Welcome to A Breath of Fresh Air with Sandy Kaye. It’s a beautiful day. A breath of fresh air.
Beautiful day. More than any day that you’re gone away. It’s a beautiful day.
Hello my lovely listener, how are you today? I’m so glad that you’ve decided to join me because I have what I think is another very interesting story to share with you. Now we all know the band Golden Earring, right? From their 1976 smash hit record, Radar Love. It was played everywhere then and still is quite a lot today.
But what I didn’t know is that there was so much more to Golden Earring and their music. So I reached out to drummer Cesar Zuiderwijk who was more than happy to unveil not only the story behind Holland’s most famous band but to introduce us to his latest group called Sloper. I hope you enjoy meeting Cesar too.
I was in a marching band when I was about 12 years old or so. And I didn’t learn much though. I would hold sticks and play plumb, plumb, plumb, plumb, plumb, plumb, plumb, plumb, plumb, plumb.
That was all I could do. When my father died of lung cancer when I was 13, I guess I needed something to just put my teeth into and make it easier to get through life. Somehow I just got an old pair of sticks and I thought, well, why not? I listened to the radio, to the Beatles, Stones, and tried to imitate them by playing on pickle cans and things.
That’s about it. I must have been 15. Downstairs lived a family.
The daughter of the house was about that time the best guitar player in Holland and the best band called Rene and the Alligators. Let them know, if you go I’ll wait for you, others will do I can wait, darling, I can wait for you One Sunday morning he dropped by and said our drummer had his finger broken and we need someone now to play drums. And he heard me playing those pickle cans upstairs.
He said, could you come? That’s what I did. I just thought, well, you know, why not? So then you started playing with that band? Yeah. Yeah.
Just for a couple of months until the plaster around his arm came off and the doctor said, oh, that doesn’t look good. I have to break it again. So yes, I could play some more months.
It was really like being thrown before the lions or something. I just didn’t even realize what I was doing. But I managed.
I could play those rhythms and things. And I looked good. So that was it.
Were you still at school? Yeah, sure. Yeah. Yeah.
In those days, you had to travel real far because they used to play maybe four or five times a week the weekends. And of course, the midweek, I’d go to Germany to play for the army nights. So I came back real late sometimes.
And I had to be at school at 8.30. I turned 16 on summer holiday. And you were allowed to leave school then and start working. I think it’s 18 years now.
But I made a decision. I could play in another band and make money. So that’s what I did.
It was about the best thing I ever did, I guess. What do you think you would have done if you wouldn’t have started playing in a band? I don’t know. I thought I realized I was pretty good at the time.
As I look at it now, I would probably start cooking and be a chef or something. I have many friends with Michelin restaurants. I teach them to play drums, and they teach me to cook.
That sounds like a fair swap. I hear you do quite a lot of drum teaching. Yeah.
Yeah. So you were completely self-taught on the drums. You didn’t have any lessons yourself? No.
No, never. In my opinion, drumming is not too hard. I mean, you have to listen and then go step by step.
When you make one step, you can figure out the next step. And in the end, it’s like I have just one page with advices. And you can do your whole life.
It’s a never-ending study. If you play right-handed, you should play left-handed as well. Well, there you go.
It’s like a tennis player playing only with his right hand. He should play with his left hand as well. But no one does it because there probably are no coaches teaching you to do that.
So while you were a teenager and you were playing with this other band, I guess Golden Earring were already around and very big in Holland, right? Yeah, they just started. I was born in 48, 45, 62, 63. They started as a band.
You knew about them? No, not really. I guess when I was 17, I went to see them. But they were cover bands.
They were nothing really special. They were very good-looking. Were they? So all the girls loved them.
But they did have a couple of hits. They had Please Go, and in 1968, they actually hit the top of the Dutch charts with Dickie Dong, Dickie, Dickie, Dong. Dong, Dong, Dickie, Dickie, yeah.
They wrote that song for someone else. The manager said, I think you should do that. And they hated the song because it’s not really a Golden Earring happy song.
It’s just like, Dong, Dong, Dong, Dong, Dong, Dong. It’s like Carnival. In the end, they were convinced they brought it out under their own name and it became the number one hit.
But I was 20 then already. Right. So Golden Earring had started off as a sort of basic hard rock band, hadn’t they? They started out as a cover band.
