Golden Earring - When The Lady Smiles (live on the beach, 1986, & live at a music festival, 2015)

[highplainsdem]

I have to admire groups that still sound great decades after they started. In this case, it's a band that had their first Top 10 hit in 1965, 50 years before the second video here. Both these videos are of a song that was a huge hit for them in 1984. The 1986 clip. from a TV show, includes some preparations for a concert for nearly 200,000 people on the beach near The Hague. There was a smaller crowd for the Dutch Valley Festival in the Netherlands in 2015, but you can see how happy the fans -- including a lot of younger fans -- were to have the Earring still doing concerts.

[kimbutgar]

1. In 1974,my friend came back after spending the school year in Germany with this 45 by golden earring

It was a big hit in Germany, Radar Love. I had never heard a song like this and we used to play it over and over in my family’s den. When it was finally released in the US I was you’re just hearing it now because it was ho hum to me because I had heard that song because of the 45 my friend came back with. To this day when I hear that song it takes me back to when I heard it for the first time I was awestruck !

[highplainsdem]

3. I think "awestruck" was a perfectly understandable reaction to "Radar Love." The

band had already had some hit albums and singles in Germany by then, but their album Moontan with "Radar Love" took it to a whole new level. And they had a really good music video for it -- see the second video here, the one from Red Bullet:

https://democraticunderground.com/103466370


They do a great acoustic version of "Radar Love" too

https://democraticunderground.com/103468664

and the performances with thousands of drummers (a thousand in 1992, two thousand in 2018) were incredible. Video for both of those in the replies in these threads:

https://democraticunderground.com/10181636968

https://democraticunderground.com/103471740

[TwilightZone]

2. One of my favorite songs ever. Sadly, they had to retire.

George Kooymans, the lead guitarist and co-vocalist, was diagnosed with ALS.

They've had the same line-up since 1970. Pretty remarkable.

[highplainsdem]

4. "When The Lady Smiles" is a great song. So is their

1982 hit "Twilight Zone" -- and now that I know you're a Golden Earring fan, I can't help wondering if that song is at least part of the reason for your user name.

I love "Twilight Zone." My favorite Golden Earring song, along with "Radar Love," and I'd probably pick "Twilight Zone" if I had to pick one.

https://democraticunderground.com/103467479

I'm always glad to see more Golden Earring fans here. Just checked the "Search this group" feature at the top of the group page, and when I search for "earring" in the thread titles, going back clear to the start of the group 11 years ago, my user name shows up more than any other, for some reason, though I didn't start posting here till last fall.

Yes, it is remarkable that they had the same lineup from 1970, when drummer Cesar Zuiderwijk joined, till last year. (They had a couple of other additional members in the '70s, a keyboardist and a second lead guitarist, but they didn't stay long.) Lead singer Barry Hay had joined in 1966. But the group really started way back in 1961, when George Kooymans and his neighbor Rinus Gerritsen decided to form a band -- after George, who was only 13 then, taught Rinus to play guitar, after initially trying and failing to teach Rinus's older brother, Rob. George also fell in love with and later married Rinus and Rob's sister, Melanie (Milly), and they're still married. Rob became the band's manager later, and Rob and Rinus's dad made at least one of their early guitars. So, lots of family connections, ever since they were kids. It was still a remarkably stable band, especially considering that all of them except Rinus (who's also a teetotaller) used drugs for a while, especially in the '70s, even trying heroin briefly (well, George and Barry experimented with heroin, not sure if Cesar did).

They did come close to breaking up at times, and from what I've read, it was usually George who was the one who was about to quit. I think they came closest right before "Twilight Zone" became their biggest international hit. George had written the song by himself (no help from Barry on that one, though Barry, who had English as his first language because of his Scottish father, has written a lot of their lyrics) and had planned to use the song for his second solo album (he'd already released one, in the early 1970s), but then included it with what they thought would be the Earring's farewell album, Cut, in 1982. And that changed everything for them.

So did the ALS diagnosis. Very sadly, as you said. Such a horrible disease. Barry said in an interview that George was the last person in the band they'd expected to have a career-ending illness. He took pretty good care of himself, ran marathons, played tennis.

But ALS doesn't care how fit or athletic you are.

I've known only one person who got ALS, and I knew him online only, in the 1980s, years before he had ALS. But because he was well known, I heard about it later. TV producer/writer Ernie Wallengren, who also coached high school boys basketball, which he really loved. He was diagnosed with ALS when he was only in his late 40s, and he died a couple of years later. Video I've seen of Ernie while he was fighting ALS is heartbreaking. Such a nice guy, and such a terrible disease.

But they must have better treatments for ALS now than they had 20 years ago And I'm hoping they'll find a cure soon.

Golden Earring's members helped raise some money for the ALS Foundation of the Netherlands last month

https://democraticunderground.com/103472246

and I was tempted to bid in that auction until I read the detail about having to go to the foundation's offices in The Hague to pick up the print you bid on.

