Golden Earring

Golden Earring started out in The Hague in 1961 as the Tornados, and they spent most of the '60s shuffling members before landing on the lineup that would carry them for half a century. From 1970 it was Barry Hay on vocals, guitar, flute and sax, George Kooymans on vocals and guitar, Rinus Gerritsen on bass and keyboards, and Cesar Zuiderwijk on drums, with keyboardist Robert Jan Stips and guitarist Eelco Gelling passing through in the mid-'70s.

"Back Home" was a hit in 1970, but "Radar Love" is the one that made them famous far beyond the Netherlands: a relentless, revved-up rocker with a thundering bass line and Hay singing like he's got his foot to the floor. It went to number one at home and into the top ten in Britain. They proved they were no flukes in the '80s with "Twilight Zone", a moody, menacing rocker, and "When the Lady Smiles" off N.E.W.S. in 1984.

At home they racked up nearly 30 top-ten singles across 25 studio albums, and the four-piece never changed again until 2021, when Kooymans was diagnosed with ALS and they called it a day. He died in 2025, and the band came back for one last run of farewell shows at Rotterdam Ahoy in January 2026.

Written with AI assistance from RockLists chart data, MusicBrainz and Wikipedia.