#simplon

Ansichtskarte

6202 Col du Simplon (2005 m) Hôtel Simplon-Blick

Green Day in Simplon, Groningen 2nd January 1992

“Ton van der Werf lived in the Lewenborg district of the city. He had many contacts and was busy booking concerts here and there.' 'He got a call from a band from America asking if he could arrange something. That turned out to be Green Day. They came this way and were going to visit Groningen first.'

Van der Werf remembers it well. In the early nineties he was studying in Groningen when the American band came his way through that one phone call. “They were 17, 18 years old and they were on an 11-week European tour,” he says. 'Now, but also at that time, that was bizarrely long. Normally it is a round of four to five weeks. With a super rickety bus that broke down in Leeuwarden. I think a key was broken off.'

The band members stayed the night in Lewenborg pending the bookings that Van der Werf could arrange. 'There was never any money. They had a maximum of 250 Guilders left over from the Simplon show. For example, if I put on a little show in a squat-place, they would sleep at my house. So did Green Day. They were three nice boys. The drummer was already hyper and a bit crazy then.'

'On stage you saw fresh guys with a nice show and interaction with the audience. That's important to break through. At the time nobody was surprised that they broke through.' Well, no one? Van der Werf has a different view about the concert. “They were very rickety. In Simplon it was funny, nothing more. Their album Dookie was released in 1994. I went to Belgium with a band NRA and that's where we came across Green Day. There they said: yes, it's going well, we've just sold 1 million records in America.'

“We were really suprised by that. You know them as a rickety band that can just hold a guitar and three years later they have sold a million records. When they started playing, I got it. It was a well-oiled machine. They toured Europe eight to nine months a year, then you become a good band.'

A short review was written in Simplon Magazine about Green Day's show. ‘What an opener of the new year in the cafe! Three boys from San Francisco who swear by primal melodic punk pop and a good dose of enthusiasm; the always working recipe for a very pleasant evening. With borrowed instruments here and there, there was a nice pounding, and the full house couldn't get enough of it. Also note the lp 39 smooth.

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