Golden Earring - Going To The Run (studio version & live in Leiden, 1999)

[highplainsdem]

Last edited Sun Mar 20, 2022, 02:04 PM - Edit history (1)

Their biggest hit in the Netherlands in the 1990s. The song's about a Hell's Angel friend of Earring lead singer Barry Hay, Ed Wijnhof, who died in a motorcycle accident. One of the most successful rock bands in Russia, Aria, had a hit with a Russian-language cover of this, but the Russian fans posting on YouTube seem to agree the original is better.

Editing to add the best YouTube video I could find of the black-and-white music video, shot in LA by Dutch photographer and filmmaker Paul de Nooyer (or Nooijer):

Editing again to add, in case you aren't familiar with biker slang, that a "run" is an organized ride.

[highplainsdem]

1. Kicking because this is a really good song, though it didn't chart here in the US. From what I've

read, Golden Earring had pretty much given up on the States by the mid-1980s, and Barry Hay's comments about their lack of success here include a lot of complaints about censorship, with liberal Dutch attitudes -- and the videos, artwork, lyrics and even album titles reflecting that attitude -- running into American prudishness. Which they found very frustrating, especially with work that was a hit not only in the Netherlands but elsewhere in Europe.

That wasn't all of it, of course. The band had been around so long and created such different types of rock and pop music over the years that they didn't fit into one convenient niche. Their Dutch and larger European audiences were fine with that. They'd seen them grow and evolve from a teenaged band, changing as popular music changed. But Americans knew them mostly from "Radar Love" and "Twilight Zone" and, to a lesser extent, their classic album Moontan, with "Radar Love" on it, but also more prog-rock tracks.

And they did not want to relocate to the US to tour here and get a larger audience that way, though they discussed it. They simply preferred to be home, and to do short tours.

And, like all bands who create new music for decades, their work could be uneven.

But they still didn't get the recognition and success that they deserved here.