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
Suzy Lunacy
Golden Earring Lyrics
Jump to: Overall Meaning ↴ Line by Line Meaning ↴
You finally got me where you wanted me
Another case for psychiatry
Signed: Suzy Lunacy
I can't forgive you, Suzy Lunacy
For all the things you took away from me
For undermining my security
Love: Suzy Lunacy
Plenty of aggro, and emotional shock
My knickers in a twist, and my head's on the block
That's what you give me with your mental rock
Now I'm wondering, how our thing will end
If you're so stubborn, and refuse to bend
People around us just stand and mock
Trying to do the mental rock
Well I ain't as sweet as my mother says
I've played these games, you lay on heads
Suzy loony, you're the cream of the crop
The expert on mental rock
The song Suzy Lunacy by Golden Earring is a dark and brooding ode to a woman named Suzy who has driven the singer to madness. The lyrics speak to the singer's frustration and anger at Suzy, who has taken away his security and left him feeling emotionally twisted and unsure of himself. The repeated references to "mental rock" seem to suggest that Suzy is a master of manipulation and mind games, and that the singer is struggling to keep up.
Despite the somber and unsettling tone of the song, there is a sense of admiration mixed in with the anger. The lines "Suzy loony, you're the cream of the crop / The expert on mental rock" suggest that the singer is both repulsed by and fascinated with Suzy's ability to control and manipulate him. It's a complex and nuanced portrayal of a toxic relationship, and the lyrics leave a lot of room for interpretation and analysis.
Overall, Suzy Lunacy is a haunting track that speaks to the dangers of getting too deeply involved with someone who may not have your best interests at heart. The lyrics are moody and evocative, and the song itself is a masterclass in restrained, atmospheric rock music.
Line by Line Meaning
I won't forget you, Suzy Lunacy
I will always remember you, Suzy, even though our relationship is now over.
You finally got me where you wanted me
You have successfully manipulated me and controlled the direction of our relationship.
Another case for psychiatry
Our relationship was so fraught with emotional turmoil and instability that it would be an interesting case study for mental health professionals.
Signed: Suzy Lunacy
Suzy is acknowledging her own role in the dysfunction of the relationship and claiming it as a part of her identity.
I can't forgive you, Suzy Lunacy
I am still harboring resentment towards you, Suzy, for the pain and damage you caused me during our time together.
For all the things you took away from me
You robbed me of my sense of security and left me feeling vulnerable and exposed.
For undermining my security
You eroded my confidence in myself and my ability to trust others.
Love: Suzy Lunacy
Suzy's definition of love involves manipulation and control, which ultimately led to our relationship's demise.
I'm a lookin' for love, and look what I got
I was seeking love and companionship, but what I found was a source of emotional distress and confusion.
Plenty of aggro, and emotional shock
I experienced a significant amount of emotional turmoil and trauma as a result of our relationship.
My knickers in a twist, and my head's on the block
I am deeply confused and uncertain about the state of our relationship and how to move forward from it.
That's what you give me with your mental rock
Your behavior and actions have caused me immense emotional pain and have left me struggling to make sense of our relationship.
Now I'm wondering, how our thing will end
I am uncertain about the outcome of our relationship and how it will ultimately play out.
If you're so stubborn, and refuse to bend
Your unwillingness to compromise or show empathy towards me has made it difficult for us to move forward in a healthy and productive way.
People around us just stand and mock
Others have noticed the dysfunction and toxicity present in our relationship, and they are not supportive of it.
Trying to do the mental rock
We are both engaging in psychological and emotional manipulation in an attempt to gain control over the other person.
Well I ain't as sweet as my mother says
I have flaws and imperfections, just like anyone else.
I've played these games, you lay on heads
I have participated in the manipulation and control tactics present in our relationship, even though they are harmful and unhealthy.
Suzy loony, you're the cream of the crop
Suzy, your behavior is the epitome of the dysfunction and toxicity in our relationship.
The expert on mental rock
Suzy is highly skilled at manipulating others emotionally and psychologically, which has contributed to the decline of our relationship.
Lyrics © Sony/ATV Music Publishing LLC
Written by: BARRY HAY, GEORGE KOOYMANS, J FENTON
Lyrics Licensed & Provided by LyricFind
James Hughes
thank you for posting this true jem of of a rock song. I have this lp and still love it. Not on the domestic version. Red Bullet you truly ROCK. God Bless!!!
Lester Doobie
Yes, I've never heard this. Had the 8 track tape. Ha!
hatmap
Moontan was a great, great album---probably GE's best!
Grax jhnsn
@Lucas Araújo that statement will always be wrong and stupid no matter who you’re talking to, taste is subjective
Lucas Araújo
@Grax jhnsn you have a bad taste
Grax jhnsn
I agree, I honestly don’t like any of the others.
German Ramos
Fue el unico LP que tuve a principio de los 80's.
Graham Shevlin
I have the original UK vinyl release of Moontan. This song is NOT on it.
Austin Heinbuch
Suzy Lunacy and Vince Taylor replaced Big Tree Blue Sea
Kyle O's Art, Illustration & More
'Suzy Lunacy' was only on the Dutch and continental European releases of 'Moontan' on Polydor. Hope this helps!