There should be a statue for Pierre Kartner. That is what the Brabant folk singer John de Bever thinks. Like many other artists, he owes his career to the man in the bowler hat. He finds it incomprehensible that Kartner never got a statue while alive.
“He was a gentleman, a decent man and always felt undervalued. And that was actually the case, because there should have been a statue a long time ago,” John tells Friday in his apartment in Den Bosch. “Certainly in Breda. And we’re going to work on that now.”
“He was the one who believed in my little voice.”
He jokes that with the help of Omroep Brabant this should work. “If necessary, we will put up a statue in front of your building. After all, he came from Brabant,” he says. “Coincidentally, Kees, Corry (Konings, red.) and I’m talking about it recently. Of course it should have been there by now. I’m actually still a little pissed about that. Someone who has meant so much to Dutch music. He was just an icon.”
Pierre Kartner was a phenomenon for John. “I always looked up to him. To me he was just as big as André Hazes. And he was the one who believed in my voice.” During a performance at the Nijmegen Four Days Marches in 1979, Pierre Kartner discovered the then fourteen-year-old Johnny. A number of singles followed and with the song ‘If I marry later’, which Kartner wrote for him, John de Bever reached the tip parade in 1980.
“He deserved a big funeral.”
The two were still working together five years ago when John Kartner’s hit ‘The little cafe on the harbor’ was given a new look. “He played in my clip and was still that fit Pierre Kartner back then. So it went pretty fast,” says John.
John also heard through the media on Friday that his example is no longer there. “I knew it wasn’t going well, but then you’re still shocked.” Pierre Kartner died on Tuesday and was buried in silence on Friday. “I respect the family’s choice to take him this way, but he had deserved a big funeral. Such an icon has been lost, the whole of the Netherlands had gone there.”
ALSO READ:
Artists mourn the death of Pierre Kartner: ‘My discoverer’
Pierre Kartner, known as Father Abraham, has passed away