Mind-expanding, Indeed!
Mind-Expanding, Indeed!
by Frank Dam (originally published in NRC Handelsblad December 21, 1998). This article also appears in the book 'Nederbeat,
De Glorietijd Van De Nederpop' by Frank Dam, Arena publishing ISBN 9069743825.
Philip Elzerman: "The long hair, that was the deciding factor if you were part of it or not, it was the hair! Mine didn't even reach my shoulders, but one day my father said: 'Today you're going to a hairdresser or I'm going to take you there myself.' We were just having dinner, I took a knife and put it, *bam!*, right into the table and yelled 'Don't you dare!'. My father was shocked and my mother jumped in between us and screamed something like 'no, please!'. I was sent to my room, and my mother had a long talk with my father, and after that he never ever said anything about my hair again. As if he could see in my eyes that I just couldn't go to a hairdresser. I still don't like hairdressers... I gotta feel my hair.
We started a school band, The Beattown Skifflers. My brother played banjo, a friend on bass, and I did guitar and vocals. During school holidays, we went to Paris to make some money by playing on the streets: Place Du Tetre, the stairs of the Sacre Coeur... That was around 1960, the heyday of the existencialists you know, eh... in underground bars etc... but we played above ground, on the streets. We played some kind of folk music and at the time that had links with jazz. We did that for about five years.
Once we filled out a paper for partaking in the Romance Phonogram Talenthunt, and, damn, we won! Immediately, we became part of the Phonogram circuit and did package shows with Trea Dobbs, Willeke Alberti, Rob De Nijs And The Lords and we played with them every weekend all over Holland. Wonderfully uncomplicated, we had a minimum of equipment that easily fitted into a small VW bus. It gave us a lot of experience.
Then came the Beatles and the Stones.
Dordrecht was more like an overgrown town in those days so you soon connected with the scene that fitted you. There was this band, The Moving Strings, who played, amplified, Shadows-like music. We hired a hall and both did our show in the end we played one song together and that was it.... Both bands became one, some guys didn't like the idea and left, the rest of us became The Zipps. It was like if Holland was waiting for us, in no time we were a big success. Why? Our presence, we were very self assured. For those days, we had a completely new sound that we used to call 'Psychedelic'... OK, we took some ideas from the Pink Floyd!
I Played a twelve string guitar, flute, mouth harp, and did the vocals. I had this Celtic whistle, man if you heard that... That was way ahead of it's time.
Our best known single was 'Kicks And Chicks'. Jack Kerouack
was name-dropped in it, and Paris, it was a real existential
beat song! I had designed purple stickers with the slogan 'BE
STONED! DIG THE ZIPPS'... In other words, experience the
psychedelic sound of The Zipps! Sure, it had to do with drugs... and
obviously we had some run-ins with the law... Our light show, for
instance, was supposed to have a hallucinating effect on the kids. When people told us such things we would always respond with, 'Mind-expanding, indeed!'.
I had built this thing with which we could show liquid slides: a
very expensive 'Prado'-projector with fish-eye lens, inbetween the
slide glasses you dripped everything from ink to olive oil to
nail polish. Through the heat of the lamp, everything started to move and
then you'd get the color explosions.
A Zipps show was a real happening: we pointed light towards
the audience, red, blue, green. On the PA, we played some quiet
classical music that slowly turned into this drone. Then we came
on stage, all dressed in black, and took over that drone that slowly
turned into our first song. Then the first projections could be seen
on the walls and the audience and it all built up to a climax: with a
strobe light flickering, black light, and when we did our song 'LSD 25',
the whole place erupted and everybody went crazy! After such a
show we were exhausted, man, no energy left to mess around with
girls.
I remember one show in Puttershoek, after we played about ten
minutes people went mad, they were hanging in the curtains and
smashing furniture. People were getting crushed in front of the
stage, then mounted police came in to clear the place.
Besides Holland, we also played a lot in Germany and
eventually again in Paris, but this time not in the streets! Through
Willem Duys (Relax label owner - editor), we got to play at the famous
La Locomotive club under the Moulin Rouge. We were real stars.
Everything came to us real easy. The band was real structured. And we had these ever-growing creative resources around the band
that gave us inspiration, people like Simon Vinkenoog, Bouke
Ijlstra... But because of lyrics, only VPRO played our records on the radio.
After that came a period of many line-up changes: two wanted
to go professional but Peter, the guitar player, and I didn't want
to. Then, suddenly, my father died. He ran a newspaper, and my
mother asked if I would take over for the time-being. I'm still doing that.
But I've still got the itch... I play guitar at home everyday. I've still got ideas, but lack the technical skills.... Maybe I should take up some lessons one of these days."
Thanks to Jeroen Vedder for the translation!
To view a scan of the original article (in Dutch) clickhere
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