STRAWBERRY WOOD
by Christopher Evans
There is no greater glory in rock and pop circles than being hailed as a “survivor”. Typically, the term is bestowed only on artists who have battled through changes in fashion, overcome personal demons, and yet can still minister to the faithful even as hairlines recede, joints creak and wrinkles become ravines. Most, though, are all too aware that the creative fire that set them on their way has largely burnt out. They may release the occasional album of new material, but the wise ones know it’s the hits that get the fans whooping.
After 35 years together, the Nits have certainly survived. Yet not only are they in better shape than most ageing rock stars, somehow they have also managed to avoid all of the compromises that can turn even the most idealistic and innovative performers into their own tribute band. Sure, the loyal fans still want to hear them play Tutti Ragazzi and In the Dutch Mountains. But more importantly, they’re just as keen to know what Henk Hofstede, Rob Kloet and Robert Jan Stips are going to come up with next. That’s bec
The conventional wisdom decrees that any of the above will bring about a state of self-indulgence, leading to severe contraction of the fanbase and lead to a point where the economics of making new records no longer add up. Such reasoning conveniently overlooks the fact that this was exactly the modus operandi adopted by the most successful and revered rock band there has ever been – the Beatles. Clearly, the Nits’ level of commercial success has never remotely approached that of the Fab Four. But it is this same hunger for experiment – anchored by a commitment to melody and a finely honed sense of humour – that has enabled the Nits to keep their creative fires burning brightly over a truly astonishing number of records.
It helps, of course, that all three members of the band are superb musicians and composers in their own right. Henk Hofstede is, without question, one of the world’s finest rock singers, with a unique voice that channels both the grit and the intimacy of Lennon and Costello, and whose wide-ranging lyrics have provided the heart and soul of the Nits since the very beginning, just as his paintings have graced many of their album covers. Since he joined the band full-time in 1983, classically-trained keyboard player Robert Jan Stips has added a range of orchestral colour and depth of expressiveness that brings every compositional flight of fancy within reach. Though his technique was honed as a founder of the prog-rock band Supersister at a time when virtuosity was actively encouraged, as a member of the Nits he has never allowed his formidable powers to detract from the all-importance of the song. And Rob Kloet is far more than just a drummer: he is a remarkably sensitive and inventive percussionist who adds as much tonal colour as he does rhythm. There have been only a handful of rock drummers who have evolved their own instantly recognisable style – Keith Moon, Michael Giles and Ringo Starr spring to mind – and Rob is one of them. There are also three shadowy Nits in the form of long-serving sound engineer Paul Telman, who plays a crucial role in helping the band develop the distinctive sound of each album, his brother Tom, who handles lighting and stage design, and Aad Link, the band’s manager from the mid-70’s on.
None of these individual qualities were especially evident, however, on the Nits’ self-titled and self-financed debut album, a rough and ready affair released in 1978 four years after Henk and Rob (then augmented by Alex Roelofs and Michiel Peters) first began playing together as students in Amsterdam. In fact if the band had carried on making post-punk, synth-based pop records as they did for their next three albums together, chances are that today they would be long forgotten. But the lushly textured and wildly imaginative 1983 album Omsk – the first on which Robert Jan Stips played as a full member (replacing Roelofs) rather than as producer – represented a significant break with the past. Henk remembers the pivotal moment, during a walk in the woods outside the studio where Omsk was being recorded, when he realised the time had come to put aside the “easy pop” and to aim for something more timeless, more crafted. Sure enough Omsk represented a huge leap forward and also spawned the band’s then biggest hit single in Nescio.
After the equally assured mini-album Kilo, the band made one last record with Michiel Peters. Though some felt its heavy-handed production was a step backwards, Adieu Sweet Bahnhof (1984) contained several of the band’s most beloved songs – including the ageless Parisian waltz of the title track. The often eccentric follow-up Henk (1986) saw the band recording as a trio for the first time and clearly enjoying themselves with the latest keyboard technology.
Building on this platform, the band – now augmented by bassist Joke Geraets – reached a commercial peak in 1987, with the single In the Dutch Mountains giving them their first pan-European hit. The album of the same name – recorded live in the studio – was equally well-received, and was followed by the sombre mini-album Hat (1988). Yet oddly, it was the live double album Urk (1989) that provided the band’s greatest success, eventually reaching platinum status. Although the rest of Europe was beginning to discover the Nits as they toured relentlessly, curiously – after a tentative (and well received) foray into the UK and US – their record label chose to largely ignore the English-speaking world from there on in. A strange decision given their English lyrics, but perhaps prompted by the same kind of confusion as to how they should be marketed that blunted the likes of equally hard-to-pigeonhole bands like XTC and Prefab Sprout.