They went to the States and started playing with bands like Led Zeppelin and MC5 and all kinds of heavy American bands. And English bands came to America, The Who and The Stones, Beatles. So they realized they should make their own material, which they did pretty well and pretty fast at that time.
You had to make two albums anyway in a year. So you must be very productive writing things, you know. Everybody did that.
So the second tour they did in the States, they were doing their own thing and they made an album called Eight Miles High, which was pretty cool at the time and very forward. It’s really, really experimental. And they were becoming a happy band, yes.
Reach for the hand that must be there You know how it fills you And you know how it is To be one of those people Who don’t know what this is You can hide away After that, I joined them in 1970. How did you get to join them? Well, the bass player, Rinus, asked me to get some coffee. I was playing in a band called Livin’ Blues.
Doing pretty good, playing with Deep Purple and big festivals. Really doing well. But blues wasn’t very progressive.
It still is what we used to do 50 years ago. So Rinus asked me to drink some coffee at George’s house. I thought, uh-oh.
I knew they had a drummer problem Because the drummer that was with them wasn’t really socially committed to them. He wasn’t really one of the guys. And he was very jazzy.
They didn’t quite fit. And they just came from the States. And I thought, well, you never know if you need a drummer.
You never know. So I went to George’s house and we had a coffee. And he said, OK, will you join us? I said, that’s OK.
Just like that. And you were in? I was in. Yep.
I had to quit smoking and drinking, though. Did you? They didn’t drink or smoke or whatever. And I was blues.
I mean, you drink, you know. So why did you have to stop drinking and smoking in order to be with them? Because they didn’t drink and smoke. I mean, you’re not going to smoke and drink on your own in a group.
You don’t do that. But that was OK. They were a very clean cut band, were they? And very good looking.
Yeah. Yeah, they just didn’t need it. I mean, they played a lot.
They were having fun. They didn’t have a problem with stopping. And it was pretty much OK.
I mean, it’s much better for you. And they’re a very active and live band, just going all over the States. So I thought, I must be in a good condition.
So it helped. Wow. They did you a big favour.
Yeah. Do you know how they got their name, Golden Earring? Where did that come from? It’s a Gypsy song, actually. You can look it up.
It’s like, da-da-da-da-da-da-da. Golden Earrings, da-da-da-da-da-da. They somehow, how do you get a name? I don’t know.
They just liked it. They just liked it. And when the music became a bit more heavy, groups like The Who, they just got the S, Golden Earring.
Right. You actually opened for The Who, didn’t you, on their European tour in 72? What was that like? Oh, fun. Lots of fun.
They drank and smoked. Yeah, yeah, yeah. We were on the same record company.
We were actually on their label, 21 Records. So we did a lot of things together. They asked us to open up for them.
And we played a lot together in the States as well. Madison Square Garden and things like that. It was crazy, craziness.
That was the time where they were smashing instruments and throwing things out of hotel rooms? Yeah, yeah, and beating each other up. I mean, they were doing a lot of smoking and drinking, and still you didn’t? No, I didn’t. No, we didn’t.
Wow. Well, I guess we started drinking a little bit. You can enjoy wine and things.
It doesn’t have to be excessive. But they were loaded all the time. I mean, really, sometimes they had a problem playing even.
That was 72. In the next couple of years, you put out this massive hit that was Radar Love. Was that your first super big hit? No, when I joined them, the first thing we did was make an album, Golden Earring.
We started recording, and then we were going to play live. But as soon as the record came out, it had a hit back home. We already had a number one hit in all of Europe.
I’m going back home Just a place where I belong Well, I’m a random random Just a fortune gambler It’s always good to be back home Well, I’m a random random Just a fortune gambler It’s always good to be back home Back home Back home Back home had taken the band straight to the top of the charts and paved the way for them to evolve towards hard rock as a result of all of their American influences. It also opened the door for them to perform alongside Jimi Hendrix, Led Zeppelin, Procol Harum and Eric Clapton.
This is a Breath of Fresh Air with Sandy Kaye. While most Dutch bands of the 60s managed to trip over the threshold into the 70s, Golden Earring entered the new decade stronger and more confident than ever. The first two American tours provided a wealth of new ideas, musically, visually and technically, and their success took the band by complete surprise.
