With the news today that Eddie van Halen has passed away and it apparantly being news that he was Asian-American by way of his mother, I was reminded of the 1991 Rockin’ Ramona documentary. As you know Bob, Indonesia used to be a Dutch colony until 1948 and marriages between Dutch and Indonesian people were not uncommon. After independence a lot of these people came to the Netherlands, where they were usually called “Indo”, both used as a slur and a name some people of mixed Dutch/Indonesian background adopted for themselves. The post-war Netherlands was fairly …whitebread until long into the sixties and when rock ‘n roll hit in the mid-fifties it was mostly second generation Indo people who started the first generation of Dutch rock bands. Eddie van Halen’s rockstar career fits right in, though he was slightly more successful than most. Slightly.
Hans Heijnen’s documentary is sadly only available in Dutch, but if you speak the language it’s a great overview of that first generation of Indo rock bands, who popularised the music both in the Netherlands as abroad, especially West-Germany. As is often the case with people of colour, they were mostly ignored once white bands took over and never quite got the success or critical acclaim they deserved. But with Eddie and Alex van Halen finding worldwide success in their own band on a scale any regular Dutch band can only dream about, some justice has been served…
Dutch Cock rock group Diesel had a minor hit over here with “Goin’ Back to China”. One of those songs you know from hearing it on the radio occassionally. A decent enough rock song, with a little oriental(ist) flavour thrown over it, but nothing special.
Imagine my surprise when listening to an anthology of Japanese pop singers from the eighties and hearing a familiar melody, somewhat sped up and with a sax rather than a guitar solo:
No clue why a Dutch rock song would turn up a year later at the other side of the world in a disco version, but I’m glad it did. Yoko Katori’s version is rather nice as well.
Fleetwood Mac co-founder Peter Green has passed away age 73. To be honest, I was under the impression he was dead already.
This is him playing my absolute favourite song from his version of Fleetwood Mac, “The Green Manalish”, which I first heard in Judas Priest’s version on Unleashed in the East. The original turned out to be even better. Priest’s one is fun but this is so much heavier and sinister. It’s always a bit sad to imagine what he could’ve been, what Fleetwood Mac could’ve been had he not taken that acid hit on tour in the same year this was filmed, had he not left the band. Don’t get me wrong, I like the Fleetwood Mac as it actually existed as well and Rumours is still the best album recorded by people who really shouldn’t have been in the same room together, but there was so much promise in Green’s version of the band as well. Imagine if it had kept up that heavy blues sound and refined it further. As it is, it took Fleetwood Mac the better part of a decade to get over his loss.
From January 1987, the very first episode of Vara’s Vuurwerk, a seminal Dutch heavy metal radio show. Hosted by pop icon Henk Westbroek, always a bit tongue in cheek, outraging the real metalheads. Yet this show introduced me to so many metal acts: Metallica, Queensryche, Alice Cooper, Vengeance, Testament, Sodom, Annihilator nevertheless. A rarity in a time when there were only a dozen or so radio channels and metal was never played on them. It was either this, or the slightly elder metal fans at high school to introduce you to new bands. Especially influential were the annual listeners Top Fifty shows, one of which I turned into a Spotify playlist. It really gives an impression of what metal was like back then. Or at least what the listeners thought was great.
Which raises a difficult question: What exactly is so queer about Springsteen? Is it his extreme butchness, so practiced and so precise that he might as well have learned it from the oldest lesbian at a gay bar? Is it because his hard-earned, roughly hewn version of love is recognizable to those of us for whom desire has often meant sacrifice? Or is it something simpler? Do many queers love Springsteen because nearly every song he has produced in his 50-year career reflects a crushing, unabiding sense of alienation and longing—and what could be more queer than that?
The story of Bruce Springsteen is well known. Two albums that made him and the E-Street Band Jersey stars, a breakthrough album after the band got tweaked a bit with Born to Run, crowned the future of rock and roll, then fucked over by his first manager and forbidden from recording for a few years. The band spent the three years between Born to Run and Darkness on the Edge of Town touring, honing their craft. Once they re-emerged, older and more cynical, most of Bruce’s original optimism had disappeared.
It’s that backstory that makes his music so much more grounded than many of his rock contemporaries. His songs don’t offer fantasies, though they can offer hope. His most famous hit sounds so much like a patriotic anthem Ronald Reagan wanted it as a campaign song, but is actually a seering indictment of the realities of his “Morning in America”. Even at his most insufferable, on Human Touch/Lucky Town he still can’t quite forget his working class roots. He walks the walk too: doing fund raisers for the Democrats, tours for Amnesty International and the like. He has spoken out against police violence and for Black Lives Matter and of course wrote the above song about the murder of Amadou Diallo. He isn’t perfect, but his heart is in the right place.
I became a fan when I was ten, eleven. One of the first albums of his I owned, was the live boxset he brought out in 1985, a compilation of ten years of touring. That was at the height of his popularity, deep in the dark heart of Reagan America and what’s on it? Woody Guthrie’s “This Land is Your Land”, Edwin Starr’s “War”, a warning that “because in 1985, blind faith in your leaders, or in anyone can get you killed”. He’s deeply subversive on a level I didn’t understand then, but unconsciously seeped into me.
Naomi Gordon-Loebl argues that the pain he puts in his songs is what makes him resonate with queer people like her. Not being queer myself I can’t judge, but to me he is the lightning example of how to be butch, how to be masculine without being macho. It’s a masculinity that is available to anybody who feels attracted to it, not reserved just for cis men. It’s part of what keeps me coming back to Bruce Springsteen again and again too.
