Radar Love Twilight Zone Golden Earring

Radar Love Album: Moontan (1973)
Twightlight Zone Album: Cut (1983)
by Golden Earring

Before you could send a text message or call someone in their car, there was no way to communicate to a driver - unless you had a certain telepathic love that could convey from a distance your desire to be with that person, something you might call - Radar Love. In this song, the guy has been driving all night, but keeps pushing the pedal because he just knows that his baby wants him home.

Golden Earring was founded 1961 and into the '00s was still playing with the same lineup since 1970, doing 100+ shows a year in The Netherlands, Belgium and Germany. The group is from The Netherlands, where this was a #1 hit. They had only one other hit. It didn't come until 1982, with "Twilight Zone."

Like many of Golden Earring's songs, this began with the title and grew from there. Originally intended only as an album track, it turned out to be the only cut on their US debut album Moontan that they could whittle down to a single for radio. It became their showstopper at concerts, and provided a striking moment for their drummer Cesar Zuiderwijk, who would take a few steps back and leap at the drum kit near the end of the song.

The song is all in 4/4 time, and the original tempo is around 100 BPM. It's a very clever arrangement: the intro is on the beat of each bar at the start. The shuffle on the snare is semi triplets which give the illusion of the song speeding up. You have to quantize drum machines to a 6th beat. Consequently the chorus is doubled up to give the impression that the tempo has speeded up to 200 BPM. You have to transpose the 4/4 bar so it can be played with in 1 beat of the bar. It does take a bit of lateral thinking to get your head around the math, but the song is all 4/4 at 100 BPM.

This song is featured in the movie Detroit Rock City, about four teenage boys and their struggle to finally see the band KISS play live.

The website radar-love.net details lots of info on the use and abuse of this song. It has been covered over 250 times: Notable versions include Bryan Adams, U2, Crowded House, Def Leppard, R.E.M. and Carlos Santana. It has also been used in TV shows The Simpsons, The X-Files, Beverly Hills, 90210 and My Name Is Earl. Movie usages include The Break-Up, Pushing Tin and Wayne's World 2.

White Lion covered "Radar Love" in 1989 when they were still an imposing presence in the jungle of hair metal. The band had big hits with "When The Children Cry" and "Wait" from their 1987 album Pride, but had to make their next album, Big Game, under duress, writing it in just two weeks.

"We needed half a year off, we needed hair treatments for our abused hair, we needed just to breathe," lead singer Mike Tramp said. "We needed the vocal cords to relax, stuff like that. We didn't get that."

Their version of "Radar Love" was the second single from the album, and it stalled at #59 in the US. The band released just one more album before splitting up in 1992.

UK radio station Planet Rock carried out a survey of their listeners in 2011 regarding their favourite tracks for in-car listening. This song came out top with Deep Purple's "Highway Star" the runner-up and AC/DC's "Highway To Hell" in third place.

The line, "The radio's playing some forgotten song, Brenda Lee's coming on strong" is a reference to the 1966 Brenda Lee song "Coming On Strong," which made #11 in the US.

Right out front, note that this song named "Twilight Zone" has nothing to do with Manhattan Transfer's "Twilight Zone." One is not a cover of the other. This is the "Twilight Zone" written by Golden Earring's lead guitarist George Kooymans. He was inspired not by the famous TV series of the same name, but by the Robert Ludlum novel The Bourne Identity, which would later be turned into a popular movie.

The song and especially the video tell the story of an espionage agent, on the run from enemy spies before being cornered. The cover of the album Cut (from which this was the only single) shows a scene repeated in the video, of a bullet slicing through the Jack of Diamonds playing card. The card is supposed to represent the rogue agent.

Interestingly, there was at least one episode of the original Twilight Zone TV series which was also a spy drama. Namely, episode #149 from season five, "The Jeopardy Room," is about a Soviet KGB agent who wants to defect, but he ends up pinned in a hotel room under surveillance from a hit man and his accomplice, who sadistically make him play a game for his life. And it's one of the few episodes where a gun is fired - "When the bullet hits the bone," indeed!

Get ready for a nostalgia blast: This song was also used as the theme to the Twilight Zone pinball machine. This was part of Bally Midway's series of "Superpin" arcade pinball games that were based on TV shows - other pinball games in the series were based on Star Trek and The Addams Family.

Fittingly, this song is also sometimes used as bumper music for the radio show Coast to Coast AM, the all-night paranormal talk show which also more frequently uses "A Hazy Shade of Winter."

The video is yet another whose early airplay on MTV paid off. In MTV Ruled the World - The Early Years of Music Video, Rick Springfield talks about the MTV Effect: "The difference that I saw was, before MTV, you'd have to be on like your third successful album before people started recognizing you at the airport. But once MTV hit, you had that one hit single, and you were as recognizable as if you were around for three or four years. It was so instant. That was the power of television.

George Jan Kooymans (born 11 March 1948, The Hague, Netherlands) is a Dutch guitarist and vocalist. He is best known for his work with the Dutch group Golden Earring. Kooymans wrote "Twilight Zone", the group's only Top 10 Pop Single on the US Billboard Hot 100, which hit No. 1 on the Billboard Top Album Tracks chart.

Kooymans also wrote and produced for other artists. In 2017 and 2018 he released two albums as a member of Vreemde Kostgangers (Strange Boarders), a Dutch-language supergroup he formed with Henny Vrienten (bass player of the band Doe Maar) and singer-songwriter Boudewijn de Groot.

Kooymans is married to Melanie Gerritsen, the younger sister of Golden Earring bassist Rinus Gerritsen. Kooymans primarily played a Gibson Les Paul, a Gretsch 6119, a Fender Stratocaster, a Gibson Marauder, a Gibson SG, a Yamaha SG2000, several BC Rich guitars, a double cutaway Gibson Melody Maker and a Gibson Firebird, with his primary amps being a Roland Jazz Chorus, a Vox AC30 amp, and a Fender Twin Reverb.

In February, 2021, Kooymans announced that he was suffering from amyotrophic lateral sclerosis (ALS) and would retire. Shortly afterward, Golden Earring announced they would disband.
the bit I did at the beginning made the video 11:11:11