The members of Golden Earring are helping raise money for the ALS Foundation of the Netherlands [View all]

[highplainsdem]

As I mentioned in my thread for George Kooymans' birthday a week ago

https://democraticunderground.com/103471740

George -- their founder, songwriter and lead guitarist -- was diagnosed with ALS a little over a year ago.

Here's an article, in Dutch, about an auction for the ALS Foundation starting in hours and running a week -- use Google Translate to get their English version of the page:

https://www.soundz.nl/gesigneerde-golden-earring-portretten-onder-de-hamer-opbrengst-voor-als

I'm sure this auction will be well out of my price range, but thought I'd mention it here in case anyone reading this, or any friends of theirs who are Golden Earring fans, might be interested, especially since the auction proceeds will go for such a good cause.

That article also has a fairly recent photo of George. I don't recall seeing any other photos of him the last couple of years, and I was glad to see he's looking well there still, despite the diagnosis. ALS can progress at different rates, and the only person I've known who developed ALS, an online friend I corresponded with for several months in the 1980s, lived only a couple of years after the diagnosis, suffering a really steep decline though he was only in his late 40s when diagnosed.

I hope that with enough funding -- and luck -- a cure for the disease can be found soon. It's such a cruel disease. My friend's work had included coaching boys' basketball, and he continued to coach for a while from a wheelchair but then lost the ability to speak. George Kooymans managed to found a band that had worldwide success and stayed together for 60 years and was still creating new music, with no plans to retire until he was diagnosed with ALS. I can't imagine what it must be like to have been able to play guitar that well, then start to lose that ability.

So I hope this auction raises a lot of money.


I'd been checking online to see if George's birthday, which last year was celebrated with radio stations and church bells all over the Netherlands playing "Radar Love," would have any similar events this year. As far as I can tell there weren't any.

But the YouTube channel for the Dutch TV show TopPop did post a 1985 video of the band performing "Twilight Zone" -- one of the songs where George takes the lead vocal most of the time, and one of his solo compositions: