I would appreciate some of DU's good vibes or [View all]

Last edited Sun Nov 12, 2023, 09:33 PM - Edit history (3)

prayers or healing energy or whatever you want to call it (I don't think the name matters).

This request isn't for myself -- I'm fine -- or for a family member. I know how good you all are at offering support, but I also have some RW relatives who know I post here but don't know my handle, so I don't post anything too identifiable.

I'd appreciate vibes/prayers/healing for a musician I've admired for decades, who was diagnosed with ALS a little over a year and a half ago, and who just gave his first interview and update since the diagnosis was announced, because he has a new album out of songs recorded years ago.

The musician is George Kooymans -- founder, lead guitarist, main songwriter, and sometimes lead vocalist of the Dutch group Golden Earring, best known for their international hits "Radar Love" in the 1970s and "Twilight Zone" in the 1980s. though they had an extremely long string of hit albums and singles in the Netherlands, and they didn't disband till last year, 60 years after the first version of the band was founded.

Lead singer Barry Hay had given an update several months ago where he said George was still traveling, going out with friends, enjoying himself -- and that sounded encouraging. Their bass player, Rinus Gerritsen, who's also George's brother-in-law, said a couple of months ago that George was doing "as well as could be expected," which didn't sound quite as encouraging, but I'd still been hoping that doctors had found or would quickly find an effective treatment,

George did a radio interview this morning, partly to talk about his new album with American guitarist Frank Carillo, whom he'd recorded one earlier album with, more than ten years ago -- they put together a new album from songs they'd been working on for years -- and partly to finally talk about how he's doing.

He said the doctors have been telling him the disease is progressing slowly for him, but to him it feels like a rapid deterioration.

He has trouble walking. He has trouble controlling his fingers -- can no longer play guitar (and he'd been an award-winning guitarist), can't really use a computer very well though he can move the mouse. He talked about software that might let him write music using eye movements.

This was heartbreaking news, and it sounded all too familiar, since someone I'd met and come to know online, back in the 1980s, had been diagnosed with ALS about 15 years later and died only a couple of years after the diagnosis. Ernie Wallengren was a writer/producer, and he'd also enjoyed coaching high school boys basketball. It was while playing basketball that he first noticed the symptoms of ALS. His illness made the news and he also agreed to some filming of his deterioration, which was so painful to watch. (EDITNG here to link to a site with more about what Ernie went through, and the filming. He was one of three people using wheelchairs filmed for that documentary, the only one with ALS. See these links: https://www.thirteen.org/rolling/discover/ernie-wallengren/ for a bit of background on Ernie, and https://www.thirteen.org/rolling/thefilm/ for a page with three videos. In the first video, the first segment on Ernie starts at 5:40. I learned that Ernie had ALS via a TV news magazine a couple of decades ago. We'd chatted and emailed for a while in the mid-1980s, but didn't stay in touch after I left that online platform after a couple of years, partly because I was thinking I might return after a break, but didn't. The diagnosis was just as tragic for him as it was for George. If it weren't for ALS, Ernie would probably still be writing, producing, and maybe coaching boys basketball.)

[Necessary 11/12/23 edit because the thirteen.org web pages linked to above no longer exist, giving some of Ernie's background and showing the documentary he was filmed for. But you can find a lot about his background in the industry on his IMDb page, at
https://www.imdb.com/name/nm0908997/ . And at https://archive.sltrib.com/story.php?ref=/ci_7881299 you'll find a long Salt Lake Tribune article from 2008 on Ernie's life and battle with ALS and the role his faith played, and that article has some information on the award-winning documentary I'd linked to above. EDITING AGAIN, hours later, since I just found a very brief clip from that documentary on YouTube. See reply 135 below.]

George was also athletic -- played a lot of tennis, ran marathons. He's 74 now (Ernie was only 50), but we all know people can often maintain health and creativity into their 80s or older. We have a great example today with Paul McCartney turning 80, while on tour again.

I'm still hoping for a miracle recovery for George Kooymans, but today's news, which I found when I checked Google for articles on Dutch websites, wasn't good.

Some old videos below. The music video for "Radar Love." Video of "Vanilla Queen" live at Winterland in 1975 -- look at the guitar solo a little after 3 minutes in and the outro starting around the 8 minute mark, to get some idea of why George is considered a great guitarist. A live performance of "Twilight Zone" -- George wrote both the music and lyrics for that, with no help from Barry Hay on lyrics (though Barry wrote most of their lyrics since English was his first language) and it was their biggest hit ever. And a performance for a crowd of nearly 200,000 on the beach near the Hague in 1993.