Thijs Van Leer was a genius. If he were English he would easily be in the pantheon of the greatest progressive rock names of all time, alongside legends like David Gilmour, Roger Waters, Ian Anderson, Keith Emerson, Rick Wakeman, Jon Anderson or Peter Gabriel. Anyway, I consider him magnificent.
Van Leer is not english, but he is in the pantheon of the greatest progressive rock names of the entire world. And Focus as a band too. The most finest progressive rock band.
Hello Rolling Stone magazine..wake up and listen to this incredable group..Jan Akkerman in the guitar list..probably under Keith Richards and Lou Reed😅
I am from the US and I became aware of Focus in the early '70's. I was in the third or fourth grade at the time. I was blown away buy Hocus Pocus!!!!!!! Heard it on mainstream radio stations. Saw them on late night concert shows on one of the major networks of the time. I consider them way ahead of their time and influential to many successful acts to follow, especially the instrumental guitarists that would follow!
Dave, In some ways that's true as only Hocus Pocus got any air play & most didn't take the time to listen to what they really were capable of. Saw them on their only US tour in 73 at Merriweather Post Pavilion in MD. Peter Frampton with his new band Frampton's Camel opened the show & Focus ended up playing for nearly 3 hours for a crowd half the size of the venue .but those who came knew just who they were & what a great show they put on. Akkerman is still one of the worlds best modern Rock players plus the man can play anything with strings & any style he wants . They were well known here but only by folks with good ears.
66 here - your not alone! Recorded this as an audio track when it hit the TV - my class mates thought I'd lost my mind, well, yeah. FOCUS ROCKS !! Just found this about 2 months ago - somewhere I have the original TV recording on 7" Reel to Reel. Think I need to get another unit.
00:02 - Hocus Pocus 06:13 - Hamburger Concerto 20:50 - No Hang Ups I have a cassette copy from when this originally aired. I parked the cassette recorder in front of the TV and hoped for the best. Amazing how I can now watch this great band at any time, from any computer.
I had to bookmark this one when I found it - I was 16 when it was on TV first time, recorded with a 7" reel to reel stereo recorder, mind BLOWN - I'm 66 now and still listen to this when I re-discovered it. :)
My God, these guys were so good. Plenty of power and beauty in this music. Akkerman and Van Leer were phenomenally gifted musicians. Great to see them having fun in this clip. Focus were an amazing band. Great to see them perform in their heyday. A stunning display of prog rock at it's finest.
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I've seen them perform many times in the 70's and seen Jan Akkerman play in several concerts. I even see Jan driving by my house several times on his Harley. He is still performing and still one of the best guitarists in the universe.
08:52 - What Jan does right here.....that descending -> ascending line.......still makes me smile 47 years later. And I love the sound of his guitar thru those grinding Leslie cabinets.
Jan inspired me as a 14-year old guitarist and still inspires me at 63. I play well but still cannot emulate so much of the gypsy/jazz/classical/rock/blues/modal hybrid he effortlessly creates. And he’s a virtuoso lute player. Huh? I’ve gone to Holland to meet him and see him perform several times over the past 15 years and his passion still burns in his 70s. He’s a bit eccentric for sure but it comes with the musical genius. A true legend of the guitar and certainly a gift to my life.
This was one of the performances that shaped my musical understanding back when I was a 12-year-old, and I'm beside myself watching it unfold again. But I remember that there was also a magnificent performance of Birth on the night, and I'm sorry that wasn't included for whatever reason.
@@CuTLeR331 I'll respectfully disagree with you, lol. I also think this is the best version, followed closely by the one in the NPO presentation. This one is more energetic, although Akkerman's solo in the other is definitely better.
@@CuTLeR331 other than studio version this is only one I heard live. If you know others out there,man let me know I'd love to hear others,I'm digging this man.
