I would appreciate some of DU's good vibes or

[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.