Golden Earring - Radar Love and Moontan, 1973/74

Bands who made only one flat-out brilliant record - I'm sure you can think of one from your collection. Mine would be Dutch band Golden Earring, whose 1973 LP release 'Moontan' remains one of my all-time favourites. They never made another one like it, as far as I know.

Moontan is probably a Prog Rock album, though the casual listener would never think of them as such. Five tracks across two sides? Definitely Prog.

Their previous albums don't point to this left turn in their career, though. The 1971 track 'She Flies on Strange Wings' hints at a more progressive style, but generally their songs were more mainstream rock, with a few extended passages - nothing to compare with the expansive and exotic atmospheres created on Moontan.

Of course, everyone remembers Radar Love, the hit single - an instant classic on its release in late 1973. It has become one of the great rock anthems, regularly featured in lists of great driving songs. Its appeal had much to do with the main guitar intro, the atmosphere created by the bass and drums before the vocal comes in, the story in the lyrics ("I've been drivin' all night, my hand's wet on the wheel...") - and even the drum solo! They all made Radar Love something to sit up and listen to when it came on the radio.

Four bands for 85p - bargain

I saw Golden Earring live on two occasions. The first, in December 1973 at the old Sundown theatre in Edmonton, north-east London. This was just as they were about to break big with Radar Love. The single had just been released and was getting a lot of airplay.

The Sundown gig was billed as "A Rock 'n' Roll Extravaganza". It was an odd line-up. Golden Earing (sic) appeared on a package bill with various stalwarts of London's 'Pub Rock' scene; Brinsley Schwartz, Bees Make Honey and Ducks Deluxe.

The other bands were playing variations on blues and folk rock (click on the links for some live clips). Brinsley Schwartz had Nick Lowe on bass and vocals. They were a tight-knit band with some good songs, notably Lowe's classic 'What's So Funny 'Bout Peace Love and Understanding'.

Ducks Deluxe were a hard rocking R'n'B group, with an album out on RCA and a decent single called Coast to Coast. I don't remember anything about Bees Make Honey. I think I saw them a couple of years later at a Brunel University All Nighter, but again I can't remember anything about them. To me, the pub rock bands all sounded the same, which is probably why they never rose above playing in pubs, or as support for more accomplished headliners.

Golden Earring circa 1973

Golden Earring had a bit more flash about them. The staging was fairly primitive still. In those days stage lighting was little more than a couple of coloured lights and a single follow-spot if you were lucky, so there wasn't much room for drama. The drummer jumped over his kit at the end of Radar Love, that was about it. But they had a swagger and a style that marked them out from the pub rock crew.

At this point, the only song I knew was Radar Love, but by the time I got to see them at The Rainbow in March 1974, I had the album 'Moontan' and I might even have got the cash-in album 'Hearing Earring', which was an amalgam of tracks from their two previous albums that were only released in the Netherlands.

I can still remember buying Moontan, taking it home and being intrigued by the uniqueness of it. Each track had a distinct and definitely exotic vibe to it, while the overall atmosphere was cohesive as a concept. Certainly the cover was edgy and alluring for a 15 year old boy.

As soon as I had listened to both sides of the record, I had to listen to it again straight away. In fact, it's one of those records that I have never tired of. I think it's because each track goes through so many different moods.

I love the way Candy's Going Bad breaks down and ebbs away into Vanilla Queen, with its outer space synthesiser and acoustic section that leads into an orchestral climax.

Side two has just two tracks, the first of which, Big Tree Blue Sea, has a middle section which is a trippy flute solo. When they played it live, the mood was augmented very effectively by dry ice and strobe lights.

The last track, 'Are You Receiving Me?' starts out like a conventional song but then breaks down to a simple bass line and builds to a hypnotic groove with a guitar crescendo.

The band's Rainbow show was much more indicative of their true star potential at the time. My school mate Mike Billups and I had queued up outside The Rainbow on a cold Saturday morning to get good tickets. We must have been near the front of the queue because we managed to get front row seats, looking up across the Rainbow's unusual sloping stage front. So the dry ice and the strobes during Big Tree Blue Sea are an indelible memory for me.

The set they played at The Rainbow emphasised the progressive and dramatic songs, starting with She Flies On Strange Wings, followed by a straight ahead rocker, Just Like Vince Taylor (the B-side of Radar Love), then Big Tree Blue Sea, Vanilla Queen and Radar Love.

Front row for this one

Radar Love got to number 1 in the Netherlands, number 7 in the UK and number 13 in the US singles charts.

Disappointingly, the follow-up single was a song about a washing machine.

Someone had the wild idea to film the promotional video on a household waste dump. I imagine it was great fun for the band, stepping gingerly around the mouldy piles of Gouda in their platform boots.

I bought 'Instant Poetry', the washing machine song, because I was a fan, but they lost me after that. They had some fun in the video age with songs like When The Lady Smiles, but I had moved on. They never did an album as out-of-this-world as Moontan. It was a real one-off.

The lyric insert from Moontan

The band talk about Radar Love:
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=IkwMexl49g0&list=RDIkwMexl49g0&index=1

An interview with singer Barry Hay at his home in Curacao - it hardly matters that it's in Dutch. You get the idea https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=OLYx7j_DAIM