Pickles. The most famous drummer in the Netherlands owes his career to it. And his life.
“It was a terrible accident,” says John Cornelis Zuiderwijk (74) – nickname Cor, better known by his imperial nickname Cesar – as he throws yet another log on the fire of his tepee-shaped stove in his log cabin in Baarle-Nassau. “On the highway, a car suddenly flew into the air. That car shot up and ended up in the street in front of me. Doors opened, people fell out, a woman screamed: ‘My baby! My baby!’ Fortunately, he was quickly rescued by bystanders.
“I was thinking about my breakfast. I love pickles, but that morning I was messing around with that jar. Every time I thought ‘now I have you’, the thing flipped off my fork again. It took me at least five seconds. Otherwise I would have been in the car earlier and crashed on top of those people. Do you understand what I’m saying? There is no such thing as a coincidence, but what is? Apparently it had to happen that way.”
Cesar Zuiderwijk: “I had never sat behind a drum set before. They had to set everything up for me, because I didn’t know how that worked.”
Photo Andreas Terlaak
How his life turned out can be read in his recently published (auto)biography Cesar, the story of a drummer which he collaborated with Telegraphjournalist Jean-Paul Heck wrote. The book reads like a Hollywood fairy tale from The Hague: a crying boy promises at his father’s deathbed that he will one day be the best, is discovered more or less by chance and then conquers the world with Golden Earring, the rock band that ceased to exist last summer after sixty years when founder and guitarist George Kooymans died of the muscular disease ALS. It is a moving story in which camaraderie is more important than monster success and modesty often wins over bravado.
But first: that other pickle story.
“In the past, all merchants came to the doors with carts. There was an ice cream shop, a hot water shop who drove through the streets with kettles hanging over glowing coals, and a pickle shop with only pickles. I built my first drum set from those pickle tins. A soapbox found on the street became my bass drum. Wash tub lids served as cymbals and hi-hats. If you put your foot in the handle jammed and stepped on another lid, you heard Chik-chik-chik.
“I was always practicing rhythms and breaks. That fantastic solo in ‘Little “B”’ by The Shadows was the holy grail. The whole street could hear it, but no one complained.”
Whoever was also listening was the downstairs neighbor who – there is no such thing as a coincidence – was engaged to local beat hero René Nodelijk. “He was such a hip guy with a huge fat quiff. He was the best guitarist in The Hague and had the legendary band René & The Alligators. When he was with his girlfriend, he heard that little man playing on top of those cans all the time.”
And apparently it was supposed to happen that way, but when The Alligators drummer broke a finger just before a performance and a replacement could not be found, the boy next door was recruited as an emergency measure.
So your very first show was also the first time you hit real drums?
“I had never sat behind a drum kit before. They had to set everything up for me, because I didn’t know how it worked. I was a skinny, skinny chicken of fifteen and had to wear their drummer’s much too large tuxedo. When I hit my bass drum for the first time, the pedal got stuck in my trouser leg. When René suddenly shouted ‘DRUM SOLO!’ shouted, I played that break from ‘Little “B”’.”
When the real drummer’s finger turned out to be placed incorrectly and the recovery took longer, Zuiderwijk was allowed to continue filling in. He then moved on to other acts from The Hague. The Ladybirds (a female band that couldn’t find a drummer) gave him his nickname because he brought along his sheepdog named after the Roman emperor. He then made a name for himself in the blues rock band Livin’ Blues until he was recruited into Golden Earring in 1970 by Kooymans, singer Barry Hay and bassist Rinus Gerritsen.
That line-up would not change for over fifty years and would come to be regarded as the most successful Dutch rock band
That line-up would not change for over fifty years and would come to be regarded as the most successful Dutch rock band, which scored major international hits (‘Radar Love’, ‘Twilight Zone’, ‘When The Lady Smiles’), completed more than ten tours through the United States and shared stages with titans such as Led Zeppelin, Kiss, Rush, Santana, Aerosmith, ZZ Top and The Who.
What was it like suddenly playing with your heroes?
“Keith Moon from The Who was always my ideal drummer, really a frontman. Until then you only saw controlled guys with some big cymbals for their stuff who hid at the back of the stage. The Who was one big explosion. I also wanted to play in a band like that. And then the Earring came along and they were like that. Not because they imitated anything, no, of their own accord.”
When Moon died in 1978, you were asked by The Who to succeed him. Why didn’t you do that?