@@rickweigle5559 , this is definitely not the only one live version of "Hamburger Concerto" on youtube. There's a video of a live version of Hamburger Concerto with Van Leer wearing a jacket with epaulettes on his shoulders..... Or do you mean that is an overdubbed video??.... No-o-o-o-o-o, i don't think so. Although i am beginning to doubt it now)))
I agree....imo this is the better version of HC! Stunning in fact!! Wish the current lineup would tackle it!! The whole band , including Colin Allen , is on fire!!
So much amazing music came from the Netherlands. Ahora Mazda, Brainbox, Finch, Pantheon, Trace - just to name a few. I've amassed over 130,000 albums to date and I still discover bands I've never heard of. Although the RU-vid algorithm can be quite random at times with its suggestions - I love the journeys of discovery I have been sent on when looking at the recommendations that appear in the columns whilst I am watching things. I can't believe I was over 50 before I heard of Eloy for example. RU-vid is like the worlds best music library.
What a treasure! Never saw this clip before. I was there in the early seventies in the Netherlands and this very much reminds me of the concerts in those days. Thanks!
I am the guitar player of Huntress in the late 80's. A neo classical shredder and loved opera. This is so amazing. This is beyond talent. Just my opinion
Questi grandissimi musicisti di mezzo secolo fa mi hanno lasciato letteralmente a bocca aperta. Conoscevo i Focus, li ho sempre apprezzati, ma in questo filmato ho potuto sentire e vedere quanto siano stati sottovalutati. 👏👏👏
the band I was playing guitar in held their breath when this episode aired....we were playing several of their songs (or attempting to) at this time...an amazing band that will never be matched.
These guys have inspired me to eat better and exercise more. I'm trying to see if it's possible to watch this so much that I fail to be amazed, and if I only live 15 or 20 more years, there is no way in hell that will be enough time.
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Van Leer was (is?) freakishly talented. No one quite like him. And Akkerman is freakish too; he was a bit sloppy, but fast as hell. (I don’t mean sloppy in a bad way-Jimi was sloppy too.) He attacked that fretboard like a berserker, but then he’d pick up a lute and play something gorgeous and delicate from the 16th century. Great bass and drums too. My fav Dutch band, by far.
Jan is a guitar genius and one thing that makes him unique among guitarists who are rockers. That is because he told me himself that his two favorite guitarists are Django and Wes. (Django Reinhardt and Wes Montgomery) Jan has a very open mind and utilizes musical styles from the Baroque and Classical periods as well as being influenced and inspired by the jazz masters. His technique is also much richer than most rock n roll guitarists because since he really absorbed and listened to jazz greats like Miles and the bebop greats, his lines are much more clever and thoughtful than many rock guitarists. His speed is something else - I have no idea how he developed such speed and fluency but it is incredible. One of the most amazing things about Jan to me is his sound. He can make a guitar sing, wail and practically talk!! He is still one of the greatest and he is on top of the pyramid, musically speaking. His playing has so much depth and richness no matter what he's playing.
I’ve listened to Ackerman for years and I would never say he is sloppy. His timing is immaculate, and his solos in the studio version of Hocus Pocus are incredible. However what I find is that he is very unpredictable, especially when watching the live shows, and here you can see it at the end of Hocus Pocus, as the band does not know what he is going to do. I would also comment that during Eruption, that otherwise perfect piece of music is marred twice by very loud feedback from Akkerman’s amplifier. The only way they would have left this in is because the tracks were being recorded live, and the feedback was so loud it was bleeding through into the other microphones and could not be covered up. Given a choice between re-recording the entire track or leaving it in, they chose to leave it, so it must have been that good overall. But I’m sure they gave him shit for it.
Most likely written below, but... the reason for the wonderfully insane tempo was a tribute to a Midnight Special performance when the band refused to shorten the song to make the time slot, so Van Leer determined that this tempo would fit the slot. Amazing, amazing, amazing. About 50% faster than the studio version.
Maybe but I've never seen any live version slow. Songs often are played fast live, but I'm not denying it's a good story either way. I was in a small local band and the first time we played a "real stage", Peabody's in CLE, I can remember when the first song started, the guitarist played the riff twice as fast. When finished the singer said, "and we could not have played that song any faster!". So it happens. But still ... maybe you are right. Enjoying this set immensely though!
