have had to be healthy for that. And there was no indication the Earring would ever have stopped touring, and recording at least some new music, as long as they were all healthy.

Toward the end of the interview he talks about how debilitating ALS can get. But then he shakes that mood off and talks about the honorary citizenship, and about how great it had been to have dinner recently with Barry, Rinus, Cesar, and his friend saxophonist Bertus Borgers (who recorded and toured at times with the Earring). "I have regular contact with them," he says, "but it is especially great to be together. Then it feels like everything is still the way it was."

I wish so much that it was.

[SheltieLover]

103. So sad.

[highplainsdem]

104. Yes. Tragic.

As it was for my friend Ernie Wallengren, mentioned in the OP.

Most of George's life has been one a lot of people would have envied. Incredible talent, and a successful lifelong musical career. A happy marriage (about 55 years now) to his beautiful childhood sweetheart, and great kids. Good health and good looks most of his life (the best-looking member of a goodlooking band, though he reportedly didn't like the attention; in his 30s he won a poll of teenage Dutch girls voting for sexiest man or sexiest musician, and he told a journalist who teased him about it that the girls needed to find idols closer to their own age). Good lifelong friendships. A home in a remodeled hunting lodge in a forested area of the Belgian countryside near the Dutch border, perfect for a home studio (the Lagoon name might be because of a pond on his estate), a studio that was quite successful and brought in more income till recently. Plus success in two other groups, side projects besides the Earring, in his 60s and 70s. He'd probably be happily making new music with all three groups, and probably working with other artists in his home studio, if not for ALS.

I will keep praying for a miracle, for a complete cure to be discovered soon. And keep sending healing energy.

And keep applauding him for handling ALS as well as he has. Kudos to his family and friends, too.

[SheltieLover]

105. I'll sure keep the healing energy flowing to him. 💓💓💓

[highplainsdem]

106. Thanks!

[SheltieLover]

107. Yw

[highplainsdem]

108. Another news story on George today, this one more worrisome.

Also much shorter.

I'm going to link to an English translation of the story on the same site that had offered only very brief snippets of the long article I posted about last. Most of the Dutch sources of this latest story are paywalled (on sites requiring Dutch forms of payment), but one I could get to, though longer, didn't have a lot more than the translated version. If it was originally a much longer story, with a lot more context, I can't reach it. But the way this story starts so abruptly makes me think it's taken from a much longer article.

https://netherlands.postsen.com/celebrities/151740/George-Kooymans-%E2%80%98It%E2%80%99s-good-that-Golden-Earring-stopped%E2%80%99.html

George Kooymans: ‘It’s good that Golden Earring stopped’


“You need creativity in songwriting, to keep new songs interesting. I thought that was starting to weaken a bit,” explains George, who was diagnosed with ALS in 2021. “Coincidentally, we got together for the first time in January in a restaurant that we loved to visit. It is at such a moment that we realize that we are really a family. It is a pity that it is over, because we had an amazing time and have done quite well. But the truth is, you can cry about anything.”

George is no longer under treatment. “No, only under control at the hospital in Leuven. And I get physiotherapy, nothing more. There is no cure for this disease, you have to be lucky that it doesn’t go too fast,” he says. “I don’t know anything else, I sometimes have those thoughts: yesterday was better than today, or last week I could do this and now I can’t anymore. The more distractions I have, the better it is.”

The musician does not want to be too busy with ‘the end’. “We all have a hard time with it at times, actually we are already grieving and that puts a strain on everyone. It’s not much more than that, I’m not that busy yet. Still, I shouldn’t complain about anything. If I look back on my life, I had a wonderful existence. Few people have that, you have to see it that way.”

I know from the only Dutch version of this I could reach that the Dutch word translated as "busy" in that last paragraph is "bezig" - which usually means busy. But it can also mean "engaged with" or "occupied with" - and using English, we'd probably say "preoccupied with" instead.

I have no idea what treatment George had been receiving that he's "no longer under" since I hadn't seen anything about medications he might have been given. What I've read about the various medications specifically for ALS - see https://www.als.org/navigating-als/living-with-als/fda-approved-drugs - indicates they don't really help a lot, or for very long, and they do have side effects. The drugs on that page are FDA approved, but I don't know if they're all approved in Europe.

In reply 81 above - about a fundraiser George's bandmate Cesar was doing to help pay for treatment in Mexico to help his son's partner, who's in her 30s and has had MS since her teens - I mentioned that the stem cell treatment described is starting to be used for ALS as well as MS, but I didn't know if it had ever been an option for George, if it was even considered because of his age. Plus it's extremely expensive and would have required a month-long stay in Mexico. (Cesar's son's girlfriend was supposed to have started getting treatment in Mexico earlier this month, but I don't know if she has.)

George mentioned needing distractions. I'm sure it helped him that he had work to complete on both his final album with Frank Carillo, which was released last summer, and the final Vreemde Kostgangers album released this month. But now he no longer has those as distractions.

I wish he would consider helping someone like the Dutch journalist and sound engineer who posts some Earring news on Steve Hoffman's forum - and who's worked on remastering some Golden Earring albums for their record label, Red Bullet - with a really comprehensive book on GE. A book that could be published in English as well as Dutch (Wouter's English is excellent), and that would include the band members' many projects with other musicians. But I don't know if George wants to do that or has the energy now. It would give him something to focus on, though.

And maybe some new software will help him write more music, and that can be his focus. I'd be very surprised if he isn't still constantly hearing new music in his head.

Besides the story above about George, I ran across a new story today on his Vreemde Kostgangers bandmate Boudewijn de Groot, with a few sentences about George.

https://netherlands.postsen.com/music/151565/Boudewijn-de-Groot-%E2%80%98Memories-lift-loneliness%E2%80%99.html

Boudewijn de Groot: ‘Memories lift loneliness’

-snip-

Are you still in touch with George?