“At first I didn’t believe he was dead. He was such a fool. I thought: he’s going to jump out of a cake somewhere tonight screaming: ‘Tada! I’m back!’ But of course I also knew his drug use very well.
“When their manager asked me, I went to George, Barry and Rinus. All three of them said: ‘You have to do that, man. You will never get an opportunity like that again.’ I knew I could do it, but I also thought: ‘I’ll never find friends like that again.’ We had played with The Who many times before and in that band there was always a lot of swearing, shouting and hitting. For us it was all about brotherhood.”
Is that why Rinus had previously declined to become bassist with Jimi Hendrix?
“Rinus thought the same as me: ‘I believe in what I do and no one is going to dissuade me from that, not even Jimi Hendrix.’ And of course, just like Moon, Hendrix didn’t just die. You could wait for that.
“But something was vibrant. Hendrix knew that Rinus was doing crazy things. Our song ‘Eight Miles High’ lasted 45 minutes. It had a bass solo that was absolutely crazy – perhaps not technically perfect, but in terms of appearance, the way of doing things.”
In the book you admit that your biggest hit ‘Radar Love’ is not tight at all.
“That song is rattling on all sides, but that’s the charm. Recording everything in one go and not doing anything about it makes music human. Listen to ‘Satisfaction’ by The Stones: that’s one big mess, but it sounds great! U2? Nothing happens there, but there is no listener who thinks: ‘I would have played that differently.'”
Cesar Zuiderwijk.
Photo Andreas Terlaak
“We weren’t tight at all. When I heard our roadies soundchecking, I thought: ‘Damn, they’re much better than us!’ My drum tech is much faster with two bass drums than I am. It’s an old discussion: many youngsters don’t like Ringo Starr because he doesn’t – DRRRR-DRRRR-DRRRR! – like an animal could drum. But Ringo was exactly what The Beatles needed, otherwise they would never have been The Beatles! Larry Mullen Jr. of U2 took up drums because the rest – who were all better – preferred to play guitar.
“Nowadays there is a lot of music over the top produced and everyone is metronome tight by playing along with click tracks. I absolutely do not participate in that!”
How could ‘Radar Love’ become a world hit?
“The joke is that in the beginning I thought: finally we have a song that starts with drums. But then Rinus said: ‘No, we still need an intro for it. TAA-TAA-TAAAA!‘ That became our own version of (sings the beginning of Beethoven’s fifth symphony:) TA-TA-TA-TAA!
“It is ours, wherever it is in the world claim to fame and I am proud of that. But when I hear it on the radio, I turn it down rather than louder. I know that number now.”
Despite all the international success, Golden Earring never reached the ultimate top. But it also seemed like you were fine with that.
“We never had a career path. Gene Simmons of Kiss knew he was going to get rich from rock ‘n’ roll before he even played a note. Aerosmith became so famous that they got the scabies. Every night, five roadies would knock on five dressing room doors and out would come five guys who would play in front of thirty thousand people without saying a word or even looking at each other.
I’m glad we never reached that level of fame. It’s a madhouse where everyone is always chasing you
“I’m glad we never reached that level of fame. It’s a madhouse where everyone is always chasing you. When we stepped off the stage in Madison Square Garden in a sweat, we closed the door of the dressing room. Then no one was allowed in for a while and we said to each other, exhausted: ‘We’re doing quite well.’ That’s how it went after our last show in Ahoy, which turned out to be our farewell concert. Afterwards we were like: ‘Wow, actually quite a nice band.’”
Did that alliance also mean that you immediately stopped when it became known that George suffered from ALS?
“I always find it sad to see that bands like Queen continue to tour, while everyone knows that Freddie Mercury cannot be replaced. We have played with artists who said: ‘This is our sixth farewell tour and it keeps getting better. I can only recommend it to you.’
“George has left such a gigantic mark on the Earring. In our business he was one of the best composers of all time. Then it is impossible to continue. We have lost our best friend, so we can’t look for a new best friend, can we?”
Don’t you miss it?
“It is no different. So many things have happened in those fifty years that could have ended long ago. A huge mirror ball which fell from the ceiling, once landed half a meter next to Barry. If he had gotten that on his head, it would have been done a long time ago. One is unlucky, the other is not. Only when you are no longer in the middle of it do you realize: we have actually been terribly lucky.”
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