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Artist
Rinus Gerritsen
6+ albums
classic rockrockdutchnetherlandsbassist
about
Rinus Gerritsen (born The Hague, Netherlands, 9 August 1946) is a Dutch bass player and songwriter, best known as the bassist in the internationally most succesful band to come out of The Netherlands, Golden Earring (1961-2021). Gerritsen and guitarist, George Kooymans (1948-2025), founded the band as The Tornado's in the fall of 1961. In the early years, when the band was called The Golden Earrings (the plural 's' was dropped in 1969) Gerritsen and Kooymans wrote many of the band's songs together. Dutch top ten singles such as That Day (1966), In My House (1967) and I've Just Lost Somebody (1968) were Gerritsen/Kooymans compositions. From 1968 onwards, however, Kooymans became the band's main songwriter, alone or as a duo with frontman/lyricist, Barry Hay, who joined the group in 1967. After 1968 Gerritsen contributed the occasional album track or B-side to the Golden Earring catalogue (1989's power ballad, Distant Love is a rare example of a post-1968 Golden Earring single written by Gerritsen. With Golden Earring, Rinus Gerritsen enjoyed international chart success with singles such as Radar Love (1973), Twilight Zone (1982) and When The Lady Smiles (1984). In their home country Golden Earring had over 40 hits and made over 30 gold and platinum albums. They sold millions of albums worldwide, and are perhaps the oldest rock band in the world that is still performing throughout the year. 1979 saw the release of Gerritsen & Van Dijk, a one-off collaboration of Rinus Gerr