“Certainly. George is less mobile, but is otherwise very positive and energetic. He deals with his illness in a way that makes you think… wow, very strong.”

[highplainsdem]

109. I found the longer article the snippet in reply 108 is from, and I was

right about it being much longer. There were 15 paragraphs - 7 about Vreemde Kostgangers and then 8 specifically about George, interview questions and answers - before it got to what was quoted in that Postsen.com article.

The original article is at https://www.ad.nl/show/george-kooymans-spieren-gaan-sneller-achteruit-dan-ik-dacht-en-dat-is-shit~a88ce2df/
Archive page at https://archive.ph/yIBUX

First of all, the reason George was talking about the end of his life was that the interviewer brought it up: "I think it's tough, also for your family. To what extent are you already working on the ending?" It wasn't a subject George had brought up.

Earlier, after being asked how he was doing, George had talked about the muscle deterioration going faster than he'd expected ("And that's shit," he added). Asked about what he enjoys, he mentioned reading and watching TV, as he had for the Volkskrant article I posted about above, and he also talked about the beautiful natural scenery, the woods, around his home, and said he sometimes goes out into the woods with his scooter. Then he laughed and said, "Well, it's the little things that you will appreciate."

The interviewer - who was doing this interview via Zoom, which is how George prefers to do interviews now - asked if he could stand to have his guitars around when he can no longer play them. (I can think of some things to say to that journalist about his questions.) George said he just likes to look at them, as he did when he was a kid looking in guitar store windows.

George talks about the remodeling he's doing, which was also mentioned in the Volkskrant article. But he adds the detail that his daughter will be moving back in, with her partner and their baby. He'd earlier mentioned visits from his kids and three grandkids helping him stay positive, along with friends he still sees, and occasional visits to Amsterdam and The Hague.

He talks about how proud he is of the final Vreemde Kostgangers album: "I think it's a beautiful record, which we all wanted to finish despite Henny's illness and and mine."

All in all, a much more positive attitude than the snippet suggested. Despite the journalist trying, with some questions, to get him to sound less brave and positive than he is.

George seems to think now that the ALS symptoms were beginning to show up in late 2019 rather than 2020:

Your last performance in Ahoy in 2019 was released on DVD, how did you watch it?

"It was a good show, but I can see from myself that the fatigue was already there. In hindsight, that was kind of the case. These days I am constantly tired. That's not for me, I was never tired."

That shorter article's headline - "George Kooymans: ‘It’s good that Golden Earring stopped’" - aloso spun what he said, making it sound worse. He said that "maybe" it was good that it ended when it did, since he thought the band's creativity was weakening (after a mere 60 years).

The first 7 paragraphs of this longer story were about Vreemde Kostgangers, with George's bandmate Boudewijn de Groot talking abour the friendship and mutual respect in the trio, and about the challenges finishing the album:

"Henny certainly wouldn't have wanted a tribute." Certainly, says Boudewijn de Groot, Mist would have sounded different if fate hadn't been so merciless to his two comrades. The title track, for example, the first on the album. Henny Vrienten sings the verses, while he actually wanted to alternate them with Kooymans and De Groot, the men with whom he formed Strange Boarders since 2016.

As early as 2020, the three started writing, playing and recording. Corona, first Kooymans' illness and then also that of Vrienten made working together in the studio impossible. "Had that been successful, certain instruments would have been played by others," says De Groot. "Henny wanted me to play some acoustic guitar parts. All choruses would have been done by the three of us, while now the demo versions have been used almost everywhere. George does his own chorus, and Henny largely does too."

Which reminds me that there was a review of Mist in De Volkskrant today:

https://www.volkskrant.nl/cultuur-media/mist-van-drie-popgrootheden-in-hun-nadagen-is-even-veelkleurig-als-de-herfst~b25480ea/

https://archive.ph/PB2CH

The headline is

Mist, by three pop greats in their twilight years, is as colorful as autumn

which sort of ignores the fact that Boudewijn was a folksinger and George a rocker and their different backgrounds are why they chose the band's name Oh, well. It's a mostly positive review anyway, though with some silly look-at-me-critiquing diva turns, as when the review says George's song "Fender Strat" about his love for guitars "balances dangerously between classic and old-fashioned rock." That description isn't just balancing dangerously - it's run off a rhetorical cliff and and the reviewer didn't notice.

But I do love this line:

It is autumn on Mist. And the album is just as multicolored.

[highplainsdem]

110. 5-star review for the new Vreemde Kostgangers album! This has to

make George's day!

https://www.ad.nl/show/5-sterren-het-slotalbum-van-vrienten-kooymans-en-de-groot-komt-hard-binnen~a879a49a/
Archive page at https://archive.ph/t7ngi

Google Translate from Dutch:

5 stars: the final album by Vrienten, Kooymans
REVIEW The third and final album of Strange Kostgangers is not only memorable because of the circumstances. Henny Vrienten, George Kooymans and Boudewijn de Groot could not have done better.

Alexander van Eenennaam 18-03-23, 12:49


Strange Boarders - Mist Album (pop) ⭐⭐⭐⭐⭐

We're too old to die young/but too young to die. Although there is plenty of competition on Mist, this is the most beautiful line of the closing album of Strange Boarders. Boudewijn de Groot sings it, on a record that is full of mostly unintentional references to the sad circumstances under which the trio came to a standstill.