It came really fast. In those times, when you had a radio hit, all the stations were playing it every hour. And the record companies were big in Europe, so it was number one all over Europe.
That’s always a crazy feeling, you know. I can’t imagine how that would feel, hearing yourself on the radio for the first time. Yeah, well, you get used to it.
I’m sure you do. No, we weren’t. Actually, the record came out and we went on a vacation, all of us, to the Canary Islands and laying in the sun, and someone came hollering and said, you’re number one in Holland.
What? You know, within two weeks it happened. So were you the sort of band in Holland like the Beatles were, where girls were screaming and running after you, you were all good-looking boys? Yeah. Did that happen? Well, it’s not that heavy in Holland.
We’re pretty down-to-earth, I think. But you get a lot of people congratulating you and we really enjoy your music and can I have an autograph or whatever. But it’s never like the Beatles or so, or the Stones.
They go nowhere, you know. So you could continue living a normal life? Yeah. Normal life.
Well, normal life. We were playing our ass off, I mean, almost every day. And going on tour to Germany, you played every day.
So that was the life you live, you know, playing, touring and making records, of course. And how did you manage to maintain a relationship? I didn’t have a relationship. It’s hard.
It’s hard. Yeah. Absolutely.
Well, you know, in those days, people married really early and George got married and he’s still married, which is an exception because it’s hard to have a marriage where you’re almost never home, you know. Absolutely. It’s hard to have a marriage even when you’re home.
Yeah. Yeah, I guess so. In Europe, we had a lot of hits.
And who was writing them all? You were writing your own material. George and Barry, it didn’t have any use to come up with things while they were doing really good, you know. I mean, George is a genius writer and Barry is one of the best lyric writers ever, you know, to come up with Moontan and Cut and titles like that, Long-Horned Animal.
It’s unbelievable. I wrote a lot of lyrics and things until maybe later. So there’s quite some things on the Sloper album, the first one and the one to be released.
Yeah, I want to talk to you about Sloper coming up, but let’s just stick with Golden Earring for the minute. So they wrote Radar Love and I remember the last time we spoke, you told me that it was purely from their imagination and the hit that it was was absolutely huge. That made you an international sensation.
It wasn’t just Europe anymore. Yeah. How did that change your lives? That’s got to have changed things up for you.
They used to tour a lot in England and the States, but it’s hard to have a follow-up. You have to be like, we love the States, but we had to go back to make albums. If you want to be big in the States at that time, like Kiss and Aerosmith, whatever, you have to tour all year round, which is pretty hard, you know? Hard life.
Nowadays, it’s all modern media. I mean, you can have an overnight hit and sell out the biggest places when you’re doing like Facebook, you know, all those things. But in those days, you had to really tour a lot.
So that’s what we did for months and then go back to Europe, tour a little bit here and make an album and go back to the States again. Certainly had us all singing it every time you got in the car. It was one of the best driving songs of all time.
Yeah, yeah. In the States, it’s still like a trucker’s anthem, probably because it’s about a truck driver. But the rhythm is really like you like to drive on it.
Absolutely. And faster than you should probably. I can’t think of very many songs about truck drivers, so that really immortalized truck drivers and gave them a hit.
I guess so. Did you know when you made that song that it was destined to be such a hit? No, no, no. Because you can never tell.
What was Radar Love about? It’s about a truck driver and his love and, you know, it’s pretty obvious. Where did the story come from? Barry wrote the lyrics. He did write most of the lyrics of Golden Earring.
And was it based on observation or just something that he conjured up? Something he made up. Radar Love was the number one in Australia. I know.
And in Japan. But it wasn’t possible at that time to go there because you had to take your own stuff, your own PA and your own equipment. In Japan they had only one hall, the Budokan, you know, and they didn’t even have a PA there.
So you couldn’t play at all. And then you had to ship your stuff. So that wasn’t worth it.
It’s really hard to have a follow-up. The single we released in England, we were voted best live performance group in England. Melody Maker, you know, a really fantastic magazine.
But where you have, you know, they write you really sky high, but where you don’t follow up like what they want to hear, they write you down just as easy. And the follow-up was a song called Instant Poetry, which I didn’t quite understand. Radness of you keep me clean Rinse me plain, spin me sane I trust my dirt to only you Automobile, see me near Scrub your back, buy your meals Choke your start, I’ll warm your heart Everybody would have made The Son of Raider love.
