ROCK 'N' ROLL QUOTES
*Tell me about Your first band, You started when you were 13, didn’t You?
No, that is a common misconception. The first time I played guitar, I remember well. I was still about 12 years old or so. My friend was doing his hair what would take a lot of time in those days. He said I could learn Guitar in the mean time because he knew I was musical, studying keyboard and recorder which didn’t fancy me so much. The Guitar, a spanish thing, belonged to his elder sister by the way. He put on an LP, In-a-Gadda-da-Vida by Iron Butterfly and challenged me to get the main riff in the time he needed for his hair. The tune took all space on the B-side of the record. Years later we would be in a top 40 band (all hard-rock at the time) to play it together. We were about 18 then. At the same time I had become friends with a guy and his elder sister, who interested me. She was aged about 15 while I was still 12 maybe 13. She too had a Guitar neither he nor she could play. They had the idea to do a play-back act to Deep Purple’s Child in Time during some Youth for Christ type of meeting. No way was I going to mime the singer, so I said I could do the Guitar. I could fake some barré chording and make those fast finger-movements for the solo (benefitting from my flute playing) My friend (allways ready to take the hardest part, mimed the singer and his lovely sister arranged some cardboard drums (washing machine soapdrums) to do the act. It wasn’t until I was 14 when I got my own Guitar (which I shared with my sister) and got into proper practice. The word spreaded fast in my family, it was very uncommon in my family to play Guitar. It was all classical so there were mainly piano and church-organ players musically active. In fact I hadn’t heard anything other than the church music my father played and some chansons on the radio, my mother was listening to. However, my pianoplaying cousin was interested in Jazz and had also discovered Emerson Lake and Palmer. He wanted to start a band with my other cousin who played organ and who had a younger brother playing drums. The latter was considered too young to be in a band but my cousins took turns in ensemble playing drums and keybards. The idea was to form a trio when they heard of me playing Guitar. To make things appear seriously, I was asked to audition for my eldest cousin. He said: “If you can play ‘House of the Rising Sun’, you’re allright, then you know all the chords. I showed him I could easily do that. Then he said: you should be able to improvise, like playing a solo to this song too when I play the chords. I never did that before but I had been practising scales and I figured out I could try to fool around a scale to chord accompaniament. And guess what? I passed the test! Still they weren't sure about wether I would be good enough to form a band with them, probably we all were insecure about ourselves, but that, I can't tell for them. Anyway, Otto told me there would be another Guitarplayer in the band, I never knew his name but I was told he was 40 years af age and the best player around, so I figured I could learn from him and I had no problem with that. Maybe he could coach the band as well, I was thinking. In the end, I never seen the man and we happily made Music, just the three of us without any external guidance.
*So, I got my first Guitar when I was about 14, a Spanish acoustic. After three weeks, I was already in a band with two of my cousins. When I was playing all six Strings for chords It was loud enough to be heard over the Drums and the Organ. I had one solo were I played single string and then my Cousins would just shut up so I could be heard. In my family it was mostly classical music what was played and without having a big brother, it wasn’t until I left primary school when I became aware of amplified instruments. At that point I still didn’t see a reason to go electric. However, when we were invited to play on the 45th wedding anniversary of our grand parents, my great grandfather was still around and we were informed he would like to be able to hear the music of his great-grandchildren. We immediately realised that raised a problem for us since he was as good as deaf. Of course I didn’t have no money to buy an electric guitar then, but I could afford some sort of clip-on pickup. My cousins had some electronic skills and came up with some amps that worked quite well. To be sure, we turned up the amps all the way and we were lucky to have these Philips Super 10” speakers that held up just great. The sound was loud and of course a bit distorted, really not to different from how I sound today and great-grandfather was very pleased with what We played for the family!
*I played the Spanish Guitar for about six months when I had my first concert with my band. The amplification of the instrument worked but when we decided to continue, more gigs would follow and we would have to play increasingly louder. With the amplified Spanish I was getting feedback trouble. I figured out that the sort of Guitars bands like Alice Cooper used wouldn’t have these Feedback problems, so I had a close look at the Guitars pictured on their albums. Glenn Buxton’s 1961 white three-pickup SG had that custom mother of pearl mosaic headstock-inlay which I recognised on an also white Ibanez les Paul Custom, priced at 450 Guilders. This was 1975 so probably the last series of pre-lawsuit Ibanez copies. After nagging my old man for about three weeks and making it look like I would finally finish school, he gave in and made a deal with the shop for the Les Paul in combination with a small amp. I had to make a promise to my dad I would keep up my sight-reading on the Guitar and seriously study classical pieces for the acoustic as well, which I did and in fact still do from time to time.
