
This article was last updated on January 21, 2025
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Golden Earring will still give a farewell concert, together with artist friends
Golden Earring will still give a farewell concert. After sixty years, the Hague band called it quits in 2021 because guitarist George Kooymans appeared to be suffering from the incurable muscular disease ALS. They did not want a replacement for Kooymans and never gave a farewell concert.
Now singer Barry Hay, bassist Rinus Gerritsen and drummer Cesar Zuiderwijk will take to the stage one more time, under the name One Last Night. This will happen in January next year at the conclusion of De Vrienden van Amstel Live in Ahoy, the annual event where numerous Dutch bands always perform.
The performance was partly initiated by Kooymans. Golden Earring is assisted by Di-rect, Maan, Danny Vera, Acda and De Munnik and Davina Michelle, among others.
“It will come as no surprise to anyone that we were not able to end our careers as we would have liked,” says Barry Hay. “When I talked about this with George two months ago, the idea arose to ask friendly bands and artists to organize a grand farewell together. Of course we can no longer stand on stage for two hours ourselves, but together that is a different story. “
Hay, Zuiderwijk and Gerritsen play along with the artists present, but the three of them will not be on stage without a guitarist. “It will be very difficult to have George there,” says Zuiderwijk. Furthermore, the band members do not want to make any statements about him. “That’s up to him and his family.”
Part of the proceeds from the concert, 5 euros per ticket sold, will go to the ALS Netherlands Foundation.
Golden Earring is one of the most successful and longest-lasting bands in Dutch pop history. It is one of the few groups that also broke through internationally and the first band to tour in the US. The line-up has remained unchanged since 1970, when drummer Zuiderwijk joined.
After its founding by neighbors Kooymans and Gerritsen in The Hague in 1961, great success came in the early 1970s with the album Moontan, containing the big hit Radar Love, one of their best-known songs, which has been covered by dozens of other artists. Radar Love reached number 1 in the Netherlands and was also in the charts in America for weeks.
Over the course of the 1970s, the Earring’s fortunes declined with the rise of punk, new wave and disco, but the album Cut (1982), intended as a swan song, was unexpectedly a great success again at home and abroad.
Groundbreaking clips
This was partly due to the single Twilight Zone with a groundbreaking video clip made by film director Dick Maas, which was frequently shown on the then new music channel MTV. It was one of the first clips that actually told a story.
Twilight Zone was a big hit, also in the US, and the band decided to continue. When the Lady Smiles also reached the charts a year later. Dick Maas again directed the clip, which caused controversy because it showed Barry Hay assaulting a nun.
Since then, Golden Earring has mainly concentrated on the Netherlands and has performed there frequently. They made one of their best-selling albums with the live album The Naked Truth, a recording of theater concerts with acoustic instruments.
In 2012, what turned out to be their last studio album, Tits ‘n Ass, was released. In 2015 they celebrated their fiftieth record anniversary (their first single Please Go was released in 1965) in a sold-out Ziggo Dome in Amsterdam.
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