Golden Earring

Golden Earring was a Dutch rock band from The Hague, active from 1961 to 2021. The internationally most succesful rock band to come out of the Netherlands, they had 47 chart hits in their home country. In North America they are best known for their brace of major hits, Radar Love (1973, an American hit in 1974) and Twilight Zone (1982, an American hit in 1983). Formed in 1961, the band was active for 60 years, almost non-stop. They had 56 years of studio output, starting in 1965, until their tragic end on 5 February 2021, when guitarist founding member George Kooymans revealed that he had been diagnosed with the neuro-muscular disease, ALS. The band's core line-up of four was unchanged from 1970 to 2021, although additional musicians had short stints in the band in the 1970s. Golden Earring was always touring, except in 2000 (their only sabbatical year) and the final year of their existence, due to the Covid-19 pandemic. In 1961 George Kooymans (age 13) and his neighbour Rinus Gerritsen (age 15) formed The Tornado's in the Zuiderpark district of their home town of The Hague. The band's first line-up mainly played The Shadows and The Ventures covers, as well as other instrumental tunes, and played its first gigs at school parties. In 1963, as the band found out that there already was a British band called The Tornados, they decided to change their name into The Golden Ear-rings (after a Peggy Lee song). Their debut single, 1965's Please Go, immediately landed in the Dutch Top 10. Under the Golden Earrings moniker the band eventually recorded four albums and had twelve hit singles in the Netherlands between 1965 and 1969, ten of which reached the Dutch Top 10. One of the band's sixties singles became their first Dutch #1 hit: 1968's somewhat carnavalesque Dong-Dong-Diki-Digi-Dong, although that tune is now frowned upon by the band and generally regarded as inferior to other Earrings singles of the era, such as That Day (1966), Sound Of The Screaming Day (1966) and the epic Just A Little Bit Of Peace In My Heart (1969). The band's lead singer during the early Golden Earrings years was Frans Krassenburg. He was replaced by Barry Hay (of The Haigs) in 1967. The band's drummer for much of the 1960s was Jaap Eggermont. His successors were Sieb Warner (1969) and, in 1970, Cesar Zuiderwijk (ex-Livin' Blues), Golden Earring's definitive drummer. The band's international career modestly started to take off in 1969, the year of their psychedelic Eight Miles High album, their first haphazard tour of the United States. The band slightly changed its name becoming Golden Earring. Their 19-minute cover version of The Byrds' classic Eight Miles High and the 1969 single, Another 45 Miles, were the first Golden Earring recordings to get some modest North American airplay. The arrival of drummer, Cesar Zuiderwijk, in 1970, completed what would turn out to be the group's definitive line-up: Barry Hay (lead vocals/guitar/flute), George Kooymans (guitar/vocals), Cesar Zuiderwijk (drums) and Rinus Gerritsen (bass/harmonica/keyboards). 1970 saw a dramatic shift in Golden Earring's musical style. After the melodic sixties beat of The Golden Earrings and a brief phase of psychedelia and hippie rock in 1968 and 1969, the single Back Home marked the birth of Golden Earring's trademark heavy, riff-based brand of hard rock with catchy hooks. Back Home hit #1 in the Dutch charts and 'broke' Golden Earring in most of mainland Europe, notably countries such as Germany, Switzerland, Austria and France. Between 1966 and 1976 seventeen consecutive Earring singles rocketed into the Dutch Top 10, while their international popularity increased, especially after their lengthy 1972 tour of Europe, supporting The Who. Buddy Joe (1972) achieved considerable chart success in the German-speaking countries of Europe, but 1973's Radar Love brought global stardom: #13 in the U.S. Billboard Hot 100, #1 in the U.S. Cashbox chart, #5 in Britain, #8 in Australia, #10 in Canada, #5 in Germany, #6 in Belgium, #1 in Spain and also #1 in (last but not least) Rhodesia (now Zimbabwe), to name but a few. Radar Love remains an enduring 'car classic' and radio anthem of global fame to this day. Between 1969 and 1985 Golden Earring completed ten major tours of North America, building a considerable North American fanbase, as well as five headlining tours of Great Britain in 1973 and 1974 alone. Golden Earring toured as 'special guests' of The Who, Aerosmith, Led Zeppelin, .38 Special, Rush and many more, whereas bands like Aerosmith, KISS, ZZ Top and Lynyrd Skynyrd opened for Golden Earring. The album that spawned Radar Love, 1973's Moontan, was certified 'Gold' by North America's RIAA in 1974 and sold millions of copies worldwide. The band failed to achieve similar chart success in the years after Radar Love: the progressive Switch (1975) and To The Hilt (1976) charted in Billboard's album charts, but yielded no major U.S. hits. Golden Earring was forgotten by many outside of The Netherlands and by 1980 even Dutch audiences started to lose interest: albums such as No Promises, No Debts (1979) and Prisoner Of The Night (1980) were commercial flops, leading to the band's decision (in 1981) to record a 'final LP and then call it quits. The lead single from 1982's 'farewell album', Cut, a Kooymans-penned tune called Twilight Zone, surprisingly became an even bigger hit in the U.S. than Radar Love: #10 on the Billboard Hot 100 and #1 on Billboard's Mainstream Rock Tracks, thanks to heavy MTV rotation of the accompanying video. The song (#1 in The Netherlands) revived Golden Earring's stateside career. The Cut LP was certified 'gold' in Canada, with Twilight Zone hitting #3 in the Canadian charts. In their native Netherlands the band managed to extend their creative and commercial peak this time: the single When The Lady Smiles and the album N.E.W.S. ('NorthEastWestSouth'), both released in 1984, repeated the success of Twilight Zone and Cut. 