They wanted to change musically, you know, and I said, I don’t think it’s a good idea, but OK, we’ll see. And it didn’t happen till Twilight Zone. Twilight Zone was even bigger in the States, I think, than Raider Love at the time because of MTV.
MTV just started and we made a beautiful clip, a thriller in three, four minutes, you know, and the first to do that, I think. So it took quite some years to have a follow-up. Did you ever feel like giving up? Yeah, yeah, sure, sure.
There’s always, when you’re going on for such a time, you have a big hit and you can play with that for years, do live performances. We were pretty good live, so people just came to see us. But it takes back a little bit.
Then you have to have a really big hit again. And we said, OK, now we put our shoulders under it and try to really do it again, which was Twilight Zone. And then the whole thing started over again.
Yeah, there’s a storm on the loose Sirens in my head Rhythm and silence All circuits are dead Can I be cold My whole life spins Into a frenzy It’s a whole place It’s a madhouse, it’s dark We had the same, when the lady smiles, we said, OK, this will be the last thing we’ll do unless it’s another smash hit. And it was our biggest hit in Europe or in Holland, I think, with a beautiful clip. But MTV didn’t like it.
You know the scene with the nun? Yeah, I do. In the elevator. Yeah.
Which is actually a song about the guy that assaults the nun gets it in the end. He’s been punished. And that’s the whole thing.
And people didn’t quite understand that. When a lady smiles Oh, it drives me wild Her lips are warm And resourceful When her fingertips Go drawing Circles in the night And the mood is soft And sensual Ooh And I love it Yeah, I love it It’s the answer To all my dreams Every time it feels like The earth is shaking It doesn’t matter As it’s falling In the shadow Maybe it’s raining But soon it finds nothing Shadow dancing Together, oh, I You did have quite a lot of songs with Golden Earring, didn’t you? You were particularly successful in the Netherlands and you hit the charts with around 60 singles reaching the number one position four times. Yeah, I guess even more.
But that’s on the side. But I don’t know. I never keep records like that.
Me neither. You did. I mean, you’re almost like national heroes for the Netherlands.
Well, yeah. A hero in Holland is OK. You know, it’s nothing like in the States or whatever.
Were you sorry that you didn’t get the opportunity to really make it big in America? No, we would have been dead probably by now. What do you mean? If you know what I mean. In terms of having to do all the touring? The rock stars in the States, they die early.
No, no, no. We always felt quite comfortable with the things we did. It’s OK.
You know, we did a lot of tours when we had the big hits. And so we never went there. We went to a lot to England and Germany.
We did pretty well. And like I said, we didn’t want to be months from home, you know, and all the dangers with that. Are you saying that the life of rock and roll in America was really hard? Does that also then suggest that you lived pretty clean all that time in the Netherlands? Yeah, because in the States we used to travel every day.
You have to travel every day, you know, and stay in hotels every day, every day in different hotels, which is pretty nice when you’re young. But when you have a family, we all started to have kids and everything. You just want to be next to home, you know.
You always took good care of your health. Oh, yes. Yeah.
That’s not typical rock and roll, is it? No, no, no. That’s pretty difficult in the States as well, you know, where you’re home and you sleep well and everything and you’re with the family. It’s really peaceful, you know.
You go out and play at night. That’s pretty good. No partying afterwards anymore, you know.
We were still in good shape. Well, they might have decided to stay close to home, but that didn’t prevent the hits from coming. In 1993, they managed to push out another one.
When it happened years later again, we said, okay, are we going to give up or do something really special? Which was the Naked Truth acoustic album, which was the best-selling record we ever had. But then it started all over again. So, yeah, a couple of times we said, okay, we’ll quit or we’ll do it.
And it always happened. We’ll let you go. The band toured America extensively, sharing the stage with other greats like the Doobie Brothers, J. Giles Band, Foz Skaggs and ZZ Top.
They toured with bands like Aerosmith and Santana, but were well able to fill halls and stadiums all on their own. The world was at the feet of this Dutch rock phenomenon.
This is a Breath of Fresh Air with Sandy Kaye. It’s a beautiful day. Recently, Golden Earring announced that their journey had reached its end.