*My first Guitar? You better ask me about my first pick… That was a red so called Sharkfin. These were picks in the shape of a Sharkfin with a very pointed edge on one side. The red variety was the thinnest pick ever made by any company. This one, combined with a .007 string set gave me the delicate touch I wanted. This combination was only topped by a friend of mine who took a scissor and cut a Sharkfin from the cover of a pack of butter and strung his guitar with .006. With strings that thinny, You'll need an extra gain-stage in Your amp to boost the signal and that is exactly what I had done to my amps. A little bit later I went back to .009 and even .010 strings and super heavy Dunlop-picks (the purple ones). I could have chosen other methods to achieve more gain, like stronger pick-up magnets or more windings on the coils but that would result in either more string-pull or loss of high frequencies.
*Our drummer asking me 5 minutes prior to the gig "how do I start off this so and so song again?" I forgot being nervous by explaining him what to do. Like we were missin' the keyboardist at one of our first gigs, turned out he had locked himself in the toilet and we had to crack the lock to make him play!
*Then we had this rockband, with five of us aged from about 17 up to 20. I was 19 if I remember well so about our age. The boy I grew up with played bass and he was the oldest of us 20 maybe 21. He had one of these Volkswagen Van's a really cool car, but not a hippy Van with flowers painted allover... It was painted brown as the only one in Holland at the time and it was nicknamed 'the Chocolate Bar'. My friend had this girlfriend, a runaway-girl 16 yo. Guess what? Her father was a Police officer trying to put her profile on Telex, sort of police alert at the time. She was with us of course when we were gigging and he was furious because he didn't want this overaged boy who looked like Jimi Hendrix lay a hand on his daughter! Luckily this was a closed Van and only two of us were in the seats and the other incl. My friend and the girl were hiding in the back behind our equipment. She kept hiding and lived quite some time with him. In the end it appeared his father was a friend of the police commissioner and her father had to give up his claim on his daughter who got help from an organisation to help runaway kids.
*There are more stories to tell about what happened in the back of this Van. One more suitable is this one: Many times the band was playing cards because some had no money to pay for the fuel. Playing cards of course either solved the problem or made it worse. when the problem had worsened, the Chauffeur was asked to lengthen the Road for him to try his luck one more time. The real luck however was we were never caught by the Police, since we were supposed not to be in the back of a Van not properly set up for that many people.
*Just a minute in advance of going on stage, Harry asked Jan: "How does the solo of Under My Thumb' go? I don't know it! What am I going to do?" Jan's answer: "Do as You always do!" Harry: "What?" Jan: "You have one minute, scrape as much wood from the neck of your guitar as possible!"
*Once we had a few days of rehearsal in some little building on the terrain of a church in Buitenveldert (Amsterdam) we would sleep in the rehearsal room, the five of us. In the morning I was the first to woke up so I switched on my amp, made sure every control was turned to 10 and stroke a chord to wake up the others. Rene was the first to be ready and so we recorded "Father & Son" by Cat Stevens, just the two of us.
*We had a gig on the next day and our guitarplayer had just left the band, so we organised a quick audition. Koen was brought in by Nils and we decided to test him. Koen didn't even bring a Guitar with him but I lent him one of mine. He plugged it in the Marshall amp and said : "Watch out, Gentlemen, this might hurt your ears!" I instantly knew he was the one for us! In the end Koen went to Luxemborgh and didn't return in time for the concert. So, in the afternoon before the concert We rehearsed with Paul who also had to borrow my Guitar. At least he picked up the repertoire quickly and played a decent gig!
*When JP came to our second rehearsal with us, Nils brought along a saxophone. JP asked: "So you play Sax as well? I didn't know that! Since when do You play it?" Nils answered: "What time is it?"
