‘Golden Earring’ guitarist George Kooymans named honorary citizen

George Kooymans

His wife Milly and their two children and three grandchildren were there, writes the Flemish newspaper.

Kooymans’ friends approached the city council with a request to make him an honorary citizen. “When this news broke, we received a lot of positive reactions at Rijkevorsel,” Kooymans’ friend Stanny Van Ostaeyen told the newspaper. “With his work, George has moved a stone in a musical river. Yet he and his family have always remained ordinary people with no delusions of grandeur.

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Honor

Kooymans is delighted with this appointment and speaks of “a great honor”. “We have lived in Rijkevorsel for almost fifty years and we feel at home here. In fact, we found ourselves here a bit by chance. The intention was to move to the United States in the early 1970s, but it was not easy. That’s why we went to Rijkevorsel to see. I lived here more than half my life, but I remained Dutch. I did not adopt the dialect.

Golden Earring became known for big hits like Radar love, twilight zone And When The Lady Smiles. Golden Earring had to stop performing in March 2021 because Kooymans suffers from ALS.

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