Switching To Bassguitar….
But it was my fascination for Deep Purple that got me going. As soon as I learned a few chords I’d record music on my cassette player while I told my friends to play drums on chairs and window boards simulating snaredrum and high-hat. Smoke On The Water was probably the first riff I learned to play and Woman From Tokyo the second. 
I worked my way through Ilja Croon’s Guitar method book 1 and 2 and when I had learned the barre chords I was ready to try everything on my own. I must have been about 13 years old when I played with my friends Ad Ghering -a hockey-playing-drummer whose father was an (upright) jazz bass player where I first saw a real huge impressive double bass- and Rene Samuels the guitarist that I met when I had my first guitar lessons with Peter van de Par who’d become a successful antique trader later. My first electric guitar was an Eco semi acoustic that I bought from Peter. It had a huge feedback and was a nice, easy to play guitar. But It was my Rokkoman Les Paul copy that I would play on for some time. It didn’t take long before I’d switch to bass guitar and bought myself a Hondo Precision Bass 
and an Ibanez Cube Amp. In our local music shop “Bill Coolen” I’d spend hours and hours just looking at the most fabulous basses and guitars that were way out of my league. Especially real Fender Precisions or Rickenbackers
like the one my hero Roger Glover in Deep Purple used to play like a wet dream. In fact they still are: an old ’62 Precision or a good old Rickenbacker are still worth a fortune.
I started to write songs for my band. Of course they didn’t sound like anything serious but I loved the process of coming up with melodies and chords to make something slightly new, at least according to me….. Another thing that works with me is stamina; I’m not a quitter… I kept looking for my voice both in songs and playing. I’d record ideas with my cassette-recorder and then rehearse them with the band. We got of playing as a school band at the bar and meeting room under the school. We played covers like “Somekind Of Wonderfull” from Grand Funk Railroad
and “All Right Now from Free”…that stuff beside some originals. One of the first songs I wrote was “Never Coming Home”, on which I played harmonica as well, slightly based on “Heroin” by Lou Reed from “Rock ‘N Roll Animal”. “Babi Yar”was another original song inspired by “Hard Lovin’ Man” from Deep Purple about a massacre of the Jews in WW2;I was way too serious those days….
As time passed I started to find different musicians to play with and I became -in retrospect- overly serious: I wanted it to be a success and drove my fellow musicians to elevating levels to the moment they’d quit. Ronald Voskens started to be the drummer of the band; he was probably the loudest drummer around and exactly what I liked. He was, and is still a very good drummer though he never worked as a professional musician, as far as I know. My friend
Rene Wouters played the guitar and we were a real band for about 5 years. We started of rehearsing on Friday afternoon at our former primary school. Later on we rehearsed in the attic of a barn of Ronald’s farm. We build a room of blocks of hay to isolate both for sound but also for temperature. Of course all in vain…. In summer it would be extremely hot and in winter there was no way to heat anything up but coffee and booze, but at least we wouldn’t have to carry our gear in and out the room every time. I remember we’d go to some ponds at night after rehearsal and have a great time. I taught a good friend Ben Doomen how to play functional organ in an old chapel- de Hasseltse Kapel- in Tilburg, opposite his home. We had a vocalist Robert Sauvé, who had a lot of nerve, not such a great voice though, and had an excellent sense of humor. They came and went. 
We eventually added a guitarist Ashna Vishnudat who was a real virtuoso to our standards. He loved Al DiMeola and that jazz rock stuff that was extremely popular with musicians in the late 70’s, and could play like that too. My eclectic spirit didn’t help to find a musical course though…. We tried several musical styles; Deep Purple and Rainbow like hard rock (Axe) , U2 and Joy Division type new wave (Transmitted Tears) etc. to get even a bit of success but it wasn’t really happening in the end. We played some loud and nice gigs but never enough to get a working band ethic that I longed for so much. To this day I regret that we didn’t play more gigs back then to really get the hang of touring in a Rock And Roll Band. I’m always looking for a working band atmosphere; I still do. My efforts to enroll Conservatory put an abrupt end to my band efforts in contemporary pop music. I had the idea that I couldn’t continue in the same way and had to start to go my own way though I had no clue in what I was doing. Instead of focusing on a band effort I took a shot at diving in a new music genre that soon would completely change my musical environment.
My fellow band members were starting to study in different cities and the former close friendship fell more or less apart. I kept in touch, on an off and on basis, with both Ronald Voskens – who got into Solar Energy- and Rene Wouters-who has become a successful photographer and film maker: he produced a portrait of mine called “Tales Of A Traveller” in 2016- they are both still playing music; I still meet up with Ad Ghering every now and then and who started to play double bass too; just like his dad.
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It was a real treat: I’ve always carried around my own flight case with the huge 7/8 scale Père Pillement Bass from the early 1800’s -Père died in 1830- build to last centuries. And believe me a bass weighing over 30 kgs and a flight case of the same weight is not something to travel light. Many times my bass wouldn’t fit the airplane and would be send later. Often taxis wouldn’t take me because it simply didn’t fit and they wouldn’t bother to call for a van or anything. But now we had a crew that took care of everything…….my bass stood, in its case, ready behind my place on stage. All I had to do was to take him out of the case and play. Very luxurious for a jazzman used to make ends meet and twist every penny.
When I was in New York with Sezen, I knew we were going to play the famous Carnegie Hall. For the rest of the band it was like the regular gig because they’d been there before but for me it was a temple of music. The place where all the illustrious jazz stars and singers had performed when they were at their top. The place where Glenn Gould worked his way through the Goldberg Variations on Bach. A magical monumental place. And me, the guy from outskirts of the small industrial town in the south of The Netherlands that nobody heard of, was going to play for a sold out house. In itself a lifetime achievement.
