Landing (The Golden Earring) (LP 2631 - 2633)

The Golden Earring  Eight Miles High (Vinyl, Karussell Records, 1969) ***  

Golden Earring  Moontan (Vinyl, Polydor Records, 1973) **** 

Golden Earring  To The Hilt (Vinyl, Polydor Records, 1975) **** 

Genre: Rock, prog rock 

Places I remember: Eight Miles High from Spellbound Wax Company, the other two are from Slow Boat Records.

Fab, and all the other pimply hyperboles: Radar Love (Moontan)

Gear costume: Are You Receiving Me (Moontan)

Active compensatory factors: Golden Earring are a band from The Netherlands, formed in 1961 by 13 year old George Kooymans and his 15 year old neighbour - Rinus Gerritsen.  They have had a few name changes over the years from The Tornados to The Gold Earrings to The Golden Earring to Golden Earring.

By the time of Eight Miles High (their 5th album), they were joined by Barry Hay on vocals and, on drums for this album only, Sieb Warner.

There are proggy elements already on Song Of A Devil's Servant (a retread from their previous album), and the side long take on The Byrds' Eight Miles High. Basically, they start off with a rendition of that song and then take off in a series of jazz like improvisations (including a drum solo) before returning to the song after 14 or 15 minutes.

There is also a lot of hard rock guitar (One Huge Road) and even some Tony Iommi style guitar riffs on Everyday's Torture. All very 1969, and I love that!

By their next album in 1970 they had a new drummer - Cesar Zuiderwijk and that line-up would remain constant until they ended as a band in 2012. Remarkable.

Moontan in 1973 is their ninth album. It's the one with Radar Love on it - probably their best-known song as it's appeared on countless compilations. 

The same basic hard rock, prog elements are on Moontan, but the guys are locked in more and the arrangements are tighter and more effective. 

To The Hilt, their eleventh album is from 1976 and continues the Moontan approach - a mixture of lengthy prog style songs and shorter rockier songs. It's a successful approach, although, there were no follow up hits to Radar Love. It's still very satisfying music to my ears.

Where do they all belong? They were pretty prolific, and a number of post 1970 albums remain out there somewhere for me to collect.