who didn’t like to wait and decided to make their own party. When we drove into town the police were already waiting for us. I rolled down the window and said, “Good evening officer can you tell me the way to venue so and so?” “You can’t go there anymore,” he answered. “The place has been demolished!”
The next day the papers had huge photos and articles on how the club was trashed by our fans. The articles described us as a bunch of violent drug addicts. Honestly, it was a bit exaggerated and had a surprisingly negative effect on our audience. From then on, the moment we hit the stage, everybody started fighting like crazy!
Frank: But we also profited from it. The week after publication our record sales went through the roof. They couldn’t press ’em fast enough to keep up with the demand!
Joop: You’d think we’d try to improve our image? On the contrary, we actually encouraged the destructive behaviour. Somewhere in Drenthe they told us if we’d use the word “hoibroi”, there would be trouble in the audience. What it meant? Something like burning hay I guess. Well I shouted the word through the microphone, and within moments tables and chairs started flying! Those farmers bashed each other’s heads in! On Monday the papers headlined: “Q65 turns show into riot!”
Frank: And again our records sold by the thousands.
Joop: In Tilburg they even had to close the fire screen in front of the stage. Things really started to cook, not regarding the temperature, but the fans got a little hot- headed. The only problem was, Willem had just jumped into the audience. We pulled him back up just in time, but the
Just five normal Dutch boys. L to R: Vink, Bieler, Nuyens, Baar, Roelofs.
microphone wire was cut through the middle.
Frank: The gig was cancelled by the authorities. When we went outside, we found our van with four flat tires, smashed windows and the mirrors broken off.
“People mistook us for girls all the time. In Frank’s convertible we had the top down, our hair was blowing in the wind and cars started honking at us. But as soon as we turned our heads you saw their faces drop: ‘Shit! Those are guys!’”
Joop: At least we didn’t need air conditioning on the way back to The Hague.
Frank: On top of that, the club owner had disappeared without paying us. This time our reputation came in handy. When we found him his voice was trembling with fear: “Sorry I forgot to pay you… How much do I owe you boys?” He was completely terrified!
Joop: Again we made the headlines. “Q65 members harass club owner!” Not a word about the fact that he had tried to rip us off.
Right after that, we entered the Top 10 with Revolution. We beat Aftermath from the Stones; that was a big thrill! So record sales were skyrocketing. Too bad almost nobody wanted to book us after all those incidents and bad press.
I DESPISE YOU!
Joop: In the meantime we kept releasing new singles. The first one after Revolution was ‘I Despise You’, a great song, I dare say. It was exceptional in the fact that we actually sang about hate instead of love. You know, back in those days, bands mostly played sappy love songs. There wasn’t much profanity going on yet in pop music.
When we took it to the radio, all of a sudden they started complaining: “It doesn’t sound like ‘The Life I Live’!” That’s what we got everywhere: “Nice song, but why don’t you make something like ‘The Life I Live’ again?”
We had just played that song something like 300 times, so we were fucking sick of it. Hearing that just made it worse.
Our next single, ‘From Above’, the same bullshit: “Very nice but we liked the other song better.”
I thought: if they want ‘The Life I Live’ so bad, they can get it. So we took the same chords and changed the rhythm to three- quarter, plus a different tune and obviously, different lyrics. ‘World Of Birds’, an immediate hit again! They loved it, while the B-side, ‘It Came To Me’, was absolutely superior. But our esteemed radio deejays didn’t agree. Yeah, they really knew their shit. ‘It Came To Me’ is a world famous song nowadays with its own internet sites based in the USA. It’s considered to be a classic example of Dutch garage beat and so on.
That’s the downside of becoming a well- known band. People will try to force their
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