Golden Earring guitarist George Kooymans dead at 77

George Kooymans, co-founder and guitarist with Dutch veterans Golden Earring, has died at the age of 77.

"We say goodbye to a great musician and composer whose work extended beyond Golden Earring," say Kooymans’ family. "George was a beloved husband, father, grandfather, but above all, a friend."

Golden Earring called it quits in 2021, after Kooymans was diagnosed with the degenerative muscle disease Amyotrophic Lateral Sclerosis (ALS) late the previous year.

"It's a very bad prognosis and I'm not really in the mood to say much about it," the guitarist said at the time. "I am being treated at the university hospital in Leuven. That's it. It's a progressive disease. Unfortunately, performing is no longer possible."

Kooymans was born in The Hague, Netherlands, in 1948, and formed The Golden Earrings – initially known as The Tornados – in 1961. They topped the Dutch charts in 1968 with Dong-Dong-Di-Ki-Di-Gi-Dong, and by 1970 had dropped the definitive article for the Golden Earring album and another chart-topper, Back Home.

Three years later, they did it again with the classic Radar Love, a song that also hit the UK Top 10 and was subsequently covered by artists as diverse as White Lion, Def Leppard, James Brown and King Diamond.

"There are about 400 versions of that song," Kooymans told Classic Rock in 2009. "I like the ones by Bryan Adams and U2. REM even did a punk one."

More international success came in the early 1980s, when Twilight Zone and When The Lady Smiles (another number one back home) were both chart hits in the US.

Golden Earring were also an unlikely influence on Iron Maiden. Band leader Steve Harris called them "one of my favourite bands of all time", and Maiden covered 1975's (Kill Me) Ce Soir on the B-side of their Holy Smoke single in 1990.

"I first saw Golden Earring in 1973 at the Rainbow in London, when Lynyrd Skynyrd supported, and they were just unbelievable," Harris told Classic Rock. "I remember the music press giving them a hard time because everyone was excited about Skynyrd at the time: Skynyrd are a great band, but Golden Earring were on a different level."

Golden Earring's last show was in 2019, at the 16,000-capacity Ahoy venue in Rotterdam. Earlier this year, after Kooymans came up with the idea, the band announced that the same venue would host One Last Night, a farewell show, in early 2026.

It is understood that the show will go ahead, with guest musicians including Dutch rockers DeWolff honouring Kooymans and raising funds for ALS research.