VELVET THUNDER

…this is the best band in the world – especially for a guitar player like me. You’re like the lead vocalist. Thijs is important but this is really like a guitar band, so you’re like the front man in a sense, as a guitar player, y’know, which is kind of unique – so for me this is like the best band a guitar player could find himself in. Definitely. – Menno Gootjes

Live Photos: Les Linyard

To prog fans worldwide, Focus need no introduction. Coming onto the scene and making their name in the early seventies with their second album, Moving Waves, which brought them international recognition, Focus have carved out a more than respectable niche for themselves in prog with their epic compositions and, in particular, with their virtuoso musicianship. Still led by Thijs van Leer, Focus are a four-piece instrumental band, a collision of hard rock, classical music and jazz, with music which is often long on ideas but short on words. Similar to John Mayall’s Bluesbreakers and The Yardbirds, Focus have been blessed with having great guitarists in their line-up, firstly in Jan Akkerman until his departure in 1976, after which the band entered a lengthy hiatus, then briefly with Niels van der Steenhoven, who recorded Focus 9/New Skin with them, but, for the past fifteen years, Menno Gootjes has been axeman in the band and has succeeded in making many long-time fans forgetting Akkerman was ever in the band with his coruscating style of play and his ability to make Focus classics sound contemporary.

Few in this country had ever heard of him when he first became a full time member of Focus, so I began by asking how was it he came to join the band?
‘I started playing in bands when I was 15, and when I was 17 I got a record deal with a band called Moon Sorrow. I was then in a hard rock/metal band for a while who made a couple of demos, but then I came to the conservatoire in Amsterdam when I was 18, studying jazz and playing some studio gigs, and when I was 21 I was picked up by Thijs (van Leer), and I’ve now been playing with him since then, so a long time,’ he laughs. ‘I was touring with him back in the day, which led to the first Focus reunion in 1997, which was with the previous bass player Bert (Ruiter) and their first drummer, Hans (Cleuver). This didn’t last too long but I was already a member of Focus for a while. I was playing sessions for a while, when Focus asked me back to replace the former guitarist Niels (van der Steenhoven) who’d played on the reunion album, Focus 9. He did it for five years but then he quit and he asked me to replace him for a couple of shows in England in October 2010 … already 14 years ago … because he had some personal problems and he asked me to be on standby, and a couple of weeks later, I was asked to go over to Southampton for a couple of shows. I hadn’t prepared anything, man’, he laughed again, ‘but I still remembered a couple of pieces, so I quickly learnt some stuff and flew in next day to play to a packed house at The Brook. I was quite tense as this was actually the first time I played with Pierre (van der Linden, drums) which was mind blowing. I really liked those first shows, we did London, the Jazz café, really cool, a great gig. After returning to Holland I thought it was all over, but Niels did one more tour and then quit, and we’d all had such a good time during the replacement tour, so they asked me back. For the first time I could tour on a worldwide level, a different level, so the world really stared to open up for me at this time, which was great.’

Back in the day, when he was learning guitar, who were his major influences, I wondered? ‘My first guitar influence was Jimi Hendrix … but I just studied everything, man, y’know? I was just crazy, I was practising all the time, already making records and writing music. Hendrix was the first but I think the biggest influences on me, for my style, were Jimi Hendrix and Joe Satriani, but there were others as well.’

What was it about the music of Focus which made joining them on a full time basis such an attractive proposition? ‘First of all, I’m a pro musician, and if I like the music I get involved with it’, he explained. ‘But, in the case of Focus, it was such amazing original music, I wanted to be involved. Thijs is such an amazing composer, and he and Jan (Akkerman) wrote some great stuff, and the thing is you can be totally free on your instrument, all the time. There’s no restrictions on how you want to play a piece of music by Focus so, live, you can do whatever you want to do with it. It’s kind of more like a jazz approach rather than a full blown rehearsed rock band because we never rehearse.’ Really? You don’t rehearse? – I asked. ‘No, we don’t, we know how to play and if you know the music, you know the music, and you just start playing. I mean, maybe, one time, when Udo (Pannakeet, bass) joined the band in 2016, we had a little rehearsal with him to learn some pieces … but there’s so much improvisational stuff going on; it’s what we do, it’s never the same, which is what makes us so great. But you have to be able to carry it musically and technically, of course, and if you can do this, then this is the best band in the world – especially for a guitar player like me. You’re like the lead vocalist. Thijs is important but this is really like a guitar band, so you’re like the front man in a sense, as a guitar player, y’know, which is kind of unique – so for me this is like the best band a guitar player could find himself in. Definitely’, he emphasised.

So, for a song the band’s played a great many times, like Hocus Pocus, this isn’t rehearsed, you just come on and play it? ‘You know the piece?’ I certainly do. ‘It’s like we’re all trained musicians. I mean, back then, I had to learn the piece when I was 21, but you listen to the track and you find it out … you listen to the track, you learn it and then you can play it. It’s almost like the soundcheck can be the little rehearsal, and the first show of a tour could also be a first rehearsal .. but if you know the music you can play it, and this counts for everybody in the band, y’know? Musicians don’t have to be in the practice room every week.’