-snip-

Of course, certain texts now come in harder than if nothing had been wrong with the trio, which has been incomplete since the death of Henny Vrienten last year and was also affected by the horrible muscle disease of George Kooymans. For example, the listener hears Vriten sing that he still has so much to do and is short of time. And the text by Thé Lau from Love knows no time also gets an extra charge from Kooymans: if I knew where everything was going / I wouldn't do it any other way. And what must you feel when Kooymans sings about his love for his guitars on the uptempo rocker Fender Strat, even though he can no longer play them?

Light-footedness
The album is full of musings, nostalgia and reflections, but also has a nice light-footedness, which is most clearly reflected in two songs by Vrienten: Time shortage and closing Tell me. Nowhere does it get gloomy or the scales tip to too heavy. Opening track Mist is a finely arranged song with Vrienten in the leading role. Pleasant to listen to and as with all songs on the album, the musical accompaniment is pleasant and functional.

For example, the last album of Strange Kostgangers, started in 2016, has no weak spots and it is difficult to name highlights given the high quality range. Memorable is without a doubt Kooymans' fragile voice on The more I come closer, but also I play guitar should not be left unsaid. It is a ballad sung by De Groot, which is still subdued and comes to fruition when Kooymans joins in with the last guitar solo he ever played. Beautiful.

Two videos from the new album:

This is "I Play Guitar" - and a Music Appreciation thread about it is at https://www.democraticunderground.com/103495868 .

And this is "Love Knows No Time" for which George composed the music for lyrics by Dutch musician and writer Thé Lau - Matheus Lau ( https://en.m.wikipedia.org/wiki/Th%C3%A9_Lau ) - who died in 2015.

[highplainsdem]

111. Story today on the Dutch newspaper site Ad.nl about a tribute concert for

Golden Earring from their fans and a filmmaker, with the proceeds to go to the ALS Foundation.

The story is at https://www.ad.nl/show/eerbetoon-in-de-maak-voor-golden-earring-duizend-fans-treden-op-als-afscheidsconcert~ad306707/
Archive page at https://archive.ph/c0pj3

But the Postsen.com website has the entire story in English, at https://netherlands.postsen.com/news/155050/Tribute-in-the-making-for-Golden-Earring-a-thousand-fans-perform-as-a-farewell-concert--show.html .

Tribute in the making for Golden Earring: a thousand fans perform as a farewell concert

The rock band Golden Earring from The Hague was never able to give a farewell concert due to the muscle disease of guitarist George Kooymans. That is a great pity, says documentary maker Yaël Vinckx. That is why she took the initiative for a farewell concert for the band, in which about a thousand amateur musicians will play Ahoy Earring songs.

Vinckx appeals to Earring-loving amateur musicians through the ALS Foundation. “Imagine about a thousand people playing a number of Earring songs live in a monumental location, in the presence of thousands of fans. The aim is to raise the highest possible proceeds for the ALS Netherlands Foundation.” This foundation raises funds for scientific research into the cause and treatment of the deadly nerve and muscle disease.

Vinckx, documentary maker and active in the band circuit, came up with the idea after seeing the documentary We are the thousandin which five Italian friends and a thousand musicians sing the song Learn to fly of the Foo Fighters playing in hopes of bringing that band to their village. That works. “I was so moved by the connecting power of music,” says Vinckx. ,,When the news came that the Earring had to stop because of George’s illness, I came up with this idea. I immediately started calling around, also with the Earring members, and they thought it was a very sympathetic initiative.”

The concert is scheduled for Wednesday, October 18 in Ahoy in Rotterdam, about four yea after the rock band gave its last concert there. The thousand amateurs form the main act and the organization is aiming as support act for a number of well-known artists who either have a connection with the Earring or with the ALS disease. The stands can seat 7,000 people.

-snip-

The documentary maker plans to follow five of these amateur musicians as they prepare for the concert and to broadcast their stories as fans, along with the concert, on Dutch public television around Christmas.

The article says that "Kooymans and his illness are also discussed" but it doesn't say exactly how it will be done.

Golden Earring has done appearances with 1,000 and then 2,000 drummers in the past

https://www.democraticunderground.com/10181636968#post1

https://democraticunderground.com/103471740#post6

with those events arranged by drummer Cesar.Zuiderwijk. But this will have singers, guitarists and bassists as well.

[highplainsdem]

112. George's new Vreemde Kostgangers album is #1 on the Dutch vinyl albums chart, #2 on

Last edited Sun Mar 26, 2023, 09:33 PM - Edit history (1)

the Dutch Album Top 100. See https://dutchcharts.nl/weekchart.asp?cat=av and https://dutchcharts.nl/weekchart.asp?cat=a . Sharing the top 2 spots this week with U2's new album, Songs Of Surrender.

Very good news!

See this thread (replies, too) in Music Appreciation: https://www.democraticunderground.com/103496354

[Cadfael]

113. Good vibes going out for George

I was introduced to Golden Earring and Radar Love by my mom …. Bless her heart, she was the epitome of the “cool mom”…she died in 2006 at the age of 82.

[highplainsdem]

114. Thanks, Cadfael! And kudos to your cool mom for introducing you to great

rock music.

My mom, who was in her 90s when I lost her a few years ago, was also a cool mom. Raised on big band music, which she continued to love, but she still fell in love with rock'n'roll. While my dad continued to prefer big band music, the Rat Pack, and jazz.

[highplainsdem]

115. The Belgian paper De Tijde (The Times) had a long article on

Boudewijn de Groot on March 22, with some of it about his Vreemde Kostgangers bandmates and the final album released last month.

He talked about how he'd almost given up performing, as a solo artist, because it had made him more and more uncomfortable, but with Henny and George, he was able to enjoy giving concerts again.

