Formed in 1961, the band was active for 60 years, almost non-stop. They had 56 years of studio output, starting in 1965, which made them the world's longest surviving rock band, formed a year before The Rolling Stones, 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 extra 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 Netherlands. 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). The band now performed around The Hague, soon had a devoted local following and landed a record deal with Polydor. Their début 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. Several of their records were released internationally in Europe and even North America, although they failed to make an impact there.
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 sixties Earrings gems, such as That Day (1966, the first Dutch pop single to have been recorded in the U.K., at London's Pye Studios), 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 (ex-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 and also the year in which the band name was slightly changed into The Golden Earring and finally (dropping the article within a year), Golden Earring. On their early U.S. tours, their long, wild cover version of The Byrds' classic Eight Miles High impressed audiences and press alike. Golden Earring's 19-minute album version, as well as the stand-alone 1969 single, Another 45 Miles, were the first Golden Earring recordings to get some 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, often Beatle-esque 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 Europe, notably countries such as Germany, Switzerland, Austria and France.
This marked the start of a decade of domestic and international glory. 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 was their breakthrough smash hit worldwide: #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. The singles were clearly not what North American audiences wanted from the 'Radar Love guys'.
Golden Earring was forgotten by many outside of The Netherland 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 Dick Maas-directed video. The song (#1 in The Netherlands) revived Golden Earring's stateside career overnight. The Cut LP was certified 'gold' in Canada, with Twilight Zone hitting #3 in the Canadian charts.
In their native Netherlands the band did manage 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. 'Lady' 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, once again directed by Dick Maas, in which the rape of a nun was suggested.
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 partially 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) also went platinum at least once 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 their home country and beyond. They toured throughout each year until the very end, almost exclusively in the Netherlands, although there are still occasional live appearances in Belgium and Germany. 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. Certified 'gold' in The Netherlands, 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 final concert. 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."
The band's final 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!.
Studio albums (released as Golden Earring, unless noted otherwise)
Just Ear-rings (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)
Additional information:
Wikipedia: http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Golden_Earring
Official website: https://www.golden-earring.nl
Mad Love's Comin'
Golden Earring Lyrics
Jump to: Overall Meaning ↴ Line by Line Meaning ↴
To keep your love-life successful
And you want a happy ending
With lots of stud potential
Reliable and perpetual
Without being distasteful, oh wee
My papa says it's not the size
On stiletto shoes, papa sure improves
But I bet he's just trying to be commercial
So let me say something simple to you
Before we get to do the do: Baby I love you
That takes care of that, you can take off your hat
You and me gotta be the lucky few
There's a tourist in the city
That went and lost his lady
On the purpose if you ask me
He'll have to find a reason
To cover-up the treason
Meanwhile let's hope the night never ends [Repeat: x2]
?cos mad love's coming, I know mad love is coming
Mad love is coming, I know mad love is coming
Mad mad love is coming, I know mad love is coming
Out on the corner, city boy routine
Right on the border of enemy territory
This is how far you've come, this is how far you've gone
There's a fool's moon out, makin' me shout
And it's cruel cruel, street's a mean school
Too many blows, below the belt, you know
This is how far you've come, this is how far you've gone
There's a fool's moon out, makin' me shout
Mad love is comin', not too soon
On beds that sail outta the blue
Mad love is comin', all day through
Who's afraid of that romance is doomed
Mad love's comin', all over your walls
Into your life, it creepy crawls
This is how far you've come, this is how far you've gone
There's a fool's moon out, makin' me shout
Mad love is
The song “Mad Love’s Comin’” by Golden Earring seems to be a love song with a playful twist. The lyrics suggest that the person is trying to keep their love life fresh and exciting by trying new positions and seeking a happy ending. They want a reliable and enduring love without it becoming distasteful. The singer suggests that it's not just about the physical, but it's also about how the love moves and feels. The person seems to be aware of the commercial aspect of love, but still believes that true love exists.
The song also mentions a lost tourist who has to cover up the treason of losing his lady. The singer hopes that the night never ends because they know that mad love is coming. The song implies that love can be unpredictable and can creep into your life in unexpected ways. The singer is excited about the prospect of mad love all over their walls and into their life. They seem to be embracing the idea of this unpredictable love and are not afraid of the romance that awaits them.
Overall, the song is a playfully romantic one that explores the idea of different positions in love while keeping the love meaningful and enduring. The singer seems excited about the unpredictable nature of love and how it can pop up at any moment.
Line by Line Meaning
You want different positions
You're looking for variety in your love-life to keep things interesting.
To keep your love-life successful
Variety will help you maintain a successful love-life.
And you want a happy ending
Ultimately, you want a happy ending to your relationships.
With lots of stud potential
You're looking for partners with a lot of sexual prowess.
Reliable and perpetual
You want a long-lasting and dependable partner.
Without being distasteful, oh wee
You're looking for someone who isn't vulgar or inappropriate.
My papa says it's not the size
According to my father, the most important thing isn't physical size.
Nor the way it's looking, it's the way it moves
Nor is physical appearance the most important thing, but rather how one moves.
On stiletto shoes, papa sure improves
My father thinks he's more attractive when he wears stiletto shoes.
But I bet he's just trying to be commercial
I suspect my father is just trying to sell products with his endorsement.
So let me say something simple to you
But let me simplify things for you.
Before we get to do the do: Baby I love you
Before we start having sex, I want to express that I love you.
That takes care of that, you can take off your hat
Now that I've said it, we can move on to other things.
You and me gotta be the lucky few
We're fortunate to have found each other.
There's a tourist in the city
There's a visitor to the city.
That went and lost his lady
Who has lost his partner.
On the purpose if you ask me
I think he did it intentionally.
He'll have to find a reason
He'll have to come up with an excuse or explanation.
To cover-up the treason
To hide his act of betrayal/infidelity.
Meanwhile let's hope the night never ends [Repeat: x2]
In the meantime, let's enjoy this night and hope it doesn't end too soon.
?cos mad love's coming, I know mad love is coming
Because passionate love is on its way, and I can feel it.
Mad love is coming, I know mad love is coming
Intense love is on its way.
Mad mad love is coming, I know mad love is coming
Extremely passionate love is on its way.
Out on the corner, city boy routine
Out on the street corner, acting like a tough city kid.
Right on the border of enemy territory
Dangerously close to hostile territory.
This is how far you've come, this is how far you've gone
This is how much you've progressed and how much you've given up.
There's a fool's moon out, makin' me shout
The full moon is making me feel foolish and impulsive.
And it's cruel cruel, street's a mean school
The streets are tough and unforgiving.
Too many blows, below the belt, you know
Too many unfair hits, striking below the belt.
Mad love is comin', not too soon
Intense love is coming, but it won't be too soon.
On beds that sail outta the blue
It will happen suddenly and unpredictably.
Mad love is comin', all day through
Passionate love is coming all day long.
Who's afraid of that romance is doomed
Who's afraid that their romantic endeavors won't end well?
Mad love's comin', all over your walls
Passionate love will be everywhere, all-encompassing.
Into your life, it creepy crawls
It will enter your life in a sneaky and subtle way.
This is how far you've come, this is how far you've gone
This is how much you've progressed and how much you've given up.
There's a fool's moon out, makin' me shout
The full moon is making me feel foolish and impulsive.
Lyrics © Sony/ATV Music Publishing LLC
Written by: BARRY HAY, GEORGE KOOYMANS
Lyrics Licensed & Provided by LyricFind