Mmmh, okay, if I really believe it. Actor Frank Lammers (49) and singer Guus Meeuwis (50), who have been “good friends for a long time”, are going into Glory Days chasing the ‘dream’ of Guus Meeuwis: meeting Bruce Springsteen in real life, the American rock star in his late seventies, known for mega hits such as ‘Born in the USA’. It will not be easy, but certainly not impossible to arrange an appointment with The Boss from the Netherlands. But that doesn’t make for a television series, of course, so the good friends go on a ten-day ‘road trip’ to the USA, to search for splinters of Springsteen in the town of Freehold, New Jersey. Freehold has 12,000 souls, including Springsteen’s. He was born there and now lives there again.
The first doubts about the closeness of the friendship already started with departure from Schiphol. Frank Lammers arrives a little after eight, mumbles something about a ‘Brabant quarter of an hour’ and then Guus Meeuwis points out that he is ‘quite on the clock’. A friend knows something like that, right? Let me say, with this duo you do not feel the bromance of Matthijs van Nieuwkerk and Rob Kemps, who in Chansons! embrace each other’s love for the French song. Nor is it the corny laughing, screeching, roaring of singers Nick and Simon, clearly a close-knit duo, who first sought Simon & Garfunkel in America and then Abba in Sweden.
Maybe Guus Meeuwis needs to loosen up a bit, and he is just shy, maybe their ‘Born in Brabant’ band gradually becomes more palpable to the outsider, maybe the reason for this series – the two concerts that Guus Meeuwis will soon give in America – still insufficient, in any case: Frank Lammers has to make the best of what (yet) seems to be no more than a tourist trip. In the car past Springsteen’s grandmother’s house, the church he sings about so often, the tree by the blue parental home. If the guide says this is the tree of the legendary photo on the cover of his most famous album Born to run (30 million copies sold), Meeuwis wants to take a picture with it – just google what that photo looks like. “Sing a little”, says Lammers when Guus Meeuwis has selected a guitar in the local guitar shop. A Dutch song follows. “And now something from Bruce.” Meeuwis struggles – “That’s the hardest thing, that’s ‘sing something nice on request’” – but then does a fine piece of Springsteen, telephone on your lap, for the lyrics sometimes?
Not just no, we think along
Also a somewhat awkward duo: Sigrid Kaag and Mark Rutte. news hour followed them on their road trip past the opposition group leaders in the House of Representatives. Officially, they want to make an inventory of their wishes and ideas for the Spring Memorandum. Coffee at JA21 (Annabel Nanninga spontaneously formulated a ready-made campaign slogan: “We don’t just say no, no, no, we really think along with you”). On to Caroline van der Plas of BBB, then at the table at Denk and together in the elevator to Forum for Democracy. Coffee, tea, coffee and tea again.
Kaag was unsympathetic to the caravan of microphones that chased her, Rutte the icebreaker who, hand outstretched, entered the SP. “Terribly overrun. Is it still possible?” The last and most important stop was at GroenLinks and PvdA, but no sooner had the Prime Minister and the Minister lifted their heels, than Jesse Klaver said that he had heard nothing new and Attje Kuiken that she found the whole meeting a disappointment. Rutte thought the talks went well. It was, he said, a joint quest. Regardless of what we think.