Golden Earring

What is the best thing to ever come out of The Netherlands? Cheese, tulips, wooden shoes or windmills? Pieter van den Hoogenband? Big Brother?

Wrong.

The best thing to ever come out of The Netherlands is the song Radar Love.

Radar Love is quite possible one of the greatest rock songs ever committed to vinyl. What makes its all the more curious is that it was released by a Dutch band called Golden Earring. What is almost incredible is that Golden Earring are still going strong today a full 48 years after their formation.

Golden Earring was formed in 1961 in The Hague by 13-year-old George Kooymans and his 15-year-old Rinus Gerritsen. Both are still in the band today. The name Golden Earrings (the ‘s’ was dropped early in their evolution) was taken from a song, originally sung by Marlene Dietrich in 1947 and covered by Peggy Lee in 1948.

Golden Earring recorded several pop songs in Holland and had some chart success but it wasn’t until 1968 that the band had a number one hit in the Netherlands with the Dong Dong Diki Diki Dong.

This was followed by a successful psychedelic album Eight Miles High, which featured an eighteen-minute version of the title track, itself a cover of the 1966 hit song by The Byrds. The live version, which could last 45 minutes (great song, but 45 mins sounds excruciating), was considered by some to be a highlight in their first and second American tours, in the middle of the hippie and flower power era.

The came Radar Love.

The single from the album Moontan became a hit in both Europe and the USA. Golden Earring embarked on their first major US tour in 1969 – 1970, and were among the first European bands to do so. Due to American influences, their music evolved towards hard rock, and they performed along with Led Zeppelin, Eric Clapton and Jimi Hendrix. Between 1969 and 1984, Golden Earring completed thirteen US tours. During this period, they performed as the opening act for Santana, The Doobie Brothers, Rush and .38 Special. In the early seventies, when “Radar Love” was a hit, they had KISS and Aerosmith as their opening act.

Singer and Lyricist Barry Hay explained the origins of Radar Love on the bands website.

“One evening I had a few friends over, one of whom was American, and I was brainstorming with them about the form and contents of the story. It had to be something very simple, to which every average person could relate, such as someone in the bathtub and ….. Everyone started to put in ideas and it when it got too chaotic I kicked them out of the house and sent them to some nightclub so that I could work in peace. The idea of an ordinary guy in his car became to take shape and when my American house guest got home in the early hours and read the lyrics, he went wild: “This is it, brilliant! The ultimate American car song!!!”

The song is now genuinely iconic. It has its own website www.radar-love.net which claims that over 375 cover versions of  Radar Love have been done including those by  U2, Blue Man Group, R.E.M., Bryan Adams, Carlos Santana, Def Leppard, Ministry, Crowded House, the Alarm, James Last Orchestra, Thunder, White Lion, and many more. It also lists many tv shows, movies and books where Radar Love is either featured or referred to.

Golden Earring had a minor hit with Twilight Zone and in 1984 When the Lady Smiles became a hit in Canada and becoming the band’s fifth number one hit in their native country, but not in the US.

Tragedy hit in 1984 when the band were playing a concert at a US theme park when a fire killed eight teenagers. After this the bands attention increasing went to Europe.

In 1991, Golden Earring scored another hit in the Netherlands with Going To The Run, a ballad about a Hell’s Angels motorclub member who was a friend of the band and died in a crash.

Since 1992, they have focussed largely on acoustic shows which remain very popular in Europe and releasing acoustic albums which have been some of the band’s best selling albums, such as The Naked Truth, which sold over 500,000 copies in the Netherlands alone.

Golden Earring continue to perform over 200 concerts a year, both acoustic and electric mainly in their home country of the Netherlands and occasionally in Belgium and Germany. These energetic live performances have been recorded on several live albums.

Golden Earring have not toured in North America or other continents since 1984. They have never toured Asia, South America or Australia.

Strangely the bands last album was recorded in New York in 2003 and apparently there is another album finished and awaiting release.

To promote the release of the album, Golden Earring will do two gigs in the UK for the first time in thirty years, with one concert on 14 March 2009 at The Shepherd’s Bush Empire in London and one show at Ipswich Regent Theatre on March 13, 2009.

Golden Earring celebrated their 47th anniversary in 2008 and have been performing almost continuously since their foundation in 1961. They have had the same unchanged line-up of the same four musicians and friends since 1970, augmented time to time with a fifth member (Dutch keyboardist and leader of legendary band Supersister, Robert Jan Stips).