Mention Focus to many rock fans and inevitably they’ll be known for just that song, but there’s much to Focus than just the one song, isn’t there? ‘Yes, there is. I think the people who know music, who really know music, know there’s more to Focus than just Hocus Pocus. It’s those people who’ve stayed with the band, the people who come to the concerts, they’re our main audience. I don’t think anyone comes just to hear Hocus Pocus, it’s just not that kind of band anymore. The success Focus had back then made them play stadiums … a different age and a different level of success because of hits like Sylvia, and they had bands like Steely Dan opening up for them. This was back then, but now, we have our own audience and it’s great to see we’ve built up our own reputation now, and people come to see us for this reason, especially in Holland when there are more people coming every time. There’s more to Focus than just the one hit, and people know this now. We get good receptions everywhere we go.’

So, I assumed Menno would agree Focus are still part of the modern idiom, a contemporary band with something to say, rather than just being a ‘heritage’ act, playing nostalgic music for the oldies circuit. ‘If you listen to our new record, Focus 12, you’ll hear we’re a very current band because it’s all new music. I’m very proud of the latest record, it’s a solid good sounding album with lots of beautiful stuff on it, and if I listen to the record myself, I don’t hear a heritage act, I hear a very current band. Onstage it’s a different matter, and it doesn’t matter what people want to call it so long as they show up and enjoy the music. It’s interesting but not really so important what people call it.’ But Focus didn’t play anything from the new album when they appeared at the recent New Day festival, did they? ‘No, we didn’t, and you were expecting to hear Fjord Focus, weren’t you?’, he laughed, ‘but we only had a short time to play, an hour, but that’s festivals … normally we just play endlessly, y’know? Anything up to two and a half hours sometimes.’

A speculative question: Thijs van Leer is closely identified with being key to Focus, but he’s now 75 and if, for whatever reason, he was no longer available, would the band continue without him? ‘No, not if you ask me, no’, he was adamant. ‘If you don’t have Thijs or Pierre, then you don’t have Focus … without Thijs there is no Focus. It’s his band; it was his vision which started it back in the day, accompanying other artists as a trio – it’s his thing. Without that crazy mad professor, there is no Focus.’ Menno stops for a moment. ‘It would be just crazy to call yourself Focus without Thijs van Leer, really – and without Pierre you also wouldn’t have that sound. Thijs is my musical father, y’know, I’ve learnt more from him than from anyone else. As a band, we’re so intertwined, y’know, and actually right now we’re playing really good because we’ve spent so much time out on the road, doing shows and concerts – so if anybody falls away, it’d be very hard to go on because, Thijs and Pierre? You just can’t replace them, they’re legendary. It’ll happen one day and it’ll be sad but it’s also life. They’ve been on the road for such a long time, it’s like Parliament saying they’re gonna continue without George Clinton, which’d be stupid. I don’t get the bands who only have the one original member, a keyboard player or someone, and call it the same band, I don’t get it.’

This then became a brief discussion about how one of the bands Focus toured the USA with a couple of months back, Martin Turner’s Wishbone Ash, were legally prohibited from calling themselves Wishbone Ash. ‘There’s a whole backstory there about fighting over the name and a lawsuit, which Martin Turner lost the case and wasn’t allowed to use the same name anymore so had to call it something else … but he’s still playing, man, he’s still touring and they’re a great gang of guys. We had a great time with those guys touring.’

In his early days with Focus, Menno was inevitably compared to Jan Akkerman, who was the first Dutch guitar hero. Does he still get compared with Jan and did he feel the comparisons were fair? ‘No, not any more’, he came back with. ‘But I don’t care about comparisons. I’m not worried about it and I don’t think about it. I mean, I’m very flattered to be compared to him, I would never have thought this when I was first starting out, and in Holland they still ask me this question sometimes, but the second time I was asked back to Focus, I also had something inside of me which said ‘I’m really going to grab this and I’m going to own it’ in a way which feels like my own. It was a conscious decision and, if you can find the courage to come from there, it doesn’t matter what people think about comparing us. I’m the guitar player now and I do it my way and it’s working and nobody leaves’, he laughs. ‘People love it, or that’s what I get back, and if there’s a couple of people who think it’s all fake, well, that’s fine too. I can’t be busy with this because I have to play. But, as I say, it’s a huge honour but I’m not stepping into his footsteps, I’m stepping into Niels’, so how does it feel to replace Jan Akkerman? I’m following several other good guitarists, many of whom seem to have been forgotten about, but they played as well, not just him.’

Focus have been around quite some time now, so I wondered how much unreleased stuff, onstage or the studio, they had in the vaults which might see the light of day in the future? ‘Maybe, at some point. There’s a lot of, y’know, pieces of music which were recorded but were never brought out. They were recorded for certain albums and they’d be interesting to listen to, but I don’t think we should do this right now because there’s usually a reason why a piece of music doesn’t end up on an album, either because it didn’t fit the record, or we didn’t play it too good, or the line up changed soon afterwards, and the band’s now different … or a composition might be really good but it just doesn’t work out. But I don’t know about the classic line-up when Jan was with them because that was different publishing, different record company and all that, which is dealt with by different people.’

I mentioned to Menno, many fans in the UK consider the current line-up of Focus to be THE classic line-up as more fans here have now seen the current band than the one with Akkerman. ‘Well, I’ll take that as a compliment and I’m thankful for this because it means I’m on the right track.’ So, what does the future hold for Focus? ‘We’re back again in the UK in November and again in the next spring. England’s our main home, we always like to play there.’

Get your tickets as soon as you can folks, they are going to be a fantastic run of shows…