Last edited Mon Jan 16, 2023, 05:25 PM - Edit history (2)
after I posted this. First video I've seen of it, from Belgian broadcaster RTV, and George sounds really good during the interview and is smiling and laughing.
There are also captions available, only in Dutch, but I'll type them into Google translate later.
Editing to add that the song you hear other musicians covering there - "Another 45 Miles" - is one of many hits George wrote by himself, before he started co-writing songs with lead singer Barry Hay, whose first language was English so he'd often write the lyrics (though "Twilight Zone" was also written by George alone, and it was the band's biggest hit). "Another 45 Miles" was a huge hit for them, an audience favorite for the next 50 years.
Music video from 1969, when George was 21:
And in 2016, George singing with the other members of the supergroup trio Vreemde Kostgangers, Henny Vrienten (who died last year) and Boudewijn de Groot (still recording and getting some help from George):
EDITING AGAIN because I'd said I would type the subtitles from that video of the citizenship award into Google Translate, and I did - what George had to say, that is, not what the reporter said - but the results weren't very satisfactory, in part because the captions are off. Not sure what happened but the words in captions aren't always what George was saying. When he mentioned Vreemde Kostgangers, for instance, the name of that trio he was in, the caption reads Verendelige Kostgangers, changing the band's name from Strange Boarders to Feathered Boarders. Which would be funny if it weren't also frustrating. Where you see George laughing in the video, he's talking about having felt like one of the townspeople already, going to the same restaurant with friends, and he says something about a playground and something about someone holding a sign, but it doesn't make sense and I think the caption's wrong, and I don't know Dutch well enough to correct it. It might be about someone holding up a sign with his name, since there's something about walking on the street with a sign, but I'm not sure. The captions have "George Pronk" as though it's his name on the sign, maybe, but Google Translate just left that as a name, George Pronk. When I translated "pronk" I found out it means "show off" so maybe this was something about a kid on a playground or the street with a sign calling him a show-off, as a joke (George thought it was funny). But again, I'm not sure.
He mentions that he can't play guitar any more, says he had done some singing for the last Vreemde Kostgangers album several months ago (an album that will be released in March), could still sing well enough then, but "it's all getting a bit limited."
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