About Me
I was born in Den Helder, 24 august 1945.
My father was a classical singer, and when I was 3 we moved to Hilversum, because all the radiostudio's were there. I started playing guitar at 13, before that I had pianolessons, but that did'nt really work out. I wanted to play the guitar because I heard Bird Dog, Wake up litlle Suzy and later when I played already: Shazam! And of course The Shadows with Apache. Later Chet Atkins draw my attention especially with Goofus.
My guitarteacher was an older guy with long hair and a pipe and on my first lessons I thought, wow is this guy also playing rock'n roll saturdaynight in the pub?
No way, I appeared to be on classical guitarlessons. I continued de lessons but I learned chords and started playing rock'n roll with some schoolmates. I was never sorry I studied classical guitar cause it helps if you want to play fingerpicking and that kind of stuff.
The band changed around a couple of times and finaly we made some records that never sold, but they were played on the radio and we did some tv appearances.
One of the highlights was playing as support act for the Beatles in Blokker '64.
Then by the time every band switched from Vox to Marshall and from Volkswagenbusses to Ford busses the band fell apart, also because my brother (who played bass) and me were asked to do sessions in the recording studio's,
We did that from 1967 on. In 1969 I had to serve in the army for 16 months (it was not so bad I was working in the office and my guitar was sitting next to me behind the desk) In 1970 we both played in de Hair band, first as stand in for Focus, they started touring then, and later we took over. In those days I met my first wife Martha she was a singer/actress in Hair, we got a daughter Scarlett who is singing as well.
After Hair I played in Ekseption, later Ekseption became Spin. Spin was basically the same as Ekseption only different bass and drums.
My brother Jan was playing bass then. We made 2 albums with that band and than it fell apart because of different musical interesses.
In the meantime I started arranging to. One of the first arrangements I did was Miss Wonderful for Wally Tax, after that we did two albums.
I did a lot of arrangements from the 70's on. At the same time I also did a lot of commercials with Jaap Eggermont the producer that produced "Stars on 45". I arranged and played all the guitars on that production (except the Stevie Wonder medley).
Then I joined the Rainbow Train of Hans Vermeulen. Martha was already singing in that band I joined them soon after that.
After that I had a band called Robinson Cruiser, also with my brother Jan and Robin Lent on drums Tommy Bachman. The band did not last a long time and my marriage with Martha came to an end. Then I joined Hans Vermeulen again with his first group Sandy Coast as extra member and we did a lot of gigs in the Netherlands.
In 1983 I met Judy Schomper violiniste of a Dutch group Flairck, we met because I was asked to make an arrangement of Layla for her. On the B side we had put a violine arrangement of Here comes the sun, but as the recordcompany thought is "too good" for a B side we put on a composition that we made together Space Lift. (You can hear Space Lift on her My Space site.) After that we made a couple of records but only one was officialy released.
We started living together, we have two children: Layla (13) plays piano on a promising way (she can play some stuff on the guitar as well), and Jonathan (9) just started to play guitar he likes to play rock.
In the 80's I did also a couple of tours with Boudewijn de Groot, most of the concerts were in Belgium. From one of the tours a live album was released, and we also recorded a studio album with the same band, called Maalstroom. I also played on many of his records and I arranged "Een wonderkind van 50".
These days when the recording business is totaly changing, I do all the recordings in my own studio and I like that a lot. The only problem is, I don't get to see much of my fellow musicians that I used to see almost every day in the past.
I work a lot of times for artists from Volendam from (1967 on).
Since 2001 I have a hobby band "Flight 505" just to play live, the members of the band are all old rockers from de 60's like Henk Smitskamp (Shocking Blue), Ton van der Kleij (Earth and Fire), Peter Vermeij (Stars on 45) and Rob Grell (The Nicols). With this band we play Stones music. With the singer of that band Peter I did a special project called Arties Curtain Climbers. He used to show up at 20.00, many times with Ton (the drummer of Flight 505) with a song and by 23.00 we had a song in rough shape. Most of the stuff we recorded is still on the track, like vocal tracks and guitar parts because of the musical chemistry of the moment. On the soundtracks you can hear "You don't fit". On You don't fit and a couple of other songs you can hear Scarlett (my daughter I was talking about) singing backing vocals. Erwin Smitskamp (son of Henk) sings also a backing vocals on some songs. If you like to hear more you can go to Arties Curtain Climbers on My Space and hear some more songs.
My own music is rock, but also I like minimal music. I composed a couple of instrumental pieces where I sometimes don't even play the guitar. My aim is to make music in a style simular to how Salvador Dali paints.
I let you know when that is happening, until then I keep on rocking!
