Golden Earring

Golden Earring is the best known and internationally most succesful rock band to come out of The Netherlands. Founded in 1961, Golden Earring has been active for nearly 50 years non-stop. The current line-up has been together since 1970, which makes Golden Earring the world's longest surviving rock band, having been formed a year before The Rolling Stones. In 1961 George Kooymans (age 13) and his neighbour Rinus Gerritsen formed The Tornados in their home town of The Hague. The band's first line-up mainly played The Shadows covers. In 1963, as the band found out that there was an older British band called The Tornados, they decided to change their name into The Golden Earrings (after a Peggy Lee song). Under the Golden Earrings moniker the band recorded four albums and had twelve hit singles in The Netherlands between 1965 and 1969. The band's international career modestly started to take off in 1969, the year of their psychedelic Eight Miles High album, their first tour of the U.S. and also the year in which the band name was slightly changed into Golden Earring. A year later, in 1970, a new dummer was recruited. The new line-up was the line-up that is still active today: Barry Hay (lead vocals/guitar/flute), George Kooymans (guitar/vocals), Cesar Zuiderwijk (drums) and Rinus Gerritsen (bass/harmonica/keyboards). 1970 saw a dramatic shift in Golden Earring's musical style. After the melodic, often Beatle-esque sixties beat of The Golden Earrings and a brief phase of psychedelic and hippie rock, Back Home marked the birth of Golden Earring's trademark heavy, riff-based rock with catchy, sometimes remarkably 'poppy' hooks. Back Home hit #1 in the Dutch charts. It marked the start of a decade of domestic and international glory. Between 1966 and 1976 seventeen consecutive Earring singles rocketed into the Dutch Top 10, while their international popularity increased. Between 1969 and 1985 Golden Earring toured the U.S. thirteen times, building a considerable North American fanbase. Their 1973 hit single Radar Love (#13 in the U.S. charts, #5 in Britain) was their breakthrough smash worldwide: it still is a 'car song' and a classic rock anthem of global fame. Nine years later Twilight Zone was an even bigger hit in the U.S.: #5 (#1 in The Netherlands), although the song did not become as much of an all-time classic as Rader Love. In their native The Netherlands the band's managed to extend creative and commercial peak: When the Lady Smiles repeated, even topped the success of Twilight Zone, but the single was a failure in the U.S., as MTV and even radio stations banned the track due to the controversial video by director Dick Maas, in which the rape of a nun was suggested. Ironically, given its lack of U.S. success, the song was used by Hillary Clinton during the early stages of her 2008 presidential campaign. After 1985 things rapidly went downhill for Golden Earring internationally, but in their native The Netherlands the band discovered a new gold mine in 1992: acoustic concerts in theatres, the concept of MTV Unplugged. The band's acoustic live album The Naked Truth rather surprisingly developed into their biggest selling album in Holland (although their by far most succesful album internationally remains 1973's Moontan, which sold well over a million copies outside of The Netherlands). Golden Earring are still recording studio albums (their 25th studio record is due for release in 2011) and still do dozens of live shows each year (electric as well as unplugged), almost exclusively in The Netherlands, although there are still occasional live appearances in Belgium and Germany. 2009 saw Golden Earring's return to the United Kingdom: their sold out shows in Ipswich and London's Shepherd's Bush were their first live appearances in England since 1978. In 2010 the band will go into the studio to record their first album of new material since 2003's Millbrook U.S.A..