The death of Henny Vrienten (73) touches many people and brings up many memories, especially in his old city Tilburg. It is also raining reactions about the former Doe Maar singer on social media. Musician Tom America is deeply sad. He had known Henny since the 1970s. “He was so special, he came from a very young age and made something so wonderful of his life.”
Tilburger Tom America (73) made his first song in the early 1970s with Henny Vrienten. “That was on Laagstraat in his modest workers’ cottage. He had a simple studio there and it was up and running in three hours.”
“The sadness overtakes me, that he respected me as a musician means a lot to me.”
The musician fills up when he reminisces about his deceased friend Henny. “The fathomless sadness overtakes me, but we’ve known each other for so long. That he respected me as a musician means a lot to me.”
The Tilburg band MAN van America was the support act during two tours of Doe Maar in the 1980s. According to musician and peer Tom America, Henny Vrienten pushed that through personally.
“He was our promoter deluxe.”
“We worked with a rhythm box and Doe Maar keyboardist-singer Ernst Jansz thought that was terrible, but Henny believed in us,” America says with a laugh. MAN makes completely different music than Doe Maar, but Henny thought that was fine. “He was our promoter deluxe.”
According to America, Vrienten really made music for fun and was lightning fast too. “According to him, I always took way too long and complicated about it,” he says with a laugh.
“He shared his success and experience.”
“He also often involved other musicians and shared his success and experience, which was nice.” The Tilburg rapper Gers Pardoel was one of them. In 2012 he made a new version of the Doe Maar hit Sweeter than sweet for the film Everything is Family.
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According to pop journalist Jean-Paul Heck from Steenbergen, Henny Vrienten was perhaps the most important pop musician ever in the Netherlands. “That is not only because of his merit and success with Doe Maar, but also for what he did after that. He was the Paul McCartney of Dutch pop music.”
“He was the Paul McCartney of Dutch pop music.”
As far as the pop connoisseur is concerned, it did not matter whether Vrienten made music for Sesesame Street, a film or his latest solo records. “It was always of a high level, contemporary and also stubborn.” Tom America recognizes the latter. “He was very outspoken and really drew his own plan, but he came a long way with that.”
Doret van Gulik used to live in the same street where Hennie lived with his parents, the Marconiweg in Tilburg. She was about 11.12 years old when Doe Maar broke through. She still remembers that later she was lying on the sidewalk with the sleeping bag at his house on Broekhovenseweg. Girls from all over the country came to see it.
“The whole hospital was in an uproar when he came.”
“Everyone was a fan of Doe Maar. We all tried to catch a glimpse of him. I remember when his mother was in the hospital and he came to visit. The whole hospital is in turmoil. And he also went to visit my mother, who happened to be in the next room.”
Doret is not the only one commenting on facebook leaves behind. Hundreds of people, especially many women in their fifties, said they were shocked by the news about Hennie.
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