He talked about working with Henny at times in the 1970s, but he hadn't known George as well then, though they'd met:

https://www.tijd.be/cultuur/muziek/boudewijn-de-groot-ik-heb-ontzettend-veel-mazzel-gehad/10455574.html

Google Translate:

The relationship with Kooymans was never so close because Golden Earring was in a different circuit. 'When we crossed paths on some TV show, I was always a bit shy. I thought that all those tough rockers didn't like my music and I didn't dare approach them. But I always liked George because he came up with such catchy guitar runs and could come up with the right melody for a text. At Strange Boarders I was impressed by his Dutch singing. He has a light Hague accent, so he doesn't sing stiffly, but nice and loose. His background as an English-speaking rock singer can be heard. Just like Raymond van het Groenewoud, he dares to sing everything. I don't dare. I sing neatly, within the lines.'

Boudewijn preferred George's singing to his own even on a song with lyrics he wrote for his mother, who died in a Japanese concentration camp during WWII. George insisted Boudewijn sing it, so they compromised, with Boudewijn singing those lyrics for his solo album Windveren, but George's version, the demo he'd sent Boudewijn after composing music for the lyrics Boudewijn had sent him, on the new Vreemde Kostgangers album.

On the musical final chord 'Mist', Kooymans sings 'The more I get closer', a text that de Groot wrote about his mother. It was also the most personal song on 'Windveren' at the end of last year. 'But George sings it more freely. I do have emotion in my voice, but I bring it more straight forward.'

And Boudewijn had this to say about another of the songs on the VK album:

On 'The end of maybe' De Groot sings 'We are too old to die young / But much too young to die'. “If you've come to the point where you're old in years, but you still feel young inside, that's just true. I have great admiration for the level-headed and positive way George is now dealing with his illness. He accepts without becoming depressed or lethargic. I don't think I could.'

[highplainsdem]

116. Ran across a tweet yesterday with a page on George as a guitar hero

from the April 7, 1983 issue of Kerrang, a British music magazine that was less than two years old then and is still being published ( https://en.m.wikipedia.org/wiki/Kerrang! ).

I'd known the editor of Kerrang was a Golden Earring fan because of a rave review he'd given their 1977 London concert that was recorded for their first live album ( https://www.democraticunderground.com/103482262#post2 ). But it was still nice to see George got this attention as a guitar hero, even though in 1983 Golden Earring was more successful in the US and Canada than the UK.

Link to tweet

April 7, 1983

KERRANG GUITAR HERO: GEORGE KOOYMAN

[highplainsdem]

117. Thread in Music Appreciation about Bojoura, the singer whose career George

helped launch in the 1960s:

https://www.democraticunderground.com/103497730

[highplainsdem]

118. Golden Earring were back in the Top Ten on the Dutch charts, the chart for vinyl albums

anyway, last week, with the release of a double live album of a 1984 concert. It was a limited, numbered edition, though, so it was there only one week.

And the Vreemde Kostgangers album is still on the charts.

Haven't been able to find any more updates on how George is doing.

I did see recent articles about early preparations for the tribute concert for the band, planned for this fall.


Tweet with video from a Dutch talk show that included drummer Cesar for the discussion:

Link to tweet

Link to the article on their website, with the same video: https://op1npo.nl/2023/04/27/cesar-zuiderwijk-henk-schaakxs-yael-vinckx-en-rosalie-en-michel-van-der-velde-over-een-afscheidsconcert-voor-golden-earring/


There was also a long and rather sad interview with Sieb Warntjes (last name anglicized to Warner) - the early Golden Earring drummer Cesar replaced - by journalist and sound engineer Wouter Bessels (who sometimes posts Earring news on Steve Hoffman's music forum) in a Dutch paper on 4/27 - https://dvhn.nl/cultuur/Eerst-drummer-bij-The-Golden-Earring-daarna-ambtenaar-bij-DUO-in-Groningen.-Sieb-Warner-76-gooide-50-jaar-geleden-het-roer-finaal-om.-Hoe-is-het-nu-met-hem-28365360.html , Archive page at https://archive.ph/Dq7Q6 . The Earring had needed to find a replacement for drummer Jaap Eggermont, who'd decided to become a record producer instead. Sieb never really fit in, though he did one American tour with the band, and played on their 1969 album Eight Miles High, which was just remastered and re-released with an hour-long documentary done at that time. Sieb did very little musically after that, instead moving to a rural area where he worked as a civil servant for several decades. He remembered disagreements with Barry and Rinus, but had a higher opinion of George.

[highplainsdem]

119. I found out today that George influenced Dutch music in a way I'd never

imagined.

I already knew he'd influenced Dutch music not just through his own bands and solo projects, but through artists he'd discovered, written hit songs for, and produced and/or played on their albums. But I'd had no idea a funny remark he'd made to a neighbor and friend in 1977 had inspired a hit record.

The neighbor was Peter Koelewijn - https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Peter_Koelewijn - who's most famous for having the first big Dutch-language rock'n'roll hit with Kom Van Dat Dak Af (Get Off That Roof), recorded in 1959. I've posted about that song before, since George and Boudewijn de Groot sang it in 2007, with Peter joining them on stage, and I posted video of that as the last video in reply 5 of a Music Appreciation thread about the last Vreemde Kostgangers album - https://www.democraticunderground.com/103496354#post5 - explaining George's VK bandmates' backgrounds and their previous appearances together. But I'd had no idea then that there was any other connection between George and Peter. The Wikipedia article on Peter had a few words about it, but I'd skimmed right past them.

Today, while checking Google for any news about George, I saw a result for the Dutch Wikipedia page on the song George had inspired (the page must have just been updated).

https://nl.wikipedia.org/wiki/Je_wordt_ouder_papa

I found out from that page that George and Peter had been neighbors in 1977 when a little boy approached them when they were outside. The kid, who looked about the same age as Peter's 8-year-old son, Joep, immediately asked George for his autograph. He then turned to Peter, who expected to be asked for his autograph as well. It was 18 years since his biggest hit had been recorded, but Peter had reunited his '50s band for a glam rock phase from 1970 to 1975.

But the boy didn't want his autograph. "Do you know where Joep is?" he asked Peter. "I was going to play with him."

George was amused and told Peter, "You're getting older, Papa."

And Peter turned that line - "Je wordt ouder papa" - into a '50s style rock song for his solo album that year. A song about a man in his thirties who still thinks he can do everything, but he's heard his 8-year-old son referring to him as "my old man" when talking to his friends. And while he can still beat the kid at ping pong, it's getting harder, and he knows the kid thinks he's an old fart.

The song was the first single off the album, and a hit in the Netherlands.

Peter was 36 in 1977. Not old. I'll post a video below of him performing the song in 1977. He was only 7 years and three months older than George, who was 29 then. 1977 was already 12 years after Golden Earring's first Dutch hit. But Radar Love had been a mega-hit just a few years earlier, and the kid asking for George's autograph probably hadn't realized George was also old enough to be Joep's father. I'll post a video of Golden Earring from a 1977 concert, too. George (in the red shirt, playing guitar and singing backup) looks exhausted at the end of a long concert, but he still looked like a kid then.

[debm55]

120. How is George doing? Loved Golden Earring's songs. Sending good vibes his way.

[highplainsdem]

121. Thanks, Debbie! I haven't been able to find any very recent news via Google or

Twitter. But I keep hoping and praying for the best, and sending positive vibes/energy.

And this anecdote I ran across today seemed worth posting. George's been so important to the music scene in the Netherlands over the last 60 years. I haven't posted about a number of Dutch artists whose careers he's helped - Urban Heroes, for instance ( https://nl.wikipedia.org/wiki/Urban_Heroes ) - because there are just so many of them. But I thought this story was worth posting.

[highplainsdem]

122. There was some news yesterday about the tribute concert

planned for October, which I first mentioned in reply 111 back in March. Barry, Rinus and Cesar, the other three members of Golden Earring, have promised they'll be at the tribute concert. (With Barry living in Curacao, his was probably the commitment the organizer and filmmaker was most anxious about.). There hasn't been such a promise from George, which is understandable given his health.

One of the news stories mentioned his bandmates hadn't committed to performing at the concert, and I was surprised that anyone might have expected that or asked them to perform. They'd disbanded because George was so crucial to the band and always had been. Many bands still touring and occasionally recording would have brought in a replacement, but when you have someone who founded the band, wrote many more of their songs than the other band members, produced a lot of their music, and was essential for his playing and singing...he simply isn't replaceable. And trying to have someone new replace him during a tribute concert that's also raising money for ALS would be especially wrenching.

His bandmates have continued to make music and perform with other musicians, and I'm glad of that.

But they made the right decision to disband, rather than go on without George.

Their music is still played a lot, live, by other bands, especially in the Netherlands.

Including, a couple of weeks ago, at the Ribs & Blues festival in Raalte, with a band called the Anniversary Band that came together just for the festival's 25th anniversary, backing Dion Legebeke, who usually sings with her hard rock band The Damned Few.

This song, released in July 1970, was Golden Earring's biggest Dutch hit before Radar Love, and it may have been a bigger hit for them in the Netherlands than Radar Love was three years later, at least going by chart numbers alone.

Both songs topped the charts, but Back Home was #1 for 5 weeks and spent 19 weeks on the charts. Radar Love was #1 for 4 weeks and on the charts for 11 weeks.

It was also one of the hits George wrote by himself, during the several years of his solo songwriting between early songwriting with Rinus and the collaborations with Barry that had started in 1973 (after which they wrote most Earring songs together, with the best-known exception being George's huge international hit, Twilight Zone).

Here's that cover, followed by the 1970 music video for Back Home, filmed on the dunes near The Hague for the second episode of the very successful, long-running Dutch TV show TopPop.

[quaint]

123. +++++++

[highplainsdem]

124. Ran across a feature story in several Dutch newspapers about two of

the fans - and musicians - who will be playing in this October's tribute concert for Golden Earring.

https://www.ad.nl/rotterdam/adieu-golden-earring-bert-en-henk-uit-vroomshoop-spelen-bij-mega-afscheidsconcert-voor-nederlands-grootste-rockband-het-zijn-iconen-die-het-lang-vol-hebben-gehouden~a4422981/
Archive page at https://archive.ph/qDYCF

Translation via Google Translate:

Adieu Golden Earring: Bert and Henk from Vroomshoop play at a mega farewell concert for the largest rock band in the Netherlands: 'They are icons that have lasted for a long time'
As a teenager, Bert Gerrits from Vroomshoop had no money to visit a Golden Earring concert. He sneaked in and ended up backstage. He was caught, but the members of the band protected him. “George Kooymans said: Leave the boy alone, he belongs to us.”

Tom van den Berg 21-06-23, 09:00


Due to the illness of guitarist Kooymans, the impressive career of the largest rock band in the Netherlands suddenly comes to an end. Moreover, a farewell concert for the fans is no longer possible. That is why those fans will give a farewell concert for Golden Earring on October 18. A thousand musicians play a number of songs by the band from The Hague, including the classic Radar Love. At that concert called De Earring & ik in Ahoy Rotterdam, guitarist Bert and his fellow villager and bassist Henk Kamermans are present. The two Vroomshoppers are honoured.

The Golden Earrings (still with the before and an s at the end) used to perform in the music dome in Vroomshoop. The band in which Frans Krassenburg took care of the vocals at the time and Jaap Eggermond was behind the drums just had the hits Please Go and That Day. “I really wanted to go to that performance,” says 65-year-old Henk. “But my parents thought I was too young. And we still lived around the corner from the music dome. I didn't see them then, but I could hear the music.”

-snip-

Bert is 16 years younger than Henk, 49 years old, so his teenage years when he was too broke to buy a concert ticket were in the late 1980s and early 1990s. Henk's first memories of Golden Earring are from the mid-1960s when they'd just had their first hits. George would have been about 17 then, and Henk would have been only 7. He bought his first Earring album before he was a teenager.

I loved the bit about George telling security to leave teenaged Bert alone when he was caught backstage. Every anecdote I've run across about George indicates how nice he is.

Henk went on to become a professional musician in three bands, at least one of which had enough commercial success for their records to get some airplay. And he met Bert because he gave him guitar lessons.

A Facebook page for the upcoming tribute concert has a post with video of Henk and Bert practicing at Bert's place. At the right you can see a computer screen where the official music video for "Radar Love" - the one posted in the OP - is playing, while they play along.

https://facebook.com/deearringenik/posts/154103540995177

[highplainsdem]

125. Found an interesting March 1974 article on Golden Earring yesterday, one

I hadn't seen before, transcribed by a music fan with an old copy of the British music newspaper, Sounds:

https://geirmykl.wordpress.com/2018/11/30/article-about-golden-earring-from-sounds-march-23-1974/

Lots of quotes from George in it, as well as other band members, and if you're a fan it's worth reading in its entirety.

Still no recent news about him...

[highplainsdem]

126. Finally, a bit of an update on how George is doing,

thanks to a news article on Golden Earring drummer Cesar Zuiderwijk reaching 75 today. He did a radio interview yesterday.

Cesar, who has a home in rural Belgium near George's home, as well as one in the Netherlands, said George came to a party on Saturday (I'm guessing this was at Cesar's place in Belgium, so George wouldn't have had to travel very far).

Dutch text from the article, then the Google translation:

https://www.omroepwest.nl/nieuws/4737082/drummer-cesar-zuiderwijk-is-75-geworden-het-geheim-elke-dag-wijn

Over Golden Earring gesproken. Hoe is het met gitarist George Kooymans, die in februari 2021 vertelde dat hij getroffen is door de slopende zenuw- en spierziekte ALS? 'George kwam zaterdag op een feestje, en daar was hij een paar uurtjes. Hij kan met iedereen nog lekker ouwehoeren.'

Speaking of Golden Earring. What about guitarist George Kooymans, who said in February 2021 that he has been affected by the debilitating nerve and muscle disease ALS? "George came to a party on Saturday, and he was there for a few hours. He can still chat with everyone."

As for how Cesar's doing... He's busy with multiple projects. He'll be appearing at a couple of music festivals, as well as doing a theater tour talking about Golden Earring and giving tips on drumming.

He was asked for his secret to staying active at 75.

"A glass of wine every day. I drink a glass a day, but I constantly refill it."

[highplainsdem]

127. I mentioned Cesar's 75th birthday last month in the reply above. Omroep West, the Dutch broadcaster

whose site I found that news story on, uploaded video of Cesar's 65th birthday party, a surprise party that was quite an event, to their YouTube channel last week.

And I want to post that 10-year-old video here because the 24-minute clip includes George singing with Boudewijn de Groot and Henny Vrienten, who became his Vreemde Kostgangers bandmates a couple of years later. As explained in reply 95, that performance for Cesar's 65th birthday was the first time all three sang together, though George had been on stage with them separately years earlier.

The video is captioned, but only in Dutch. You can hear some birthday wishes for Cesar in English, though, from fellow drummers Chester Thompson of Frank Zappa's band, Lars Ulrich of Metallica, Simon Phillips of Toto, and Ian Paice of Deep Purple, starting about 13 minutes in. And at 17:40, Brian Bennett of the Shadows - https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Brian_Bennett - who was 73 then and is still around, is introduced and Cesar gets to play drums with the iconic musician who inspired him to become a drummer. ( (Drummerzone page about that and an album with some of the performances is at https://drummerszone.com/videos/drum-duet-cesar-zuiderwijk-and-brian-bennett-the-shadows/a-6955-5316/channel/ but their video of Cesar with Brian.Bennett is missing.) And Cesar's son is interviewed after that.

From the YouTube description, English translation via Google:

Drummer Cesar Zuiderwijk blew out 75 candles on July 18. Time for a party. Ten years ago, for his 65th birthday, he already received a real birthday concert in Diligentia in The Hague with many famous musicians.

Many well-known people came to the party, including singer and bassist Henny Vrienten, singer Boudewijn de Groot, actor Karel de Rooij and various (ex) members of the Golden Earring . Musician friends also performed during the festive gathering, including Livin' Blues, René and The Alligators and The Clarks. Also special were Henk Savelberg's drumming assistant chefs, Nico Dijkshoorn's Radar Love column and video messages from famous drummers.

But the highlight of the evening was Cesar Zuiderwijk's performance with drummer Brian Bennett of The Shadows. “I am emotional that all those people have done this for me,” said a touched Cesar Zuiderwijk afterwards.

[highplainsdem]

128. Sadly, the tribute concert scheduled for October, first mentioned here in reply 111

five months ago, has been postponed till early next year, at the earliest, and there is no longer a definite date set for it.

https://www.omroepwest.nl/nieuws/4749470/afscheidsconcert-golden-earring-uitgesteld-tot-volgend-jaar

Some excerpts from the Google Translation:

THE HAGUE - The farewell concert for the Golden Earring in Ahoy in Rotterdam is canceled this year. More than a thousand musicians would play some songs from the legendary band from The Hague on October 18. Organizer Yaël Vinckx has announced via the website of the event that this date cannot take place. The concert is now planned to be held in the first quarter of next year.

