Herman Brood - Musical Career

Musical Career

Herman Brood was born in Zwolle, and started playing the piano at age 12. He founded beat band The Moans in 1964, which would later become Long Tall Ernie and the Shakers. Brood was asked to play with Cuby and the Blizzards, but was removed by management when the record company discovered he used drugs. For a number of years Brood was in jail (for dealing LSD), or abroad, and had a number of short-term engagements (with The Studs, the Flash & Dance Band, Vitesse).

In 1976, Brood started his own group, Herman Brood & his Wild Romance, (and started work with photographer Anton Corbijn) initially with Ferdi Karmelk (guitar), Gerrit Veen (bass), Peter Walrecht (drums), and Ellen Piebes and Ria Ruiters (vocals). They played the club and bar circuit, first in Groningen, In 1977 the band released their first album, Street.

The band now played all over the Netherlands, playing as many gigs as possible. And Herman's drug habit became public domain: In 1977 for instance the Wild Romance played a gig in a highschool in Almelo, the Christelijk Lyceum; during the break Brood was caught on the toilet taking heroine or speed (there are different reports on the type of drug, but it is a wellknown story amongst former students), the rest of the concert was cancelled, and this also was the last time a rockconcert took place at this school for many years.

They are still best known for their second album, Shpritsz—a play on the German word for syringe—from 1978. This album contained Brood anthems like "Dope Sucks," "Rock & Roll Junkie," and their first Dutch hit single, "Saturday Night." The band went through many personnel changes over the years; the best-known formation was Freddy Cavalli (bass), Danny Lademacher (guitar) (later replaced with David Hollestelle), and Cees 'Ani' Meerman (drums). A frequent contributor was Bertus Borgers (saxophone).

Brood's outspoken statements in the press about sex and drug use brought him into the Dutch public arena even more than his music. He was romantically involved with the German singer Nina Hagen, with whom he appeared in the 1979 film Cha-Cha. He is reputed to be the subject of her song "Herrmann Hiess Er" (English title "Herrmann Was His Name") from the 1979 Unbehagen album, a song about a drug addict. Brood relished the media attention and became the most famous hard drug user in the Netherlands. "It is quite common for an artist to use drugs, but not for him to tell everybody. I admit that it scared me that my popularity could make people start using drugs", he once said in an interview.

In the summer of 1979, Brood tried to enter the American market, where he toured as a support-act for The Kinks, The Cars, and Foreigner. A re-recorded version of Saturday Night peaked at number 35 in the Billboard Hot 100, but the big break Brood hoped for didn't happen. When he returned to the Netherlands in October 1979, his band had begun to fall apart, and soon his popularity went downhill. Go Nutz, the album Brood had recorded while in the States, and the movie Cha-Cha, which finally premiered in December 1979, were considered artistic failures, even though Go Nutz produced three charting singles in the Netherlands and the Cha Cha soundtrack attained platinum status. The 1980 album Wait a Minute... is a minor success, but the follow-up albums Modern Times Revive (1981) and Frisz & Sympatisz (1982) fail to make the Dutch album charts.

Brood continued to record throughout the 1980s and had a few hits—a top-ten single, "Als Je Wint" with Henny Vrienten, and a minor hit with a reggae song, "Tattoo Song," but he spent more and more time on his art work. At the end of the 80s he made a comeback of sorts; Yada Yada (1988), produced by George Kooymans, was well-received, and he toured Germany with a renewed Wild Romance (which saw the return of Danny Lademacher). In 1990, he won the BV Popprijs, one of the highest Dutch awards for popular music, and recorded Freeze with Clarence Clemons of the E Street Band and Tejano accordion player Flaco Jiménez. A live "best of" album, Saturday Night Live, appeared in 1992. His fiftieth birthday, in 1996, was celebrated with a show in Paradiso, Amsterdam, and the album (of duets) was released the same year.