their previous lead singer, and more of a showman. I don't think he was as good a musician as the other three (I'm counting Cesar, the drummer who joined them in 1970, a few years after Barry joined), but he didn't need to be.
Barry cowrote some of their best songs with guitarist George Kooymans, too, though he hadn't done much songwriting by the time this album came out. George had cowritten many of their early songs with bass player Rinus Gerritsen, including 1968's Miracle Mirror, their first album with Barry as lead singer. Then for a few albums George and Rinus wrote songs separately - I haven't seen anything about why they stopped writing together - with most of the tracks written by George. 15 of 19 tracks for On The Double, the other 4 written by Rinus. 3 of the 4 original tracks for Eight Miles High. And 6 of the 9 tracks for their self-titled Golden Earring album, with one song by Barry, another by Barry amd Rinus, and the first song cowritten by Barry and George, "Big Tree, Blue Sea," which they re-recorded for Moontan in 1973. This song and the other one from Seven Tears that I linked to above were written by George, along with three other tracks on the album, which also had one song written by Barry and one cowritten by Barry and Rinus. The next album, 1972's Together, had 7 songs by George and just one by Barry.
And then 1973's Moontan was ALL songs cowritten by Barry and George, except for two songs John Fenton, a British friend of theirs at Track Records, helped them write.
And after that Barry and George cowrote almost all their songs -- the main exception being "Twilight Zone," which George wrote and had originally planned to use for a solo album.
Editing after checking a website with their Dutch chart history. Their earliest singles were all cowritten by George and Rinus, then from late 1968 through late 1972, the last single before "Radar Love," all the singles had been written by George. 8 of those 9 singles written by George reached the Top 10 on the Dutch charts. And then there was that complete switch to cowriting with Barry.
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