-snip-

This concert was scheduled for October 18 this year. The enthusiasm was great. More than a thousand musicians applied and within a few days more than 30,000 euros in donations were collected to make the concert possible. Ahoy also participated and made the hall available for the concert free of charge.

Nevertheless, Vinckx did not succeed in getting the organization round. 'This is mainly due to the cooperation we enter into with other parties', the organization explains on the website of the concert. 'On the one hand to make the concert technically possible, and on the other hand to keep the costs manageable.'

Well advanced with new date

This does not mean that the concert has actually been cancelled. The goal is now that the farewell concert can still be held in early 2024. On what date, the organization does not want to say yet. "We're well advanced with the new date, but… We want to be doubly sure before communicating the new date."

-snip-

[debm55]

129. highplaindem.I will continue to send good wishes and vibes. I am sorry this is happening. You are a

good person for keeping him in our thoughts.

[highplainsdem]

130. Thanks, Debbie! I was sorry to see that the tribute concert was postponed, and the

new date not certain, both because a lot of musicians who are fans had been preparing for it, and because George and his family would have been looking forward to it.

It's the 50th anniversary of Radar Love's release (August 1973 in the Netherlands; its US release was April 1974), and Cesar and Rinus joined other musicians including Dutch singer Waylon - https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Waylon_(singer) - to perform the song (for what Cesar said would have been 6,001 times for him) at The Hague Beat Festival. And while I'm glad to see Cesar and Rinus together again in the video below, it's sad that George is fighting ALS, rather than healthy and on stage where he belongs.

[highplainsdem]

131. Videos of two recent appearances by the other members of Golden Earring,

performing their old hits, with Dutch band DI-RECT - https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Di-rect - but with Barry in one appearance and Rinus and Cesar in the other, in the Music Appreciation thread at https://www.democraticunderground.com/1034105877 .

[highplainsdem]

132. There was a great interview with Boudewijn de Groot mentioning George in a

Belgian newspaper a couple of weeks ago, and that made me aware how close their friendship has been.

https://nieuwsblad.be/cnt/dmf20230919_95634751
Archive page at https://archive.ph/IozBZ

It's a lovely, rambling interview done by a longtime fan of Boudewijn's who's also a journalist, and it must have been a fun interview to do. Boudewijn, who's 79, arrived at a terrace (cafe, I think) in Haarlem in the Netherlands, dressed in a floral shirt and salmon-colored shorts, in a great mood and with his eyes sparkling after what's described as a "short" bike ride from Heemstede (which is at least a few miles away, possibly several miles depending on location in each town, and only in the Netherlands, where almost everyone cycles, would this be considered a short bike ride, or be a likely way for a legendary pop and folk star who's nearly 80 to arrive for an interview - arriving exactly on time, which is also very Dutch).

The focus of the interview was a new 528-page book with Boudewijn commenting on every song he's recorded or collaborated on during his very long career. I don't think it's available in English, but wish it were, since it would be a great read.

Boudewijn did a lot of reminiscing during the interview, including about Antwerp, with the Belgian journalist asking him about the times he'd been there. And that involved not just a lot of shows he did there - including one in the late Sixties when he was so stoned he couldn't remember the lyrics to his own songs beyond the first lines, so he finally told the audience he couldn't do it and just left and the furious organizer refused to pay him - but longer stays.

I hear from your Antwerp contemporaries that in the 1960s things were not nearly as fast as in Amsterdam, for example. Can you compare the two?

Amsterdam came pretty close to what happened in San Francisco. Antwerp and Ghent less so. That had a lot to do with the way the BOB (Special Investigation Brigade, ed.) acted with you. In Amsterdam we were occasionally approached by police officers, but everything was much more pleasant. For example, the Vondelpark was a tolerance zone, where you could smoke cannabis without any problems. You never saw police in tents like Paradiso or Fantasia either. While in Antwerp you rarely saw hippies gathering together on the streets, perhaps for fear of being arrested. They mainly sat in their bars, often near Conscienceplein. By the way, one of those cafes was called De Kroeg. I remember that place well, because I often went there to play shuffleboard. That was extremely popular there. You regularly had to wait your turn before you could get to work.

-snip-

You even lived in Antwerp for a while.

Yes, a few months with Evelien, my girlfriend at the time. That was in the Lange Altaarstraat. The house actually belonged to a friend of Evelien, an artist. He made assemblages on canvas with parts of clothesless toy dolls. The first day we walked around there, we saw these creepy works of art hanging everywhere. But then we hadn't been to that one room yet, where there were boxes full of doll parts. That was a really scary experience. I referred to Evelien in the song It's raining in Antwerp, on Achter glas. When I wrote that song, I was staying at the apartment of George Kooymans (from Golden Earring and Strange Kostgangers, ed.) on the Waalsekaai. On a rainy day I looked out over the city and immediately thought of the song Il pleut sur Nantes by Barbara. I then sat down and wrote the text in one go. That's how it usually happens, and that's how it should be with me. Only with very intimate songs, such as Anamorphosis about my father, does it become a matter of toiling and grinding. It was certainly wonderful living in Antwerp during those months. A carefree life of smoking weed and playing shuffleboard.

Unfortunately the article doesn't say exactly when Boudewijn was staying in George's apartment in Antwerp. But that song, Het Regent In Antwerpen, is on Boudewijn's album Achter Glas (Behind Glass), which was released in April 2015. But all I could learn from.reading the Dutch Wikipedia page on the album was that Boudewijn had written the songs for it over a period of several years.