Lead singer Barry Hay now lives in the Dutch Antilles island of Curacao in the Caribbean, presumably in a tax haven from the on-going royalties from Radar Love.

More information about Golden Earring can be found at www.goldenearring.nl

There is a great range of merchandise available – who wouldn’t want a Golden Earring t-shirt? Surely it would have to be a must have fashion accessory. I’ve just ordered mine.

For those whose memory is failing here are the lyrics to Radar Love.

I’ve been drivin’ all night, my hand’s wet on the wheel
There’s a voice in my head that drives my heel
It’s my baby callin’, says I need you here
And it’s a half past four and I’m shiftin’ gear
When she is lonely and the longing gets too much
She sends a cable comin’ in from above
Don’t need no phone at all
We’ve got a thing that’s called Radar Love
We’ve got a wave in the air, Radar Love
The radio is playing some forgotten song
Brenda Lee’s comin’ on strong
The road has got me hypnotized
And I’m speedin’ into a new sunrise
When I get lonely and I’m sure I’ve had enough
She sents her comfort comin’ in from above
We don’t need no letter at all
We’ve got a thing that’s called Radar Love
We’ve got a light in the sky
(Instrumental break)
No more speed, I’m almost there
Gotta keep cool now, gotta take care
Last car to pass, here I go
And the line of cars drove down real slow
And the radio played that forgotten song
Brenda Lee’s comin’ on strong
And the newsman sang his same song
Oh one more radar lover gone
When I get lonely and I’m sure I’ve had enough
She sents her comfort comin’ in from above
We don’t need no letter at all
We’ve got a thing that’s called Radar Love
We’ve got a light in the sky
We’ve got a thing that’s called Radar Love
We’ve got a thing that’s called Radar Love

Paul Kelly Interview

Welcome, strangers, to the show … Eleven years after his first best-of album, PAUL KELLY has added another volume to his “Songs From The South” collection. He chats with JEFF JENKINS about songwriting, success and Warnie.

Years have come along/ Years have gone/ Some friends have risen/ Some have moved on/ And my old winter coat still hangs by my front door/ Holding all the stories/ I don’t remember any more” – Wintercoat

Paul Kelly is driving down Punt Road in Melbourne. He sneaks a peek at the Nylex Clock. “I always check it,” he admits. “And I always get a little buzz when it’s 11 degrees.”

Leaps And Bounds has been feted as a classic Australian sports song. “I always get asked to play it on footy shows or at big events,” Paul says, “but I’ve never seen it as a sports song. It’s kind of a song about nothing, about feeling good, for no particular reason … just some days you feel like you’re floating.”

Leaps And Bounds is one of 40 tracks on Paul Kelly’s new best-of, Songs From The South Volumes 1 & 2.

How did Paul enjoy compiling the album, going back and listening to his old songs? “It’s always a bit of a mixed bag. I never really like listening to myself singing, so I find that a bit of a hurdle to jump. But at the same time you get some surprises, sometimes good ones, sometimes you think you’re singing them better now.”

Paul concedes that the songs on Volume 2 did not get as much radio play as the tracks on Volume 1. The story of the second disc is diversity and more musical experimentation, featuring Paul’s work with Professor Ratbaggy, Uncle Bill, The Stormwater Boys and Stardust Five. “There’s been more collaboration with the songwriting. Like all writers, I get sick of my own habits, you fall into your old patterns. I write a lot of songs in G or D, those simple keys. Writing with other people is a way of breaking those habits, so I consciously tried to do more projects where the songs were group-written.”

The best-of draws on material from 17 albums. Has Paul got a favourite Paul Kelly album? “I don’t think so. What tends to happen is some songs fall away, some songs remain. They’re what I call working songs, the songs that you take to work, tools in the kit. You can pull ’em out and you know they’ll do the job on a particular night. I often forget what songs come from where, they just become the songs in the swag.

“But if I had to pick an album, maybe Post. Even though it was my third record, in my mind it’s my first. It was the first record where I felt that I was starting to hoe my own road. Is that the phrase?”

Paul’s first two albums, with The Dots – 1981’s Talk and 1982’s Manila – were not hits, and he once said: “I wish I could grab them and put them in a big hole.”