Despite having a long history of simply being the original four, there were times when they added additional members, but they always reverted to their core. For 50 years, I played with the band for 50 years, you know. It can go always up, you know.
I mean, there’s always an end somewhere. It was always the same four of you, wasn’t it? We always stuck together, but we had an extra guitar player. He went to the States a couple of times with us.
I remember we played Madison Square Garden supporting Aerosmith. And the night before, I said, I’ve had it. I just want to play with the four of us.
We don’t need another guitar player. Come on, you know. He was maybe taking drugs or whatever.
You know, he was really on his own. And I said, I want to play with the four of us tomorrow in Madison Square Garden. Let’s do it.
And they said, oh, I don’t want to, you know. I’ll play with the four of us. I’m not going to play at all.
I’m going home. So we played with the four of us, and that was cool. And then we had a period.
We made To The Hilt with a good friend of ours, Robert John Stipps. He played a lot on To The Hilt, and we liked the sound. So we started playing with Robert John and two horn players.
And that was pretty cool for a couple of years. And then we said, OK, we’re going to do it with the four of us again. As the 70s turned into the 80s, you said that musically Golden Earring changed its style, too.
Yeah. Did you have to be very different for the new decade? No, we never went with trends or anything. You know, we just did what we wanted to do.
We always did. Most bands that go for a certain trend, they only exist for a couple of years when the trend is over. So we were always a bit before our time sometimes, I think.
And of course Radar Love had a bit of a resurgence at the end of the 80s when that was covered by a pop metal band called White Lion. So Radar Love was back on the charts again. Actually, there’s a book out.
It’s 50 years of Radar Love, and all the covers are in there. I think it’s about 800 covers. Really? Yeah, there’s nun choirs and street organs and marching bands, whatever.
And they’re all covering Radar Love, you know. Wow, I had no idea about that. It’s pretty funny, yeah, yeah.
So, I mean, as the decades went on then, I think your next album after that was in 2003, wasn’t it? Yeah, yeah, yeah. We wanted to go to the States and record, which was easy, just a couple of weeks, which we did. And there was pretty much, we went with not too much material, and we wrote it in the studio, most of it.
And my favourite song, by the way, is The Last Frontier Hotel, especially the end. I love it. We were driving to the studio from a restaurant that night, and we heard on the radio that John Entwistle died in The Last Frontier Hotel.
They were playing Las Vegas. That night we wrote that song. I’m feeling tired and hungry I’m weary to the bone Rode 10,000 miles to get here To justify my soul To justify my soul One last drink and one more smoke And I won’t wait, take you to the end of the show That was your last trip to America in 2003, or have you been back since? No, we’ve never been back touring, because the last time we went to the States for touring was 84, I think, with When the Lady Smiles.
But we released a thing called Weekend Love, big hit in Europe, but they couldn’t, the finger on us. The radio stations were formatting at that time. They were either country or rock or heavy rock.
You had to be in that… Pigeonhole, yes, that’s right. They couldn’t make up what we were, you know? So we were not on the radio. Of course, at that time, if you weren’t on the radio, you couldn’t be too successful.
You could play lots live. It was all dependent on the radio, wasn’t it? Yeah, but we were really doing well in Europe, so we kept in Europe and played a lot in Europe, in Holland. Soon I remember Peter Longtime singing Feels so stupid using these old clichés Lying in line where death is, she said All is just a warning I never realised how many albums the Golden Earring had actually put out.
Yeah, when we started Naked Truth in 92, we started playing theatres. You play 60, 70, maybe 80 theatres a year, and that’s so comfortable. I mean, you go home every night.
I played pearl drums for almost 60 years. I played Zildjian cymbals for 60 years. Remo skins all my life.
I’m really very monogamous. Women too. Yeah, deserves congratulations for sure.
Cesar, in 2021, as we last spoke, you told me that Golden Earring, after 60 years, had finally broken up because George had been diagnosed with ALS. Yeah, well, we had to. George Kooymans, he’s not able to play as he should, so we don’t play anymore.
It’s nothing like arguments or whatever, the way groups break up. I think we would have played some more years, I guess. We were really doing well.
We knew already for a while it’s not really aggressive. Your muscles are not that well anymore. I also read that you said that nobody could actually take his place.