And as always after the show there was Turkish food for everyone. That would become the staple diet of the years to come. The delicious and rich flavors of the Turkish cuisine, always, always, always; no matter where we were. If we’d toured India, Mexico Japan or China only Turkish food would be served.
Being such a star takes a huge toll. It takes away your identity and changes your environment fundamentally. Since I wasn’t a Sezen disciple – I didn’t really know anything of her before I joined the band- I could joke and talk with her on an equal basis. I still take her serious as a person, not as a star and I love her for that. Sezen is a special person with a special place in my heart. Over the years I’ve come to understand that being a superstar is both a bless and a burden. Drugs and alcohol are available anywhere, anytime and as Sinatra didn’t want to sing Randy Newman’s song….it’s lonely at the top.
I recall the sound which was very thick and heavy. Different and raw. In my memory it was Deep Purple’s “Smoke On The Water” but of course I couldn’t really tell. The time frame is way too blurred. However I do remember the TV showing us the first man on the moon and the relentless B 52s bombing of Vietnam, Watergate -which took forever- and of course the World Championships in Mexico in 1970 with Pele and Rivellino. My dad was a huge soccer fan and sports 
was one of the most important elements growing up. I would often play soccer with my brothers and many kids from the neighborhood at a small abandoned square in front of our house which used to be part of a temporary wooden school when the quarter was build in the early 60’s.
My dad had bought his first car, a Vauxhall Viva- the English version of the infamous Opel Kadett- which allowed us to go to soccer games in Rotterdam to see Feyenoord, one of the best teams in the world at that time. I recall seeing Ajax with Cruijff & Neeskens and Feyenoord with van Hanegem and Franz Hasil play each other in the most beautiful soccer stadium ever “De Kuip” in Rotterdam. I knew all the players by heart. Us kids collected small soccer player pictures and glued them in special books. Same stuff that’s still going on nowadays. To this day I can recall some of the names of players that played with small long gone soccer clubs like DWS, GVAV en Holland Sport.
loved to be outside playing and roaming the streets and woods around the town I grew up in; Tilburg, the Netherlands. I lived in a typical Dutch 60’s quarter -square and straight- on the western edge of a deteriorating industrial town where the textile industry had left. Just a couple of hundred yards from our house you’d find woods and farm land. The next village was about 10 miles away westward. I never had the idea I lived in a city because it felt really like a small village with plenty of space around.
My mother keeps telling me – to this day- that I was a very busy kid -now they’d probably diagnose me with ADHD- and that I would use my cutlery as drumsticks and would be drumming on everything that was available on the table when we had dinner. I played drums on the empty wash powder boxes my my mother saved for me while play backing our favorite popsongs using pvc pipes you use for electric wire as my drumsticks. My friends would imitate playing guitar on old tennis or badminton rackets.
I recorded as much music as I could on my first cassette recorder with a build in speaker(!). I would check the national hitlist which was available at the Tobacco store in a small mall nearby and wait for the songs I wanted to be broadcasted. Then I hoped the DJ would shut up so I’d have the whole song and not some stupid introduction. I do recall recording “Jet” by Paul McCartney and Wings and many other different popsongs. We would be searching for all great new songs and especially new clips that were extremely fascinating in those days. It was long before MTV hit the screens and videos were very rare. Colour TV was just coming within range for average, moderate income families like mine. It also took some time before our dad bought a decent Philips stereo amplifier with good -loud- speakers and a real -stand alone- pick up to play LP’s and singles…. Me and my brother were in heaven. We always played music when we were at home. Our thirst for new music was endless and that would last for decades. 
The fast solo’s and agility of the rhythm section was just mythical.
It was the right album at the right time: a teenage kid in a small town suburb in the early 70’s hearing music that you couldn’t listen to on any radio station. It was of course also very important that my parents didn’t like it at all. Way to rough. This was my music. This was what I wanted to do: make records, albums and play all over the world. I had one problem: I had no instrument but some of my older brother’s friends played guitar and they, being about 3 years my senior, were the real cool guys. They had long hair and upcoming beards, wore old soldier’s coats and cowboy boots with square noses- not pointed- square! I was fascinated by them learning to play guitar – I thought they were amazing: they played barre chords (!) – and I kept asking my dad for one like theirs. My dad was a generous and loving man and he realized I wasn’t going to back down -something which is not in my nature- so he went with me to the town’s legendary guitar shop Bill Coolen where he bought me my first guitar. It was the cheapest acoustic steel stringed guitar we could get and it was a tour the force playing that instrument but it didn’t take long before I could play a few chords. The teacher I had found in our neighborhood, and where everybody went if you wanted to learn to play guitar, was a real gentle, nice, jazz musician who loved Les Paul and Chet Atkins. I really liked him a lot. I admired his chords and way of playing but I really liked it when he started to play old school Rock ’n Roll. I hadn’t come for the smooth jazz stuff he played – which in later years I truly regretted-, I had come to learn the rough stuff and just enough to start my own band. I wanted to have my own hardrock band. I had found my mission.
For a short while I thought CSN&Y were the best that ever happened to me. That was until I played it while hanging out the window in the evening some summer night and one of the girls next door asked me what I was playing. As I replied CSN & Y she said: “no way this is not Deja Vu because I know that music well”, so I went to my brother and asked what he had recorded over the now classic album. He said it was “Naturally” by J.J. Cale. J.J. is my main inspiration since then. All my life I’ve kept listening and playing his music. In my darkest hours he gave me comfort and in the best of times he made the happiest man on the planet. In the end he’s been on my shoulder ever since.