“The pivotal one that stands out for me was seeing Elton John on the Great Lawn in Central Park on Sept 13th, 1980. This was actually my first rock concert, my mom took me – I was ten years old.”
“It was a gorgeous day and one of the things that I remember the most vividly… was how fucking LOUD it was when we were approaching the park/concert area. The sound was reverberating super loudly off the buildings on 5th Avenue, and I remember actually getting goosebumps from this particularly. I’ll never forget that! And in terms of the show itself, although there were some quieter numbers throughout, I remember overall it often being pretty high energy ROCK. He did this kind of humorous boogie-woogie piano solo/vamp at the end of Benny, I remember that vividly too (in the video it’s at around 20 mins in.) Overall I was insanely excited and played “air drums” throughout the whole thing, wondering if anybody could maybe tell that I was “a drummer” (or at least that I was gonna be one, etc.)
I think intuitively, at that point I was already gearing up to want to seriously learn to play music – and within 18 months of it, I would start actually playing the drums. But this show was crucial in my musical history, as my mind just got fully fucking blown that day and it paved the way for all my musical obsessions… which continue, unabated!”
Netherlands released their latest album Hope Porn on February 9th via Records And Tapes Records. You can buy it here.