Herman Brood

Herman Brood (Zwolle, November 5, 1946 – Amsterdam, July 11, 2001) was a Dutch musician, painter and media personality. Brood was the Dutch personification of sex, drugs and rock 'n roll. After playing piano in Cuby and the Blizzards and several other bands since 1964, Brood started his own group, Herman Brood & His Wild Romance, in 1977. The band had their first hit single, Saturday Night, in 1978. But even more than his music, it was his outspoken statements in the press about sex and drug use that brought Herman Brood into the public arena in the Netherlands. In the early 1980s he was romantically involved with the German artist Nina Hagen, with whom he appeared in the film Cha Cha. Brood relished the media attention and became the most famous hard drug user in the Netherlands. "It is usual that an artist uses drugs, but tells everybody he doesn't", he once said in an interview. "I admit that it scared me that my popularity could make people start using drugs." In the 1990s he took up painting and became as successful as a painter as he was as a musician. With the band 'Herman Brood & His Wild Romance' he made his best known album 'Shpritsz' (a play on the German word for injection needle), containing anti-drug use songs like 'Dope Sucks', but also 'Saturday Night'. Brood swore off most drugs, reducing his drug use to alcohol and a daily shot of speed. A as al result of a impressive TV-show together with the 'modern saint' Salvation Army's major Alida Bosshardt makes Herman Brood also beloved to people who never appreciated or even heard his music. When in 2001, he found out that he had only a few months left to live, Herman took matters into his own hands and, depressed by the failure of his drug rehabilitation programme, committed suicide on July 11 by jumping from the roof of the Hilton Hotel at the age of 54.