"Playing slide came about of necessity. When we were in this coverband and sometimes had to play three hour-long sets on a single evening, I tried to stretch the pauses in between as long as possible because I really began to feel my fingers at times. Especially when off Stage I got cassette-tapes thrown at me with all kinds of Tunes I was supposed to learn to play. What I actually did was play along the tape with a Slide to get a general idea of what I could be playing and check out what Keys the Songs were in. So, when we climbed the Stage, I knew the Tunes but still had to figure out how to play my Guitarparts since it would be a bit strange if I played everything with the Slide! So the lot of it was made up on the Spot. Nowadays I play half of my solo's making use of the Slide, mainly to give rest to the fingers and to have alternate sounding solo's. "
*I did mostly recording and producing work for Bobby (as he called himself). I had one of these Tascam Porta's at the time. I had made him listen to 'You don't Know', my Guitar-Tour-the-Force then, with the intention to make him hire me for his Soul System. He said he was willing to test me on the job but made a lot of restrictions concerning the number and lenght of my solo's and said he would first give me some special training for the wrist. Playing rhythm-guitar with Bobby for sure gave me (and my competitors) some serious wrist development! Bobby never allowed more than one guitarplayer at one time in his band, because he wanted to be sure he fired the right one if he heard a mistake. I was fired and rehired about twenty times, but kept recording him and supplying demo's all the time. Only a few of them had my Guitar on them. On 'Love is Always...' I did all the Rhythm and Solo -parts and Bobby did the Bass and Vocals. The Drum-programming we did together. On 'Easy Rock' originally Bobby did the Bass-part, which I redid in his absence because I didn't think it was good enough. He was furious about that and I couldn't point out the mistakes because I had erased the whole part! In the end, we kept my Bass on because of time running out, so on that one I did all the string picking, it is also the only time I played Bass with a pick, to be able to do the runs in unison with the Guitar. On 'Love is Always' however, we have the only recorded bass-playing by the Boss Himself! Of course I was fired from the Soul System once again. As it happened, next Day we encountered Down Town and Bobby said to Me: "You know Harry, My Soul System doesn't make much Money at the moment. I can play fantastic Rock-beat too, You know? Boom Tchaf- Boom Boom Tchaf... You hear? You can hire Me if You have some Rock-gig! And You know I sing too. Of course You have to pay me double because I Sing and play the Drums at the same time!
*The Fly Away Jam at the Abandoned Gas Plant happened New Years Eve 1988. This was definitively the lowest point of my musical life and my life in general as well. I was arrested four times during the period, for stealing a bottle of vintage Wine (and drinking it with some ‘friends’), for drug possession and not be able to prove I had borrowed the Bike I had with me from a good Friend, for trespassing and for hoboing from Utrecht to Amsterdam were I lived with Yasin, a Somalian Musician refugee. He had just fired me from his band for the umpteenth time. I had no Job, no money and several of my Guitars were stolen. It was Francis, a classical Guitarplayer gone electric who invited me and my Vox AC 30 to a Jamsession in this abandoned Gasplant in Utrecht on New Years Eve 1988. I knew half the musicians who were there to Jam and there were some others. I forgave Yasin for firing me and asked him to come as well. Francis said we could eat and drink so that was something to look forward to. I took my one Telecaster to the venue which was packed with basically all white punks on dope, so to speak. Around midnight I spotted Hans, a Bassplayer I had seen and heard a few times at the sessions. However I had never played with him before. I said let’s find a drummer and You know Francis right? He said: don’t worry, You’re in, I have it all mapped out. Francis had his souped up Fender Champ and his wooden pick along with his Telecaster, there was a drumset, a Peavey Bassamp, Peavey vocal pillars and of course my Vox. Hans had indeed mapped out things. He came up with a bass player and a drummer i did not know and he was going to sing himself. So we jammed about half an hour around midnight and I thought it sounded terrible but the atmosphere was quite relaxed. The jam was supposed to be a country song in E and by sign of hand we got up to A and back (or something like that). I was bad. I didn’t remember anything afterwards when Yasin came to me and said: ‘I heard Your solo, man, You’re in my band again!’ I said ‘what solo? I didn’t play one!’ Some Guy gave me a tape of the evening which ended on the shelves of Nutking Records (formerly Bounty Records) And I had to find out what solo Yasin was referring to. I was really gone to the Dogs at this point in Time, You could hear them bark at me during the Jam. Finally it was Ben and Rob starting this band Blue Jeans and Black who dragged me out of the Swamp I was in at the time.