“I was probably just one of those late developers,” he explains. “Francis Bacon, the painter, destroyed all his early paintings. Suddenly when he does his exhibition, there are great works of art right off the bat. I didn’t have great works of art straight away, but Post was just the sound of me maturing, I guess, just getting a bit better at what I do. Some people write great songs when they’re 18 or 20, I wasn’t like that. It took me a while to figure it out.” Indeed, in Nothing On My Mind, the song that kicks off Volume 2, Paul declares: “I never did one damn good thing till I was over 30.”

In 1986, Paul, then 31, sang: “Every dog will have his day, any dog can win.” The words proved prophetic – Before Too Long became his radio breakthrough. He will never forget the day he heard it on the radio for the first time. “I remember that vividly – The Coloured Girls were doing a lot of touring, driving between Melbourne and Sydney, in a Holden Kingswood, and the song came on the radio. We turned it up to the max, jumped out of our skins, it was fantastic.”

Paul calls songwriting “a scavenging art, a desperate act”.

“For me, it’s a bit from here, a bit from there, fumbling around, never quite knowing what you’re doing. I might have a melody or a scrap of words and I’m just trying to get them to fit. If I knew how to write a song, I’d write one every day. You can’t really pull out the manual and follow Steps A, B and C and make a song, it just doesn’t work like that. You just have to get a bit lucky.

“Songwriting is like a way of feeling connected to mystery.”

Can Paul recall the first song he wrote? “It was in open-tuning and had four lines about catching trains. I have got a recording of it somewhere.” What was it called? “‘Catching A Train’. I wrote a lot of songs about trains early on, trains and fires, and then I moved on to water.”

“Paul Kelly’s concise insights and acerbic wisdom are exactly the music for strolling the bottom of ancient oceans, both literal and metaphoric” – Russell Crowe

A double-disc best-of is quite an achievement. Paul has come a long way since his public singing debut, in Hobart in 1974.

“I was living there at the time and there was a folk club in Salamanca Place. They had a night, I think a Monday night, where anyone could get up. I sang Girl From The North Country and Streets of Forbes, a traditional Australian song about Ben Hall. I can’t really remember how it went – I remember I had a lot to drink afterwards from relief. I was incredibly nervous.”

As well as Adelaide, Melbourne and Hobart, Paul has lived in Sydney, Perth, Darwin and Alice Springs. How does location influence a songwriter?

“A lot of my influences were from ’50s American music and British pop, so I don’t know if location is that important. It’s really where your imagination goes. A lot of my songs are set in particular places, but I still don’t think it’s that important. My songs aren’t really about the places I’ve lived, they’re usually about men, women and children and what they do, and they could happen anywhere.”

A lecturer in contemporary art, Chris McAuliffe, declared that Paul wrote about “the heroism of everyday life”. Is that what he’s doing?

“No, I’m just trying to get music to fit rhymes. Having said that, as I get older, I think my friends and people I’ve known for a long time get more heroic to me, and you become more admiring of them, just for making it through, living their lives and doing the best that they can.”

“For a generation or two of Australians, Paul Kelly is the closest thing we have to a poet laureate. His songs are like postcards – little snapshots of the countryside with our experiences, dreams, hopes and problems scrawled in the lyrics. He’s captured who we are like no other writer, but when asked once if he was the voice of ordinary Australia, he had the grace and wisdom to reply, ‘I don’t know any ordinary people. Do you?’” – Andrew Denton

Bob Dylan once had a crisis of confidence because he knew that music critics would be quoting his lyrics. Is it hard being Paul Kelly, having to live up to people’s expectations?

“Um, confidence comes and goes, but it’s not really ruled by external things. Most of the pressure, nearly all of it, is inside, it always has been. If I’m not writing, I feel useless, I feel like I’m not really functioning properly. That’s what makes me write, I don’t even know why. It’s not that I think there are people out there waiting for a new record. I mean, I’ve made enough records. At some point, people don’t need to hear another one of my songs.”

Songs From The South Volume 2 features one new song, Thoughts In The Middle Of The Night.

“It’s a band song, we all wrote it together. There’s a poem by James Fenton, a British poet, called The Mistake, which is probably an influence on the lyrics. It’s a waking up in the middle of the night song, for anyone who’s woken up at 3am and not been able to get back to sleep.”

