Golden Earring

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

Golden Earring was founded in 1961 in The Hague by the guitarist George Kooymans and the bassist Rinus Gerritsen. The group was originally called The Golden Earrings and dropped the s in 1969. Golden Earring lasted sixty years and is one of the few Dutch rock bands to reach the American charts.

Music and breakthrough

The band began in The Hague's beat scene. In 1965 Please Go was their first hit, and in 1968 Dong-dong-di-ki-di-gi-dong became their first number one in the Netherlands. The singer Barry Hay joined the group in 1967, the drummer Cesar Zuiderwijk in 1970. After that Golden Earring grew into a hard rock band. In 1973 came Radar Love, written by Kooymans and Hay, from the album Moontan. The song is about a man driving to his lover at night. It was a number one in the Netherlands, reached number 7 in England and, in 1974, number 13 in America. In 1982 came Twilight Zone, from the album Cut. Kooymans wrote it after reading the spy novel The Bourne Identity. Helped by a video clip by Dick Maas that was shown a great deal on MTV, it became the band's only top ten hit in America.

Influence

Golden Earring showed that a Dutch band could compete internationally in English, like Focus and Shocking Blue. There are hundreds of cover versions of Radar Love, including by U2 and White Lion. In 2021 the group stopped, because Kooymans had the muscle disease ALS. He died in 2025.

Listening

• 
  Radar Love · Golden Earring, 1973
  Apple Music ↗

Discography

Studio albums

• 1965Just Earrings
• 1967Winter‐Harvest
• 1968Miracle Mirror
• 1969Eight Miles High
• 1969On the Double
• 1970Golden Earring (Wall of Dolls)
• 1971Seven Tears
• 1972Together
• 1973Moontan
• 1975Switch
• 1976Contraband
• 1976To the Hilt
• 1978Grab It for a Second
• 1979No Promises… No Debts
• 1980Prisoner of the Night
• 1982Cut
• 1984N.E.W.S.
• 1986The Hole
• 1989Keeper of the Flame
• 1991Bloody Buccaneers
• 1994Face It
• 1995Love Sweat
• 1999Paradise in Distress
• 2003Millbrook U.S.A.
• 2012Tits ’n Ass

In School of Rock

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

• Mixtape 11: Nederpop^NL Reader
• Magazine: Nederpop in the Cold War^NL Magazine

Mentioned in other articles

• Radar Love SongIn 1973 Radar Love by Golden Earring from The Hague was released, a rock song about a man driving to his lover at night.

See also

• Eight Miles High
• On the Double
• Seven Tears
• Together
• Switch
• Contraband
• Grab It for a Second
• Hard rock and heavy metal

Sources

1. Wikipedia (nl): Golden Earring
2. Wikipedia (en): Radar Love
3. Wikipedia (en): Twilight Zone (Golden Earring song