Golden Earring - Hold Me Now (rehearsal argument, studio version + live with orchestra, 1994)

[highplainsdem]

Last edited Fri Sep 23, 2022, 03:55 PM - Edit history (1)

This is from their 1994 album Face It, a Top 10 album. This was the lead single and didn't quite make the Dutch Top 10, peaking at 11 or 12 (sources differ on this), which was still their highest-charting new song for years.

And they had some trouble recording it.

Their record label, Sony, told the band in August 1994 that they wanted a new album to release in November (for holiday sales, apparently). The band had been really busy with live appearances and hadn't been focusing on new music, and they had lots of live appearances already scheduled through the end of the year. They'd started doing some acoustic shows in 1992, had released a live acoustic album in November 1992 that spent over 2 years on the Dutch charts, and in 1993 they'd done one of their huge concerts on Scheveningen beach near The Hague, again for more than 100,000 fans, both acoustic and electric sets, with most of the concert televised live. They didn't want to cancel any of the acoustic shows in smaller venues they'd do during the week, or the electric concerts for large audiences on weekends. But they needed to come up with new songs and get them recorded quickly. while working around their concert schedule.

So they used guitarist George Kooymans' home studio, somewhere in the woods near the Dutch border in Belgium, where he often produced or mixed songs for other artists.

They also allowed the making of the album to be filmed and released in VHS. There's no way I've seen to get that film now, though I've read it's circulating in the Dutch fan community as computer files. It was also apparently used in part for a later (1999) documentary, Don't Stop The Show, mentioned in the description of the first video here, the rehearsal and the start of the actual recording.

It wasn't a prolonged argument, since George won it almost immediately, after having obviously been less than pleased with the rehearsal and the initial recording, with Barry Hay taking the lead vocal. Barry hadn't memorized the lyrics yet, something mentioned on a fan site, so he'd had to read them. And it wasn't one of his better vocals.

I was still surprised that George was pissed off enough to finally say that it was "echt een gedrocht." Really a monstrosity. He'd decided to take the lead vocal himself.

Both journalists and fans have assumed George was the leader of Golden Earring, but George himself always denied it and said they didn't have a leader (though it was known that it was his decision as to who joined and who left the band over the years). The description on YouTube of the rehearsal video is in Dutch, and I'm not going to translate all of it, but part of the Google translation is that this clip "shows who the musical boss of the band is." (Which George had every reason to be. He'd written most of their songs himself up to Moontan, and although he then let Barry Hay write most of the lyrics, since Barry's first language was English, I've read that demos fans have heard show George would have the instrumental backing as well as the vocal melody, verses and chorus for the complete song, recorded first, with him singing la-la-la or some words. Maybe nonsense words like Paul McCartney singing "Scrambled Eggs" when he first got the melody for "Yesterday" but sometimes snippets of lyrics he'd wanted, which Barry didn't like because he felt that interfered with his own inspirations. Then they'd decide who should take the lead vocal, which was usually but not always Barry. If Barry hadn't been there, you'd probably have had the same Golden Earring melodies but with different lyrics.)

It was still a shock to hear him calling Barry's vocal a monstrosity, though, and Barry apparently accepting the rebuke.

But not happily.

I've seen other video of bands disagreeing, but can't offhand recall seeing one band member calling what another did a monstrosity, or words to that effect. (To be honest, I don't know if George might've said anything in this clip that would have offset that insult. I can't translate enough of it.)

The first part of the first video below is the rehearsal, with Barry reading the lyrics. This was apparently still late summer, and hot, judging by the way they're dressed while they're sitting around outside. The playback of the song with Barry's lead vocal starts about a minute in, and you can see George's anger building. And at 1:51 you see them recording the song after more rehearsal, either later that day or the next day, with Barry looking pretty unhappy still.

The second video is audio of the studio version.

And the third is a live performance for Dutch TV later in the year.

[DJ Porkchop]

1. What a great song!

I really enjoy the deep dive into a band who I always thought had major skills in songcraft, but I never took the time to learn more about than just the hits. I'm beginning to like them the way you do! Thanks for the introduction.

[highplainsdem]

2. Thanks! I do think it's a great song. I love power ballads, and this is a good one.

And I'm glad you're enjoying the Golden Earring songs I've been posting.

But I should have done a bit deeper dive before posting this, since I just now checked their exact tour schedule for August through December 1994, rather than relying on what else I'd read about all the shows they were doing then, and I discovered they did have a couple of weeks in September with no concerts, and that was probably when most of the album was recorded. One of the two detailed schedules I checked showed a couple of weeks without concerts in August, too, but the other schedule showed that August gap was due to several concerts being canceled because George had been ill then with a throat infection. Losing the income from those shows probably hadn't helped his mood, either. He'd always seemed either very quiet or amiable in every other documentary or interview I'd seen.

[highplainsdem]

3. I found another video clip from the film on the making of that album, and I want

to include it since it provides some context that IMO helps explain why George had reacted to Barry's vocal the way he did. I know from comments I've read from Golden Earring fans who've met the band that they were surprised by the exchange. It just wasn't typical of George.

The video below is the only other clip I've seen from the "Making Face It" film, and it shows one song they recorded then that they didn't even use on the album, but instead released as the B side of "Hold Me Now" when that became the first single.

It shows some of what they were doing, besides practicing/recording, and it was a reminder that George, whose home studio they were using, was probably working harder than anyone else in the band. Drummer Cesar Zuiderwijk had mentioned in one interview that when they were recording at George's house in Belgium, he and Barry and Rinus would stay there, and George and his wife Milly would be cooking for them. George and Milly also had two kids who were 8 and 12 then (you'll see a wooden playset), so you can imagine how busy their days would be. I thought Cesar, bass player Rinus Gerritsen (Milly's older brother), and Barry all looked pretty relaxed and happy in the video below. George looked tired, and probably was. (I believe he was also the one who did the string arrangements like the one for the song in the OP, so he'd had that extra work.)

Golden Earring in September 1994: