Golden Earring, bluesier than usual and with (and without) an extra guitarist - Leather

[highplainsdem]

5. Since I blamed lead singer Barry Hay, in one paragraph of the OP, for sabotaging

the band's success at critical times with bad decisions on lyrics, album titles and artwork, I wanted to add (in the interest of fairness) a video I ran across for the first time last night, an interview with manager/producer Bill Curbishley.

Some background on Curbishley: https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Bill_Curbishley

Curbishley started his career in the music business in 1971 at Track Records,[5] managing tours for The Who and other artists such as Thunderclap Newman, Golden Earring and The Crazy World of Arthur Brown.[6] Curbishley produced The Who's film Tommy, the prison movie McVicar and also the film Buddy's Song, all starring The Who's Roger Daltrey. With Daltrey, he also established the Goldhawke production company to issue the singer's solo albums.[7] Curbishley left Track in the mid-seventies after financial issues led to the decline of the company. With his wife Jackie, he established Trinifold Management Ltd., a music management company, in 1974.[8]

After a royalty dispute, Curbishley's company acquired management of The Who in 1976[9] and soon expanded to manage other well-known artists such as Judas Priest and Robert Plant.[6] It was at the suggestion of Curbishley that Plant disbanded his Shaken 'n' Stirred touring ensemble in the mid-1980s, starting afresh with a completely new band and writing with different musicians. As a direct result of this, Plant re-emerged as a hugely successful recording and touring artist.[10]

In 1994, Curbishley assumed management of guitarist Jimmy Page, and in the same year, was integral in the reuniting of Page and Plant, both former members of Led Zeppelin. Despite failed attempts by others to reunite the pair, Curbishely was able to persuade the previously reluctant Plant to work with Page again, resulting in the highly successful Unledded album, video and world tour. During this period, Curbishley and Trinifold also managed the solo career of Francis Dunnery (former frontman of It Bites, and Plant's guitarist prior to his reunion with Page).[11]

The interview video is below, and the part that was a real surprise to me starts at about 5 minutes in, where Curbishley talks about how drugs were much more legal in the Netherlands then, in the early '70s, compared to the UK and US. "They used to do so much speed I couldn't believe it. The next album I got, I didn't understand one word. It was ridiculous."

He's talking about the album after Moontan and its hit single "Radar Love." Switch was a huge switch in style, the last thing the band needed to follow up an international hit.

The members of the Earring have admitted to using drugs (well, three of them have; bass player Rinus Gerritsen didnt, as far as I can recall from what I read). But the main one mentioned was hash. They mentioned heroin, which they said they only experimented with and immediately swore off. I don't recall any mention of speed (well, in the lyrics of Radar Love, and Barry referred in one interview to one of their management staff who'd loved that line since he was a speed freak). Of course they also drank. (One of their hits I posted months ago here, "Weekend Love," was reportedly written in a few minutes -- the music, anyway -- by George when he was drunk, and he recorded the demo on 8-track then and they couldn't better it in the studio later and just used the demo. The lyrics were written by Barry, reportedly about a woman he was involved with at the time, a photographer who didn't have enough time for him.) But if they were using enough speed that a rock band manager and producer said he "couldn't believe it" and he thought it had made a mess of their next album, it might have been pretty bad.

But Barry's poor choices on lyrics/titles/artwork were also to blame. I'd found that video in a thread about the Earring on Steve Hoffman's music forum, and in another thread there about them, back in 2014, GE fans were listing the reasons they thought the band never became a top band. Barry's dumb choices and remarks in interviews were named as one of them. Another was unwillingness to move to the States or spend much more time touring here. (They did a lot of tours here anyway, whether supporting other bands or headlining with support from bands like Aerosmith.) Part of the blame was put on the unevenness of the albums and the change in musical styles.

None of the fans there mentioned a drug problem. But Curbishley was a real insider who was helping them at a crucial time.

He thought very highly of the band. Obviously thought they'd had a lot of potential.

I think I'll transcribe that entire section of the interview, where he's talking about Moontan and the Earring in America, after first talking about the band's appearance on Top of the Pops in the UK and their having a #1 record there, and American record execs then taking the band quite seriously.

So they took them to America, and we had a Top 3 album. I mean huge, huge album. And they were great musicians. And they were all great-looking guys. So I thought, this is it, you know. And the album was called Moontan.

But anyway, in those days, in Holland, drugs were sort of virtually legal. They used to do so much speed I couldn't believe it. The next album I got, I didn't understand one word. [Laughs] It was [unintelligible] ridiculous. But having said that, they were a great, great band. And they were one of the few bands I'd ever had out supporting the Who that got an encore. You know. Lynyrd Skynyrd was another one.

There's no way to know how successful Golden Earring could have become if they'd been able to follow Moontan with an album that was just as good, and similar but maybe not too similar.

But it does seem that Curbishley blames speed more than anything else.

And I just did some checking on what drugs were virtually legal in the Netherlands then, and speed was considered a hard drug, unlike hash, so it wasn't one the band members would have been likely to admit to using so much.

They certainly weren't the first rock band to have a promising career at least partially derailed by drugs. I just hadn't read much to suggest that drugs really had been that much of a problem for them. I might not take this so seriously if the background info hadn't come from a tour manager who really liked the band.


Curbishley interview...and there are interesting anecdotes about Golden Earring before he mentions the drug problem, so I think you'll enjoy listening to all of this: