the conversationNIJMEGEN – Singer Frank Boeijen recently turned 65. A milestone, but not an obstacle to a life full of rock ‘n’ roll. ,,I still smoke, actually since I was thirteen. But it’s not like the 80s when everyone in the music business was on coke.”
No, he does not want to be interviewed at home. So it becomes his favorite restaurant Blue on the Oranjesingel in Nijmegen.
He prefers to keep his home and private life out of the public eye. “I regularly warned Marco Borsato not to do business with those gossip magazines. In the beginning they write positively, but there always comes a time when they get you.
You can see that in him now. That boy no longer dares to show himself on the street while it is still not clear what exactly happened. I was also regularly in the magazines, although I never spoke to those people.
I would be addicted to drugs, fighting with my brothers. I felt especially sorry for my parents. My mother read those magazines at the hairdresser’s and then was completely upset.”
You prefer not to talk about personal matters
“You make yourself vulnerable if you expose your private life. The more you tell, the more you will later see distorted in the media. Nowadays I don’t care about that, let them write.
But I have been threatened regularly in the past. Right-wing extremists targeted me because of the song Black and white, about racism. During my performances at that time, a plainclothes officer stood in the audience.
In 2007 I sang the song in Arabic at a memorial service and it came up Journal. Then I received threats from national populists again. That was frightening, also for my girlfriend. So I prefer to keep my private life outside of my work.”
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Due to the lockdown there was time for reflection. But there was also the fear: soon we will no longer be allowed to make music
On November 27, he celebrated his 65th birthday during a performance in TivoliVredenburg, Utrecht, at the end of his club tour. Family and friends were in the room. His annual theater tour will start in February, this time with the project Icarus and Phoenix.
That agenda does not belong to someone who is thinking about retirement
“I was at a Bob Dylan concert a few weeks ago. He is 81 and on a world tour again. Charles Aznavour was still performing when he was over 90. Leonard Cohen went on for a long time. Not that I want to compare myself to them, but this is what I do: perform together, be on stage.
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