Casparcritique: Gitaarjongens (Guitar dudes)

If you want to get a guitarist talk guitar, the best question to start of is: what was your first guitar, and what song was the first one you learned to play? I remember my first guitar well. It was an old, rambling Hondo (see picture). I bought it when I was about 15, I guess, with money my grandmother had given me for my birthday. I got it from my high school friend Jos, a six-string afficionado in his own right, whose first guitar was an Epiphone by Gibson. One of the pickups of my Hondo was held in place by a piece of electric wire, but still it worked well in enough to perform live with the cover band I was in soon after.

Henny Vrienten, legendary musician from the band Doe Maar, and solo work, made a documentary around these two simple questions. He put them to 12 of the best guitar players from the Netherlands. Now, it is important to understand that Vrienten is not a documentary maker, but as much a guitar lover as any of the guitarists portraited in the film. We sense this little unease when Vrienten first visits George Kooymans, guitarist and songwriter of the Golden Earring. Kooymans, one of the few Dutch guys known internationally, lives in a big mansion stuffed with dozens of guitars, all classics, some of them never played on. Vrienten follows Kooymans through the house with his tongue on his shoes, impressed by the collection, but hardly able to do his job as interviewer.
What follows next is nothing less than a road movie through the Dutch landscape, when Vrienten knocks on doors of, mostly very humbly living, guitarists. Most of us opiniated music friends and lovers have their list ready of personal favourites, but let's not get into that. Henny Vrienten made the choice for us and comes up with a great selection of players throughout the decades. He travels to the deep East where he meets roots rocker Daniël Lohues,  to the notorious musical village of Volendam to see  internationally acclaimed Jan Akkerman (Focus!), and the more city folks like Arthur Ebeling, Anton Goudsmit, and Anne Soldaat. They're all asked what their first guitar looked like and what it meant to them. Especially the seniors, the pioneers from times when Rock 'n Roll was still the devil's music, have good stories to tell. Some of their families didn't have enough money to buy a guitar. Jan Akkerman bought a second hand one on the flea market. When his parents saw that he wasn't going to do without it anymore, they finally managed to buy a new one. All twelve of them, though, remember the moment they picked up a guitar for the first time, and they knew that this was going to be a life fulfilling pastime.

As I mentioned earlier, in the beginning of the film, I thought Henny Vrienten was still a bit struggling with his various parts to play. As a sort of tension span throughout the film, though, he tries to get hold of the legendary Eelco Gelling. Gelling has had a long history of drug abuse and for periods of time he seems to have vanished from earth. At the end of the film, quite obviously from a documentary's perspective, Vrienten tracks him down. What follows is a heart warming scene when Vrienten interviews him. But this time not as a guitar fetishist, or documentary maker, but something in between. He manages to touch Gelling and have him talk about his Gibson from the bottom of his heart. For me, this scene wrapped up the film. You sense that Vrienten has made the full circle, from the special guitar shack Kooymans has got in his garden, to the one-room, run-down apartment where Gelling lives, to discover what binds these two extremes is the love for the six string. (Curiously, the two extremes played together in the Golden Earring in the seventies.)

It is hard to make it in the Netherlands as a guitar player, but what great fun we have playing and talking guitar amongst ourselves. Gitaarjongens (which I'd like to translate as Guitar Dudes), documents key stories in the Dutch musical landscape in a very enjoyable way. Next time I'll shed my lights on the concert the guys put up in honor of the magical instrument. 4 stars out of 5!