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Barry Hay

From HitStory, the pop encyclopedia of School of Rock · Artist

Barry Hay was born on 16 August 1948 in Faizabad, India. His father was a Scottish officer, his mother a Dutch-Jewish woman who had been born in Makassar. After his parents' divorce he came to the Netherlands with his mother at the age of eight. He lived first in Amsterdam and then in The Hague, where he attended an English-language boarding school and later went to art school.

Music and breakthrough

Hay began as the singer of the band The Haigs. In the summer of 1967 the manager of The Golden Earrings asked him to replace singer Frans Krassenburg. A year later the group, which from then on was called Golden Earring, had its first number one with Dong-dong-di-ki-di-gi-dong. Worldwide fame followed with Radar Love (1973), which reached number one in the Netherlands and was also a hit in England and America. Twilight Zone (1982) and When the Lady Smiles (1984) were added later. Golden Earring had almost thirty top-ten hits in the Netherlands and made 25 studio albums. Hay also designed a number of album covers.

Influence

Hay remained the singer and the face of the band until the end. Alongside the band he made solo albums, including The Big Band Theory (2008) with the Metropole Orkest, and he started the group Barry Hay's Flying V Formation with younger musicians. He did voice work for cartoons. In 2021 the band announced that it was stopping, because guitarist George Kooymans was seriously ill.

Listening

Listening tip. Listen to Radar Love (1973). Notice the driving bass and drums that evoke a night-time car ride, and how Barry Hay keeps raising the tension in his singing.

Discography

Studio albums

In School of Rock

The chapters, maps and magazine stories of School of Rock are currently available in Dutch only.

Categories: Artists