Golden Earring

Although their hard rock output earned the greatest recognition in the United States, Golden Earring has remained the leading Dutch act at home ever since the mid-1960s, when the band concentrated chiefly on pop. Guitarist and vocalist George Kooymans joined forces with bassist and vocalist Rinus Gerritsen while both were still in school to form the group in 1961. After several personnel changes and a few years of activity, they scored their initial Dutch hit with “Please Go,” then reached the top of the national charts for the first of many occasions in 1968 via “Dong-Dong-Di-Ki-Di-Gi-Dong,” a track that expanded their reach across Europe.

The lineup settled in 1969 around lead singer and multi-instrumentalist Barry Hay together with drummer Cesar Zuiderwijk. The musicians spent the next several years exploring different approaches before committing to a direct hard-rock style reminiscent of the Who, who later asked them to support their 1972 European dates. Golden Earring joined the Who’s Track imprint, which issued the Dutch-singles collection Hearing Earring and helped establish the band in Britain. The 1974 album Moontan yielded “Radar Love,” a chart-topper in the Netherlands that also climbed into the U.K. Top Ten and peaked at number 13 in the United States.

American tours supporting the Doobie Brothers and Santana followed, yet the absence of another comparable success kept their Stateside profile brief, even as the group stayed among Europe’s strongest concert attractions throughout the remainder of the 1970s. A short-lived U.S. resurgence arrived in 1982 with the album Cut and its Top Ten single “Twilight Zone,” though momentum again proved impossible to maintain and the band receded from the American market. White Lion’s 1989 cover of “Radar Love” briefly revived interest in the original track stateside.

Golden Earring nevertheless continued recording and touring into the new century and retained a loyal following in the Netherlands and across Europe. Although they have not visited North America since the mid-1980s, they tracked the 2003 release Millbrook USA at the Millbrook, New York studio owned by Frank Carillo, whose collaborative album with George Kooymans, On Location, appeared in April 2010. Individual members have also issued solo projects throughout Europe. The group disbanded in 2021 after Kooymans revealed his diagnosis of amyotrophic lateral sclerosis.