No, no, we won’t play with anyone else. It’s the four of us. It’s always been the four of us, and that’s the way it is.
He is just simply irreplaceable, you know, the voice and the guitar playing and everything. Worked out fine for 50 years, so it must have been something. 50 years together, that’s longer than most marriages last.
Oh, yeah. Yeah, a marriage between four stubborn, totally different kind of musicians is really something. We managed.
We were good friends, you know. Musically, we had maybe some ups and downs, but we never had any personal quarrels. You know, we always said, let’s go for it one more time.
How is he now? He’s still going, isn’t he? Yeah, yeah. It’s not getting better. You know what the disease is.
But we see each other. Barry comes over from Curacao. You’ve remained really close with them.
I mean, they’re as close to being your family as your family. Yeah, I see Irenus a lot, and we play together sometimes, you know, do sessions with people because we fit pretty good together, I guess, when we play. Well, I’m still doing a theatre show called The Naked Truth.
We’re really busy, you know. And, of course, you’re involved with the band Sloper. You started them in 2018 too.
Yeah. Tell us a little bit about Sloper. In Dutch it’s really funny.
Sloper means deconstruction. I mean, you know, just demolishing houses and things. In English it’s like a sloper engine.
You have a sloper engine, which is the engine is in a slope hanging in a motorcycle. Ah, okay. And a tailor would say it’s the front panel of your jacket.
It has so many meanings. But it’s really funny because in Dutch the first thing you say is, ah, sloper. Oh, man, Sloper’s coming, you know, going to demolish everything, but in a nice way, not in a way I’m going to kill you or something, you know, but just lose your house.
That’s it. And it’s actually been you who’s put this band together. Well, I met Mario Hosens, the drummer of Triggerfinger, a really great rock and roll band in Europe, very well known.
First time I met him, we became friends. You know, it’s like you shake hands and you know, okay, that’s my guy, you know. And one day he said, I’m going to make an album with different drummers and I want to play some covers like Kinks’ songs.
Can I ask you to be the first one to play with? We did I Need You. I Need You. Really nice Kinks song.
I need you more than birds in the sky I need you, little girl You can keep the tears from my eyes If you ever tell me goodbye I’ll break down and you’ll hear me cry I need you more than anybody else’s I don’t need anyone before I need you There’s no one else can stand in my way I need you, little girl Until they put a smile on my face If you ever tell me goodbye I’ll break down and you’ll hear me cry I need you I didn’t need anyone before It was amazing. Man, I love this. I love this stuff.
Let’s start a band. We made the first album. But then COVID happened.
So we were out of it for two years. And Peter’s mother died in the meanwhile. And he wanted to be home more in England.
There’s a Brexit rule that’s completely… I mean, you’ve got to be insane to come up with it. You can only stay for 90 days on the continent. And we can only stay for 90 days in England.
90 days in total? In total, which is completely insane, you know? And then you’ve got to stay away for like 90 days. So a lot of English people that have houses in France and Portugal, they’re really… What the hell? They can’t live on the continent anymore. So it was very complicated.
And we had to come up with another singer. That’s what happened with Sloper. The next album is called Changing Colours.
All of us write together. It’s almost incest. A million faces Blinding me A time of changing Heart in the streets Subtle whispers Rain in my ears Colours fading Before they disappear Changing colours But you can’t change me Cesar, thank you so much for chatting with us and sharing your stories.
I’m so glad to hear that you’re doing really well and that George is still with us too. And please say hi to him from all the fans. Congratulations on a fabulous career.
I suppose they’ll take you out playing those drums one day, won’t they? Yeah, I guess. We’ll see what happens. Thank you for letting me tell the stories.
Bye now. Bye. Bye.
Cesar Zuiderwijk there. Golden Earrings’ illustrious drummer. Look out for Cesar’s autobiography, which should be out soon.
It’ll be full of stories from the road and people he’s met along the way. There’s also a book with drum instructions he’s put out in case you want to learn. That’s called A Drummer Can’t Play Out of Tune.
Will you lend me your ears next week again? I hope so. See you then. Bye now.
Because it’s a beautiful day You’ve been listening to A Breath of Fresh Air with Sandy Kaye. Beautiful day Oh, baby, any day that you’re gone away It’s a beautiful day