I would appreciate some of DU's good vibes or

[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.