“Paul shits me. He tries more outrageously flowery bullshit than I could ever allow myself and he comes off smelling like a saint! It’s because he’s such a good singer. It takes real willpower to get over that cute, smoky tone and listen to what the bastard’s doing with your mind” – Dave Graney

David Fricke from American Rolling Stone called Paul “one of the finest songwriters I have ever heard, Australian or otherwise”. Has he ever had a bad review?

“Yeah, there have been bad reviews. I try to forget them. Try to forget the good reviews, too. It’s probably best to read them and forget about them.”

Paul’s songs are now studied in Victorian high schools. Does that mean a lot to him? “It was a thrill. I don’t know if it means a lot, but I hope it’s good for the students. I’ve started doing shows for the Year 12s, they’ve been great fun. I play for about 45 minutes and then do a Q&A. That’s always quite stimulating.”

The sixth of nine children, Paul was born in Adelaide in 1955. He went to a Christian Brothers School, where he played trumpet and captained the cricket team. He once said that songwriting was about “sex and death and cricket. I mean, what else is there?” He later amended that to “sex, death, love, family, friends and cricket”.

“Having met Paul, it is easy to realise how his passion for everything in life is transformed into great songs. He is a one-off, dinky-di Australian” – Dennis Lillee

Volume 2 features the first physical release of Paul’s YouTube favourite Shane Warne. Has the spin king heard the song? “We’ve had no reaction,” Paul says. “We sent it to him and no reaction. I don’t know what that means.”

Paul’s first cricket song, Bradman, did get a reaction. “I wrote Sir Don a letter and sent him the song. I mentioned that he may remember my father – he knew my father in Adelaide. And he wrote back and said he remembered my dad well. At the end of the letter, he said: ‘Not having access to the income of pop stars, I don’t own a video player, so I’ll go and have a look at the video at my daughter-in-law’s place. Thank you, I was flattered by your attempt.’

“I got a letter from The Don!”

Remarkably, Paul has never had a number one album. The first volume of Songs From The South, released in June 1997, is his biggest seller, going double platinum and peaking at number two.

As he adds another volume to his career retrospective, how would Paul describe his career? “The successful avoidance of a career. I got into music to not have a career. I never wanted to have a five-year plan or a 10-year plan, or be tied to a routine. Playing music and being in bands was a way of not having a career. I’m still trying to duck it.”

What does he love about music?

“Um, without music, life would be a mistake. I didn’t say that, Friedrich Nietzsche did. I don’t agree with everything he said, but I agree with that.”

“I remember, I remember, I remember everything …”

Songs From The South Volumes 1 & 2 is released by EMI and is out now

SIX SONGS FROM THE SOUTH – Paul Kelly talks about half a dozen gems

From Little Things Big Things Grow
“It’s an old Sunday school melody, it’s like an old buggy that just keeps on going down the road. That song comes in and out for me. Sometimes I get sick of singing it, other times I really like it. It’s one of those funny songs for me.”

God Told Me To
“The Bible’s always been there, it’s always bubbling up in my songs, one way or another. The Bible’s got everything. Tarantino can’t touch it – it’s got violence and heroism and great pettiness, wisdom, whim, grandeur and vindictiveness.”

Gunnamatta
“I’m a bodysurfer. I’ve never ridden a board – I’m not very good with equipment. In the early days, I was always travelling light, so I couldn’t carry a board. A little cassette player and a guitar was all I could carry with me.”

How To Make Gravy
“That recipe (‘just add flour, salt, a little red wine and don’t forget a dollop of tomato sauce for sweetness and that extra tang’) is from my first wife’s father, my first father-in-law. Tomato sauce was his suggestion. I tried it and I’m quite fond of it.”

To Her Door
“The song ends at the beginning and I’ve always kind of liked that – you don’t know what happens next. As for the characters, they kind of keep coming back, I think. The guy in To Her Door seems like the same guy in Love Never Runs On Time, he could be the guy in Gravy. Yeah, he’ll keep coming back, I think.”

You’re 39, You’re Beautiful And You’re Mine
“Tex Perkins actually wrote the second line. I sent Tex, Don and Charlie the song before I recorded it. I had written: ‘I don’t talk all that much, I guess it’s a kind of crutch’, which wasn’t a great second line, but it was the best I had at the time. Charlie Owen dropped off a tape and Tex had changed the second line to ‘I don’t talk all that much about how I feel and such.’ Much better. I always thank Tex for that.”