The DU Lounge

planned for October, which I first mentioned in reply 111 back in March. Barry, Rinus and Cesar, the other three members of Golden Earring, have promised they'll be at the tribute concert. (With Barry living in Curacao, his was probably the commitment the organizer and filmmaker was most anxious about.). There hasn't been such a promise from George, which is understandable given his health.

One of the news stories mentioned his bandmates hadn't committed to performing at the concert, and I was surprised that anyone might have expected that or asked them to perform. They'd disbanded because George was so crucial to the band and always had been. Many bands still touring and occasionally recording would have brought in a replacement, but when you have someone who founded the band, wrote many more of their songs than the other band members, produced a lot of their music, and was essential for his playing and singing...he simply isn't replaceable. And trying to have someone new replace him during a tribute concert that's also raising money for ALS would be especially wrenching.

His bandmates have continued to make music and perform with other musicians, and I'm glad of that.

But they made the right decision to disband, rather than go on without George.

Their music is still played a lot, live, by other bands, especially in the Netherlands.

Including, a couple of weeks ago, at the Ribs & Blues festival in Raalte, with a band called the Anniversary Band that came together just for the festival's 25th anniversary, backing Dion Legebeke, who usually sings with her hard rock band The Damned Few.

This song, released in July 1970, was Golden Earring's biggest Dutch hit before Radar Love, and it may have been a bigger hit for them in the Netherlands than Radar Love was three years later, at least going by chart numbers alone.

Both songs topped the charts, but Back Home was #1 for 5 weeks and spent 19 weeks on the charts. Radar Love was #1 for 4 weeks and on the charts for 11 weeks.

It was also one of the hits George wrote by himself, during the several years of his solo songwriting between early songwriting with Rinus and the collaborations with Barry that had started in 1973 (after which they wrote most Earring songs together, with the best-known exception being George's huge international hit, Twilight Zone).

Here's that cover, followed by the 1970 music video for Back Home, filmed on the dunes near The Hague for the second episode of the very successful, long-running Dutch TV show TopPop.