Rinus did an interview recently where he said George was doing pretty well, despite the diagnosis.

But it is very sad that he's so ill he had to stop performing, ending the band's 60-year career, when they hadn't planned to stop.

Their last concert, because of Covid-19 in early 2020 and George's diagnosis later that year, turned out to be the one in November 2019 at the Ahoy arena in Rotterdam. Which fortunately was recorded, and a double CD and DVD set -- You Know We Love You! -- was released earlier this month. I'm supposed to get the copy I ordered today.

[TwilightZone]

5. Yep, my name is because of the song and not the TV show.

Though, I'm quite fond of the original show, as well.

They're probably my favorite band, though music has always been a big part of my life so I have a lot of favorites. I always wanted to travel to Europe to see them play since the chances of any US shows were pretty unlikely by the time I could have done it. Just never took the plunge. It's a long way to go (from Nebraska, then Texas) for a concert!

I became a fan because of "Twilight Zone" and "The Devil Made Me Do It" (and, shortly thereafter, the rest of Cut) though I was aware of "Radar Love" before that. My favorite stretch is Cut to The Hole, probably because I was a teenager through those years. My formative musical years. They got a little US airplay with "Quiet Eyes" from The Hole. Freakin' love that album.

One of my high-school classmates, a good friend, died of complications from ALS at 47. I thought of him when I read about George's diagnosis. Barry had always said they'd keep going until one of them couldn't, and he reiterated that after the diagnosis.

I'm not on DU much anymore for a variety of reasons, but I do try to chime in whenever I see a GE thread.

[highplainsdem]

6. I like both the show and the song.

According to some things I've read, the song "Twilight Zone" -- with the song's plot inspired by Robert Ludlum's The Bourne Identity -- even took the Twilight Zone title from the book, since the antagonist, Alexander Conklin, at one point talks about the "twilight zone" of drinking, how he used to drink and still would if he could "function in that twilight zone." I've never seen whatever interview or article that bit of info originally came from, though I have read an interview where George said he sometimes drank too much, so that line from the book might have resonated with him. But again, I haven't seen his exact statement quoted or any link to the article it was in. And the lyrics refer to "falling down a spiral" which seems to refer more to the Twilight Zone TV show's intro. Although that was really a rotating cone with concentric circles, it's often referred to as a spiral.

Re the Earring not doing US tours after a while -- they'd lost money on most of their US tours, ended up with debts that had to be paid out of money made doing shows in the Netherlands. That sort of thing happened more than most people realize, unless a band had brilliant management like Led Zeppelin's Peter Grant (who also managed Bad Company), management able to get more money out of promoters than they usually wanted to share.

And Golden Earring, especially Barry Hay, didn't like the censorship they ran into in the US. Some album artwork was changed. One scene in the "Twilight Zone" video had been censored. The video for "When The Lady Smiles" was censored/edited and then still rarely shown in the US, despite being popular enough in Europe that the band felt it had helped the single become a hit there. The video had upset enough people that when Hillary Clinton started to use "When The Lady Smiles" for her 2008 presidential campaign (Bill had used "Radar Love" for his 1992 campaign), she had to drop it.

To be honest, I don't like most of GE's music videos. I prefer to post TV appearances and videos from concerts. I think Barry Hay miscalculated on a number of the artistic decisions I've read that the band usually left to him (some of his lyrics, too, at times). Sometimes you can sell more records being outrageous, and other times you can end up finding out you've not only stepped onto thin ice but chopped a circle around yourself.

They still had an amazing run, despite all the problems they ran into. It's a shame their music isn't better known.

I'm so sorry about your friend with ALS. 47 is way too young to die. Ernie Wallengren was 50, also much too young. But it's a terrible disease to come down with at any age, and I can't imagine what it must be like to have been able to play guitar and perform on stage the way George Kooymans did, even in his 70s, and then lose that ability to a disease we don't have any cure for yet. So I keep praying for a cure to be discovered soon, for all the people with ALS.

[TwilightZone]

7. I had no idea Hillary used WTLS

That absolutely rocks and makes me love her even more.

I'm also not much of a fan of their videos, but do love their live stuff. Some of the live versions of "Radar Love" and "Twilight Zone" are just amazing. Also a big fan of their acoustic stuff, particularly the first Naked Truth album. So much energy.

GE probably wouldn't have been GE without the innuendo, but I do get what you're saying. I do wish they'd been more successful in the US - being a GE fan could be a big pain in the ass since hardly anything was released domestically. I spent years looking for imports, etc. So much easier now.

[highplainsdem]

8. Hillary does have good taste in music. :)

Yes, GE did put a lot of energy into those acoustic performances -- so much so that I read somewhere that they had to alternate acoustic with electric performances at times because they were injuring their hands with all the acoustic playing they weren't used to.