'When The Lady Smiles' peaked at #3 in Canada, but fared disappointingly in the U.S. as MTV and even radio stations banned the track because of its controversial video. After 1985 things rapidly went downhill for Golden Earring internationally (they would not tour the U.S. again), but - after a creative and financial crisis that lasted throughout the second half of the 1980s - the band wrote one of their most enduring Dutch hits in 1991 (the power-ballad, Going To The Run, which fared particularly well in Russia) and discovered a new gold mine in their home country a year later: acoustic concerts in theatres, the concept of MTV Unplugged. To everybody's surprise, the band's acoustic live album, The Naked Truth, slowly became their all-time biggest selling album in The Netherlands. Its sequels, Naked II (1997) and Naked III (2005) were also certified platinum in The Netherlands. Golden Earring's by far most succesful album internationally remains 1973's Moontan, which sold well over 3.5 million copies outside of The Netherlands and was certified 'gold' in the U.S., Canada and the United Kingdom (and platinum in the U.S. in later years). Golden Earring released 25 studio albums, 9 live albums and countless succesful compilations. Almost all of these records were certified gold, often platinum, in The Netherlands. More than anything else, though, the band remained a live force of legendary status in Europe. 2009 saw Golden Earring's long overdue return to the United Kingdom: their sold out shows in Ipswich and London's Shepherd's Bush Empire were their first live appearances in England since 1978. In 2011 the band recorded their first album of new material since 2003's Millbrook U.S.A.: Tits 'n Ass - studio album #25 for the Dutch legends - was released on 11 May 2012 on Universal Music and hit #1 in the Dutch album charts one week after its release to become Golden Earring's 8th #1 album in their home country. The album was generally believed to be Golden Earring's final studio outing, but December 2015 saw the release of a five-track mini album entitled The Hague, released more than fifty years after their début single and just before the band's sold out 'Five Zero' anniversary concert at Amsterdam's Ziggo Dome in front of a 17,000-strong crowd. 2019 saw the release of a stand-alone single, Say When: Golden Earring's final studio recording. Nobody was aware of it at the time, but the band's 16 November 2019 performance at the Rotterdam Ahoy would turn out to be their last. After a year of Covid-19 lockdowns, guitarist George Kooymans announced his ALS diagnosis on 5 February 2021, the disease rendering him unfit to perform. Within hours, the band admitted that carrying on without Kooymans was unthinkable. In the words of lead singer, Barry Hay: "This is the end of the line for the band. It's a death blow. We always said: we'll keep going until the first one of us goes down. I never expected it to be George." Golden Earring's final live performance was released as a live CD and DVD in April 2022, named after Barry Hay's final words at the end of countless Golden Earring shows: You Know We Love You!. George Kooymans died of ALS on 23 July 2025 at his home in Rijkevorsel, Belgium, surrounded by his family. The music of Golden Earring was performed one last time by the surviving band members during a string of five farewell concerts at the Rotterdam Ahoy in January 2026, titled 'One Last Night', with Dutch artists paying hommage to the band, with Hay, Gerritsen and Zuiderwijk playing with them. The 'One Last Night' residency marked the official end of Golden Earring's existence, some 65 years after the group's 1961 inception. Studio albums (released as Golden Earring, unless noted otherwise) Just Earrings (1965, as The Golden Earrings or The Golden Ear-rings) Winter-Harvest (1967, as Golden Earrings, sometimes spelled as Winter Harvest) Miracle Mirror (1968, as Golden Earrings) On The Double (1969, as Golden Earrings) Eight Miles High (1969, as The Golden Earring) Golden Earring (1970, colloquially known as 'Wall Of Dolls') Seven Tears (1971) Together (1972) Moontan (1973) Switch (1975) To The Hilt (1976) Contraband (1976, U.S. title: Mad Love) Grab It For A Second (1978) No Promises...No Debts (1979, spelled as No Promises, No Debts on most online platforms) Prisoner Of The Night (1980) Cut (1982) N.E.W.S. (1984) The Hole (1986) Keeper Of The Flame (1989) Bloody Buccaneers (1991) Face It (1994) Love Sweat (1995, covers album) Paradise In Distress (1999) Millbrook U.S.A. (2003) Tits 'n Ass (2012) The Hague (EP, 2015) Live albums Live (1977) 2nd Live (1981) Something Heavy Going Down (1984, includes one new studio track) The Naked Truth (1992, acoustic) Naked II (1997, acoustic) Last Blast Of The Century (2000) Naked III (2005, acoustic, incorrectly listed as Naked Truth III on some streaming platforms) Live In Ahoy 2006 (2006, live DVD + CD set) You Know We Love You! (2022, live DVD + CD set) Solo and side projects Barry Hay: see Barry Hay, Barry Hay's Flying V Formation and Barry Hay & J.B. Meijers. George Kooymans: see George Kooymans, Kooymans & Carillo and Vreemde Kostgangers. Cesar Zuiderwijk: see Cesar Zuiderwijk, Labyrinth and Sloper. Rinus Gerritsen: see Gerritsen en Van Dijk, Rinus Gerritsen and Rinus' Garage. Read more on Last.fm. User-contributed text is available under the Creative Commons By-SA License; additional terms may apply.