BEN HOLLAND GOING DUTCH: THE ARTFUL LIFE OF A MUSICIAN, ENTREPRENEUR AND PORTRAITIST
Benon Roman Holland has always carried a restless creative spark: a musician’s ear, a painter’s eye and an entrepreneur’s instinct. Could dreams of Rock ‘n’ Roll be a portrait for life?
A NAME RECAST
Ben was born to a Polish father and a Dutch mother, who met in Holland while his father was a Pay Master there with the British Army under General Montgomery. Stationed in Salisbury post-war, the family was eventually housed in a council flat in London but then Ben’s father developed mental health issues. “He didn’t trust that the Russians wouldn’t invade and he tried to gas us all. In his mind he wanted us all to die together rather than being killed” Ben recalls. His father was sectioned, however when he kept escaping the institutional home, the family was rehoused on a large council estate near Slough for their own safety. His father remained incarcerated for 30 years until his death only in his fifties.
Both only 4 and 5 years old, Ben and his older sister had also contracted Polio and spent months receiving treatment. Being non-British they had to report to the police station each month, but their surname, Wierzcholski, proved challenging for the locals, and so his mother, known as ‘the lady from Holland’, actually changed it to Holland. “We were really poor. I used to save some of my school bus fare money by walking part of the way so I could buy sweets. When I got older I started a window cleaning round with a friend for pocket money until the local cleaning firm made us stop” Ben remembers. An entrepreneurial spirit was already growing.
FIRST CHORDS At around 12, Ben met Joe Konas at school, a gifted musician who introduced him to his first guitar. They formed a small band with frontman Rod Evans, playing covers of The Shadows and Cliff Richard before rock ’n’ roll took hold. Ben later joined The Mocking Birds. “We even supported The Yard Birds at a gig and couldn’t believe it when they got booed off and we actually survived the audience, it was terrifying,” he muses. Konas went on to forge a full-time career with British band The Gods, among others, sharing stages over the years with guitar greats including Ritchie Blackmore of Deep Purple and Rainbow, and famously jamming with Jimi Hendrix at the Royal Albert Hall. Evans became a founding member and original vocalist of Deep Purple in 1968, and later Captain Beyond.
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LOCAL PEOPLE BEN HOLLAND
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