The early Nineties found the Nits – once more a trio since the enforced departure of Joke Geraets – hitting a new creative peak with two remarkable albums: the fairytale psychedelia of Giant Normal Dwarf (1990) and the austerely beautiful, Philip Glass-flavoured Ting (1992), both of which rank among Henk’s favourites. In 1992 the band also recorded Hjuvi – A Rhapsody in Time with the Netherlands Radio Symphony Orchestra, a hugely ambitious work largely composed by Robert Jan Stips. From an accounting perspective, none of these were obvious ways of exploiting the bridgehead established by Urk or Dutch Mountains. But the Nits had long since made it clear that widescale success was not their primary motivation, and they can justifiably point to all three albums as containing some of their most enduring work.
That said, Henk has always insisted that while he doesn’t aspire to topping the charts, he is equally uninterested in appealing only to a small, intellectual elite. As he once said: “I’m ever so much happier when the lady next door says ‘Hey, I heard you on the radio.’ I want to be in the middle of the world with my music. We’re not some monastic order!”
When Robert Jan left in 1996 after the distinctly uneven dA dA dA (1994), the future of the band was never in doubt. Augmented by other musicians and singers, Henk and Rob recorded the darkly atmospheric Alankomaat (1997) and the sumptuously arranged Wool (2000). For their 30th anniversary, the band commemorated the year of their formation with the ebullient 1974 (2003), on which they also celebrated the return of Robert Jan. But it was with Les Nuits (2005) that the Nits really reminded the world that they were still a force to be reckoned with. Shocked by the assassination of controversial film-maker Theo Van Gogh in the street outside his Amsterdam home, Henk was moved to create a powerful trilogy of songs in The Laundry, The Pizzeria and The Key Shop that formed the heart of the album. The semi-improvisedDoing The Dishes that followed in 2008 was an altogether more upbeat affair, and proved to be one of their most popular albums.
In parallel, the individual members were by now pursuing numerous projects outside the group. Henk released the exquisite, Dutch-language solo album Het Draagbare Huis, paid homage to his beloved Leonard Cohen with the Avalanche Quartet, and collaborated on recordings and concerts with the Simon Ho Orchestra and old friends Henny Vrienten and Frank Boeijen. Robert Jan also recorded and performed solo, with his band Egotrip and with legendary comedian Freek de Jonge, as well as participating in a reunion with Supersister. Even Rob – unusually for a drummer – found ways of expanding his musical vocabulary via various collaborations and solo projects, including his all-percussion albumDrumset With Dog.
All of the above have undoubtedly helped to prevent the Nits becoming mired in routine. But the band’s principal raison d’être remains their tireless exploration of the humble pop song. As Henk puts it: “We’ve talked among ourselves for many years about recording longer works, but there are already so many possibilities contained within that basic 3 to 5 minute structure that we’ve never really felt the need. We’re like one of those artists who spend their whole lives painting the same still life, or portrait. It’s amazing how many ways you can paint a portrait and I recognise that, in a way, that’s what we’re doing – using this same, simple frame of the pop song.”
As the Nits look ahead to their 40th anniversary, parallels with the Beatles just keep on suggesting themselves. There’s the insectoid link in their very name, the numerous B-side cover versions and the fact that both bands had been together some four years before they got to make their first proper record. (Enough time for most bands to give up and go their separate ways). Then, most significant of all, there’s the word Henk uses without any prompting whatsoever to describe their new album. “Beatlesque”. And its title: Strawberry Wood.
Thanks largely to Oasis and their infinite variations on a theme of Paperback Writer’s b-side, Rain, over the last 15 years Beatlesque has somehow become synonymous with a familiar blend of dirgeful guitars, nasal vocals and lysergic drums. For the Nits, however, Beatlesque means something entirely different. It means enshrining melody, never settling on a single formula, and always remaining open to possibilities– the same openness that led the Fabs to conquer and colonise the new soundworlds of A Day in the Life, Within You, Without You or I Am the Walrus. And yet they have put these principles into action while remaining part of an industry whose central tenet often seems to be one of closing down possibilities, of corralling its artists down a single channel – the one marked ‘more of the same’.
I suspect that even Henk, Rob and Robert Jan don’t quite know how they arrived at this enviable, almost Woody Allen-like, position of independence. Henk speaks in terms of achieving “balance” and “simplicity” in their working methods – contributory factors perhaps, but hardly a bankable formula for success. You might argue that someone like Neil Young enjoys a similar degree of autocracy, but then everyone at his record company has a rough idea what a new Neil Young album will sound like. With the Nits, everything is always up for grabs.
This makes the Nits very unusual indeed at a time when most pop and rock music consists of shameless permutations of the tried and tested –whether in the name of commerce, irony or post-modernism. For the most loyal of their fans, they represent a direct line to a time before innovation and popularity became mutually exclusive concepts: that all-too-brief period when teenagers and milkmen alike could whistleStrawberry Fields Forever without even realising that its creators had just turned the pop rulebook into confetti.
In short, 35 years on, the Nits are not just surviving. They can still be relied upon to surprise and delight us with their newest work. How many other bands of a similar vintage can say the same?
photo by Mirjam Schuurman
