Rinus Gerritsen
Biography
Rinus Gerritsen (born The Hague, Netherlands, 9 August 1946) is a Dutch bass player and songwriter, best known as the bassist in Golden Earring (1961-2021). Gerritsen and guitarist, George Kooymans (1948-2025), founded the band as The Tornado's in the fall of 1961.
In the early years, when the band was called The Golden Earrings (the plural 's' was dropped in 1969) Gerritsen and Kooymans wrote many of the band's songs together. Dutch top ten singles such as That Day (1966), In My House (1967) and I've Just Lost Somebody (1968) were Gerritsen/Kooymans compositions.
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From 1968 onwards, however, Kooymans became the band's main songwriter, alone or as a duo with frontman/lyricist, Barry Hay, who joined the group in 1967. Post-1968 Gerritsen only contributed the occasional album track or odd B-side to the Golden Earring catalogue. 1989's power ballad Distant Love is a rare example of a post-1968 Golden Earring single written by Gerritsen.
1979 saw the release of Gerritsen & Van Dijk, a one-off collaboration of Rinus Gerritsen and Michel van Dijk, the frontman of Dutch rock band Alquin. The album was also released in North America, its title 'internationalised' into Garrison & Van Dyke.
In 2013 Gerritsen announced the launch of his new solo project, Rinus' Garage. Record Store Day 2014 (19 April 2014) saw the release of the first physical Rinus' Garage release: a 7-inch vinyl single with re-recordings of two Gerritsen-penned numbers from the Golden Earring catalogue: The Wall Of Dolls (featuring Triggerfinger) and Annie.
A second Rinus' Garage release, a single entitled 'Live Up to Your Love' (featuring Berget Lewis), popped up on streaming platforms such as Spotify on 11 December 2025. Rinus' Garage now appears to be the name of the project (perhaps a future album title), but the music is credited to Rinus Gerritsen, who will continue to release stand-alone singles.
Biography text from Last.fm, available under CC BY-SA.