Things could have been much worse... when the Jam was finished we thought it to be a fun idea to go upstairs in the Gas Plant to watch the fireworks. Remember it was New Years Eve so when the Music stopped we heard the Firecrackers. Since the Plant was abandoned, there was no electricity and no light further up the building. This was 1988, so no phones or led-pens, no nothing! We found the Fire-escape Stairs to go up. On the 3th or 4th floor some of us, including me, got a bit lost and suddenly I found myself half a step away from from the edge of the elevator shaft. The elevator of course was dismantled. I was saved by Starlight coming in from the broken Windows of the Plant, what made me see and realise just in Time I was about to fall down the three or four floors.
*I was never into deliberately throwing my guitar to pieces or setting fire to my amps or anything like say Pete Townsend or Jimi Hendrix would do, but that didn't prevent it from happening all the same. When we played the Marriage of good friends of mine (Jacques and Yvonne actually) We were halfway the final song from the last set, "Get Ready" -a Temptations-tune made famous by Motown's Rare Earth. Suddenly I became aware of a burning smell and when I looked over my shoulder I saw clouds of smoke rise through the grates of my Vox AC30 amp and eventually all sorts of light-effects coming from the tubes. We were able to finish the song with the amplifier still producing the sounds while it was catching a severe fire. I thought it was a great effect, symbolising the passion of the relationship from the couple. Unlike after an earlier internal fire in my Power City amp, I wasn't able to restore the burned power-stage of the Vox to this day. Ever since I play two Vox Cambridges, hooked to the AC 30-cabinet (minus the burned amplifier itself).
*When Henri's Guitar-pal Jitte married, Blue Jeans & Black were asked to play the wedding-party. Jitte and Yvonne knew their repertoire and there weren't any further requests. Charlotte (their singer) would find this very strange and she suggested they'd cover 'Rockband Poppenkasts' 'Knuffelbeesten' (cuddly animals or Teddy Bears). Henri used to play this when he was on Bass in Poppenkast. But this time he was on Guitar and he had to play the solo (originally by Jitte) note for note, which he actually did, including the harmonics and the feedback.
*Q.: Why the Jimi Hendrix song 'Fire', when You intended to move in the Ska/Funk direction? A.: We never intended to move away from Rock we wanted to cross-over the styles. Saint Vitus inherited the Jimi Hendrix song from the Feedback-repertoire and when people looked at our setlist, often they (especially Stella's friends) would think it was the Pointer-sisters song. Of course we knew because it was a big hit two years earlier. That attracted a lot of disco/soul fans who complained afterwards: 'Hey, why didn't You play Fire?' 'We did!' I said. 'You just missed it!' With Blue Jeans & Black it was the other way round. My Rock-o-phylic friends came up to me and said: 'Oh great Harry, you're playing Fire again' assuming it was the Jimi Hendrix tune. Of course I knew but left them in the dark and let them find out We played the pointer-sisters song as Charlotte's inner Circle of course expected we'd do. I always liked this sort of practical joking.
*One time we would be playing at a mixing master class. There was this MasterMixer who would be mixing our concert and his students would be learning from him. We assumed it was like a regular gig for us, so we let the fans know via some sort of paper we had back then. That turned out not so well because the people of the organisation had been thinking there would be turning up like about 4 people, but suddenly there were close to 100 people who broke in to see us and got thirsty. There was only one tray of 24 tins of beer.... That caused a nice riot and we were banned from the venue...
*Then there is this 'Kerozinekikker Knocking about' story, believed to be an initiative by their Guitarist 'de Nutking' who thought it was a good idea to practice a form of kickboxing during rehearsal-breaks to stay sharp and concentrated. To have a fair play, the members were divided over two pools, one for the women in the band and one for the men. Winners of both pools met each other in a final round. This sports-practise for musicians was soon expanded with items like 'Guitar-fencing' and 'Amplifier throwing'. Later the band started to practise these activities during performance-breaks as well. The story goes that during a gigs' break in Cafe Flits Utrecht, 'de Nutking' started to practise this while in a still packed Hall and accidentally hit their sax-player 'Kiks'. When Henri AKA 'Nutking' was asked about this years later, he said he could not remember anything about this incident or any of these 'Kerolympics'. So we are left to wonder with this picture from Caroline (Kiks) with this inexplicable black eye.