If I was a guitar player, I would've tried to copy Jan Akkerman. So great. I was a keyboard player that worshipped Thijs Van Leer. Just thinking outside the box.... His records weren't so much theatrical as this presentation. Today he is still playing with the New Skin Tour and still kickin ass....
¡¡Genios!! De las mejores bandas del progresivo de todos los tiempos. Thijs van Leer, genio entre los genios. Jan Akkerman, ni hablar. Bert Ruiter y Colin Allen, con una solidez tremenda (aunque se extraña al maestro Pierre van der Linden). ¡¡Alucinantes!!
in 1974,i was on drums in a local band in a puny town near Niagara Falls,Canada..we did ONLY what we wanted and played ONLY what we enjoyed performing..and were DAMN good at all we did for the time .. we were a prog rock band and covered numbers by Genesis,Yes,Gentle Giant,PFM,several others and Focus..along with a good deal of our own original material.. and we NAILED everything we did because the other musicians,looking back at those times, were extraordinary in that myself AND them could actually perform such numbers..at the time,prog rock was the in thing, and we did manage to get gigs in the surrounding area...some appreciated the band..some at least appreciated the musicianship that went into doing the material by the bands that we chose to do...before we eventually called it quits,we learned and NAILED "Hamburger Concerto".. in its entirety..took an entire set to perform...seeing this video of Focus doing "Hamburger Concerto" brought back enough memories of those incredible times that i shed a few tears...there WILL never be a time again like the 70s from 1970 to 1976.. a time when music MATTERED.. and bands and artists did what pleased THEM...not what was "popular" at the time...and they were true to themselves in what they did,wrote,recorded,and performed..the band i mentioned that we had at the time was called "Hesperus"...and a salvaged remastered cassette recording we made from late 1973 of us doing OUR original material is on my channel here on RU-vid... and THAT brings back memories of a sweet bygone time in 1974... that will NEVER be repeated in the same way ever again. >>>> the link ru-vid.com/video/%D0%B2%D0%B8%D0%B4%D0%B5%D0%BE-N3PhvuVbB8g.html
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Thanks for uploading this. I never missed a Kirshner show and remember this one. Jan playing faster than humanly possible @ 1:56. I'm surprised he didn't injure his left hand, looking back @ it almost 50 years later.
that's how the show started but this actually was the encore. The first track was Birth, but they pretty much did for each show, like Golden Earring. This was also the first time I heard and saw UFO and I was floored and instantly became a fan.
Thank you for posting this! This was one of the first DKRCs I saw. First time seeing Focus and UFO live was a real treat. The next Saturday I bought Live at the Rainbow and Hamburger Concerto. This was shot in Long Beach at the LB Auditorium in late '74, the usual place for DKRC shows. I think it was broadcast in early '75. I still have a cassette with both bands from the show that I taped off the TV. I hope more DKRC shows with this VQ will show up on YT. Next one that would be great to see is with another Dutch band, Golden Earring from Moontan tour. There is a video from the show but of rather dodgy quality and very truncated Big Tree Blue Sea, definitely a highlight where Barry Hay plays the flute and song goes on for about 10 mins.
I bought on a 2e hands market a LP of Jan Akkerman with "Piétons" on it. After google I came here on YT and I saw Thijs van Leer, an artist that my father had in his assortment. I saw the man Thijs van Leer as a reformed stiffhead with a transverse flute and with stiffly raked classical flute melodies. Was I wrong! A dozen Biebers can suck a point on the technically trained vocals alone. His timings and the right Hammond sound.... and what a genius band this is. 1974...i was only 5 :(. Same feeling that I had with Earth@Fire
Colin Allen on drums instead of Pierre van den Linden, Focus was already cracking down in 1974. Jan Akkerman couldnt stand van Leers ''"'singing"' no more. Greetings from Holland Stan
