Gerard Joling announces his ‘last’ major solo concerts: on February 19 and 20, 2027 he will be in Rotterdam Ahoy. It is cleverly presented as a farewell, but whether that is the case is another matter.
It is a proven trick, and Gerard Joling knows it better than anyone. Anyone who announces that something is ‘the last time’ sells tickets like crazy, because no one wants to feel like they missed something. Céline Dion built an entire career chapter on it and Suzan & Freek sold out their Gelredome concerts before the posters were dry.
Marketing trick
Geer is now doing more or less the same. The Final Countdown. Two evenings at Ahoy. Never again. He announces it all in The Telegraph. Only: in the same interview he also says that he still performs more than a hundred times a year, that he really doesn’t want to stop and that he still enjoys it all as much as he used to.
The big solo show, that’s what he’s stopping. It will be ready after February 2027. He promises that. But what are you actually done with? His last major solo concerts date back to 2007, when he performed two evenings in Ahoy with Stout en Nieuw. Saying goodbye to something that has not been there for decades is of course mainly a clever marketing trick.
Full houses?
Anyway: ticket sales start on June 8 and for two evenings Ahoy has approximately 28,000 seats. Will he get them full with this trick? “I’m really looking forward to it, but I also know what I’m getting myself into. It requires so much preparation. But it’s worth it,” he says in the newspaper.
He just keeps doing the Toppers and everything else. “There is so much demand for it, and people participate so incredibly enthusiastically with all those hits. No, I’m not going to stop doing that yet. Not for a long time.”
Big names
Gerard thinks he cannot become more famous than he is now, but feels the hot breath on his neck. “Yves Berendse, Samuel Welten, Robert van Hemert, Mart Hoogkamer, Tino Martin, Marco Schuitmaker, Justen de Wildt. All nice guys, with great hits.”
Fortunately, Geer has long since had his sheep on dry land. What is he going to do with all that money? “What I would like is a house in the Netherlands, in Bergen, to spend a weekend there every now and then.”