*Henri.: "I have nothing against effects equipment or strange sounds. One time I started out on a 'Jen Jumbo Fuzz' which determined the sound of a band called 'Feedback'. For a change I also made use of a 'Mini Monacor Phaser' and for some time a pink 'Ibanez Analogue Delay'. Unfortunately all this equipment broke down when being handled by my size 45 shoes. The last one was a Dunlop Wah-wah which was soaked in beer by some drunk idiot who also tried to assault our (female) singer. Ever since I throw my amplifier at someone or something I don't like!"
*About Caprice 16: I only had a couple of classical Guitar lessons from a guy who was reallty a top 40 bassplayer. It is just love for practice. There were always people who doubted my talent as well as people who think I have it. What I'm trying to say is it doesn't really matter as long as you enjoy what you are doing. That does NOT mean I am taking composition lightly!
*Sometimes I’d liked to be with the roadies and help them a bit. Once there was a terrible duo with the band, we called Taco & Co. They certainly weren’t lazy although we sometimes had to call them out of bed, especially when Taco had this new girlfriend he had to be pulled out of is bed all the time. When they were at work they were really unbelievable. I once helped them to reload the Van for the road, we used to make a chain of people and pass the the guitars, the keyboard, the drums, the bass, the amplifiers, several sorts of cords and strings, the barstools, a table lamp, an assortment of glasses, cutlery, three plants.... wait a minute!.... Once we had to drive back to the venue the next day to return half a truckload of goods!
*I.: Do You read music notation?
H.: Yes, I learned from playing recorder and keyboard, my father taught me.
I.: Also on Guitar?
H.: Yes. I had to promise my father in order to make him to buy me one. Besides that, My cousin also wrote things down for me to play while in our band Contemporary.
I.: So Your father thought You on the Guitar?
H.: No he couldn't play the Guitar, I saw him try only two times. He said I should take lessons, I did just that. My teacher turned out to be a top-40 bass player, who could read notation. Guitar-wise, I outplayed him in about two lessons but he basically explained me how classical guitar music was notated. Sight reading requires a lot of training,
I.: Do You still use music-notation?
H.: Not really, no. The notation in itself isn’t music. I mean, I know I have to look at the score to learn the melodies and accompaniments from, say a Paganini Guitar piece but he was very scarce in making notes on how to play it, what ornamentation to use or were to put your fingers. Learning a piece by heart is always the best option, only then you will really feel how to interpret.
I.: Do You write down your own compositions?
H.: I used to do that, but rarely in detail. Sometimes I just write down the chords I used. After all I record most of my tunes. I must admit I sometimes have a hard time to play a tune I recorded I while ago. I have a bad musical memory, so I have to get back and listen to the recording to refresh my memory.
I.: You have once said You were very serious about composition and You don’t take it lightly, so how do you do that? How do You compose?
H.: In the 90s we were jamming a lot and we developed the concept ‘Instant composing’, meaning that You compose while playing your instrument. We did that in ensemble form but You could do that on your own too.
I.: Isn’t that difficult to do? Don’t You need a special talent to work like that?
H.: Actually it is quite easy. I do it while watching TV for instance. I always want to hear music and half the movies I watch have no Music for the greater part of it. So I watch with my Guitar on hand and If there’s no music, I’ll make it.
*In the 80s, Henri used to play at the jamsessions, sometimes night after night. On one of these nights at "t Oude Pothuys" in Utrecht the Netherlands, past midnight, the jam still hadn't started yet and the club owner asked the musicians to commence playing. "We certainly want to, but there's no bass player tonight!" they answered. The club owner had seen Henri play bass before and asked him to do so again. Henri said "I have a Guitar with me, I can't play bass on that!" "Well there's a bass hanging on the wall over there, You may play it!" "Okay!" He said. When he took the bass off the wall, he discovered it had only one string but still he kept his promise. After playing for several hours all the different bass parts, he got a lot of compliments from musicians and audience alike. "You know, it is not that difficult. At least I had the big E-string. You have to change position a little bit more often but that is about all that's to it!"
*On 'Nothing at All' from the very last Kriziz-EP there's a solo for bagpipes as you might have noticed. It was performed by Jitte, who of course had to have some practice in advance. Neighbours, of course weren't happy with this and to avoid problems he created is own practice-room in a hall closet, which he had made sound proof with all sorts of material. He practiced several hours in the closet with the door closed. There was a special air-filter for him to be able to breath properly.