Even if it was written only months before the album's release, though, it still shows George and Boudewijn were good enough friends even before they formed Vreemde Kostgangers, their supergroup trio with Henny Vrienten, that George was happy to let Boudewijn stay at his Antwerp apartment.

I hadn't even known George had an apartment in Antwerp - which is less than an hour by car from his country estate in Belgium, between Rijkevorsel and the Dutch border - though I had read he always had an apartment in the Netherlands.

Here's that lovely song:

[highplainsdem]

133. Kicking after editing the OP because some web pages I'd linked to about Ernie Wallengren, a friend who

died of ALS, are no longer online. I substituted a couple of other web pages, one an article partly about the documentary I'd previously been able to link to.

[debm55]

134. I will continue to pray, highplainsdem.

[highplainsdem]

135. {{{{{Debbie}}}}} Thanks! You're an angel.

I wish so much I'd had some news about George to post.

This thread got kicked because I needed to post something to replace the web pages the OP had linked to that had vanished - pages about a friend of mine, Ernie Wallengren, who died of ALS - and since I have no idea how long ago those pages had vanished, I thought I'd better kick the thread with a note, in reply 133, about some of that info being replaced by new links in the edited OP.

I know nothing on the internet is really permanent, but it often surprises me to find that something has vanished.

Whoa. I just found a short clip from that award-winning documentary. It occurred to me while I was writing this reply that I hadn't checked YouTube to see if any video of Ernie was there.

And I found this, uploaded to YouTube by the same people who'd put the documentary on that website, from which it has now vanished:

[highplainsdem]

136. Just discovered there's now a fundraiser for ALS, mentioning George, via the website of NPO3 radio in the Netherlands.

Here:

https://www.npo3fm.nl/kominactie/acties/earringfans-for-serious-request

Golden Earring gitarist George Kooymans vecht sinds een aantal jaren tegen de vreselijke ziekte ALS. Wij strijden met zn allen voor dit goede doel en proberen een steentje bij te dragen. Voor onze dierbare George en voor alle anderen die getroffen zijn door deze ongeneeslijke ziekte. We maken een vuist tegen ALS! Doe je mee? We gaan ervoor! Weve got a thing!!

Translation, via Google Translate:

Golden Earring guitarist George Kooymans has been battling the terrible disease ALS for a number of years. We all fight for this good cause and try to contribute. For our dear George and for all others affected by this incurable disease. We're taking a stand against ALS! Are you participating? Let's go for it! Weve got a thing!!

Their goal is 10,000 euros. They've already raised nearly 3,000.

A few translations of personal messages fans have posted there as they donated:

Obviously my personal motivation to support this because George is my hero and also that this disease can be treated in the future.

As a Golden earring fan, I also sympathize with George because I cared for ALS clients in the area, a terrible disease

So sad that the Earring had to come to an end due to George's personal tragedy. Fantastic campaign to help eradicate ALS from the world.

Terrible disease, and it happened to my hero George Kooymans from Golden Earring. The band that has been present all my life. For George ❤️ 🎸

[debm55]

139. Thank you, highplainsdem. You a tireless person working for a cause that will one day have a cure.

[highplainsdem]

140. Two of George's Golden Earring bandmates, bassist Rinus and drummer Cesar, took part in a Queen tribute

a couple of weeks ago at the Ahoy arena in Rotterdam, part of the Vrienden van Amstel festival. Joining them in the tribute band were guitarist JB Meijers (a singer/songwriter who's recorded with Golden Earring frontman Barry Hay) and lead singer Duncan Laurence (who won the Eurovision contest for the Netherlands in 2019).

11-minute clip of the band doing Radio Ga Ga and Don't Stop Me Now. Duncan introduces the band just after 6 minutes in.

I wish George were still healthy and could have been on stage again.

There's been no recent news of him. None that I could find, anyway.

[highplainsdem]

141. New video on YouTube with Frank Carillo, who recorded two albums with George, talking about their decades of

being friends and working together, starting when George had mixed an album recorded by Frank and Annie Golden - https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Annie_Golden - as the duo Golden Carillo.

The video starts with Frank talking about Ricky Byrd - https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Ricky_Byrd - but he starts talking about George a little over 15 minutes in, and talks about their close friendship and work together for most of the rest of the 40-minute video:

I found that video, which was uploaded just yesterday, because I've been searching every day for any news about George, especially any updates about his health (none).

George really enjoyed being in a duo with Frank, as he enjoyed being in a trio with the other two members of Vreemde Kostgangers, even while he was still touring and recording with Golden Earring. He'd been in Golden Earring nearly 30 years before he started working with Frank, and 50 years before he formed Vreemde Kostgangers.

You can see how much he enjoyed being with Frank in this video from the 2010 Parkpop music festival. The song they're doing, Low Rider, is one George wrote for his first solo album, JoJo, in the early 1970s:

[highplainsdem]

142. I posted in reply 128 last August that the tribute concert scheduled for last October had been postponed. It's now

scheduled for September 30.

https://www.telegraaf.nl/entertainment/1730782929/fanconcert-voor-golden-earring-eind-september-in-rotterdam-ahoy#

The farewell concert in which fans pay tribute to Golden Earring will take place on September 30 in Rotterdam Ahoy. Under the name De Earring & I, about a thousand musicians play a number of Earring songs with support from Dutch artists.

Initiator Yaël Vinckx asked fans to submit a video with their version of Radar love in 2023. The best and most original versions were selected from the hundreds of entries. The names of the Dutch artists will be announced later. The farewell concert for the band from The Hague was originally scheduled to take place last October, but that had to be postponed.

-snip-

Ticket sales for the concert start on Friday. With the concert, the organization also wants to draw attention to research and control of ALS. Part of the proceeds from ticket sales goes to the ALS Foundation.