Bennie Jolink just can’t stop. He is fitter than ever. The frontman of farmer’s rock band Normal, which broke through in 1977 with the hit ‘Oerend hard’, is ready to give a concert for 20,000 people on Ascension Day. At the same time, a new album is being worked on. In the run-up to this, the single ‘Putin is a bastard’ was released last week.
Jolink is fitter than he has been in the last twenty years. “It is going very well, I will be 77 in September.”
A ‘medical update’ immediately follows: “I have always had health problems. In 2015 we gave a farewell concert in the Gelredome in Arnhem. I was completely exhausted and could only walk twenty meters with the dog. And in 2016 I was hospitalized three times with asthma and spent ten weeks in a rehabilitation center.”
But a new drug has got the Normal singer back on his feet. “One injection every four weeks, fantastic. Now I can go up the hill again. I still have sixty percent lung capacity, so I really can’t run or play football anymore. But walking is fine. I go into the woods four times a week. Twice a week you see me swimming 25 laps. Then I do fitness in the water. And on Sundays I walk about fifteen kilometers. And that means I’m really rocking again on Ascension Day. Okay, I’m still five or six kilos overweight, but that doesn’t bother me.”
Affectation
The farmer’s rocker is brief about the Eurovision Song Contest, which will take place next week in Liverpool, England. “That is pure anti-culture,” says Jolink. “Ridiculous posturing. It is crap music with a few exceptions, such as Anouk and The Common Linnets.”
Despite that revealing opinion, Normal has ever tried to participate in the Eurovision song contest. That was in 1992 when the Dutch broadcaster had Willeke Alberti in mind as a possible candidate. Jolink: „I thought it was very bad that our manager Willeke Alberti, who I like very much, called an ‘old cake box’ during a radio interview in which he put forward Normal as a Eurovision candidate. That insult was unnecessary. But I thought it was good that he kicked against the Eurovision song contest, because the Netherlands made itself ridiculous every year.”
Normal was once a Eurovision candidate
The band from the Achterhoek already went exploring. “We went to the Swedish city of Malmö where the festival was to be held and presented ourselves there as a Dutch entry,” says Jolink. They visited the indoor skating hall where the song spectacle would take place. “We rejected the dressing room there. Because we were a rock band, we found the dressing room much too small. It resulted in full-page articles in Swedish newspapers. We totally laughed our ass off. Did we also have a song? No, nobody asked for that. But of course it would be a rough rock song. We wanted to go høken at the Eurovision song contest.”
Meanwhile, Normal’s ‘supporters’, as the group’s fans are called, were called upon to bombard the broadcaster with postcards to reinforce Normal’s candidacy. In the end, the attempt failed. The Dutch broadcaster decided to organize a National Song Contest. That was won by Humphrey Campbell, who finished ninth in Sweden. Willeke Alberti was crowned the Dutch entry two years later, in 1994.
“My health no longer allowed me to ride a motorcycle”
Jolink’s home base has been a farm in the village of Hummelo for fifty years. But his motorcycles, which Jolink was addicted to for decades, are no longer there. Jolink has sold both his BSA and his Norton. “They were the most beautiful engines ever made,” he says. “My health no longer allowed me to ride a motorcycle. Actually I could do it again now, my fingers are itching again. I can come and ride on my son’s cross country. That’s a safe place. And riding a road bike? No, I can’t manage that. My wife absolutely does not want that.”
Involved in peasant protests
As an Achterhoeker in heart and soul, Jolink has been heavily involved in the farmers’ protests in recent years. He calls it a complicated story.
“There has been a nitrogen crisis for twenty years. In recent decades, farmers have expanded rather than contracted. And it shouldn’t have. Now they are in a situation that is practically unsolvable. I understand the farmers’ frustration. A lot of people have looked away. The farmers now have to come up with a plan to reduce emissions. In that respect I am happy with the election victory of BoerBurgerBeweging. That party has become so big that they cannot escape taking responsibility. I would like to speak to political leader Caroline van der Plas of BBB, especially to emphasize to her that everything revolves around how we want to leave the planet for future generations. Who knows, I might invite her over sometime soon.”
Eighty
How long will the recovered Normal founder continue with his farmer’s rock band? “I want to keep it up for a while, never expected to reach seventy. But my grandchildren have become my greatest wealth, so now I want to grow old. And as I live now, I will probably make it to eighty.”