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entertainment">“I still think a lot about him, and I also dream about him,” Jansz told presenter Willemijn Veenhoven. “I dream that we have to perform, and that I have lost everything. It always has to do with performance.”
entertainment">Jansz founded the band Doe Maar in 1978. But the big success only came when Henny Vrienten joined the group as bassist and lead singer. “If Henny hadn’t come, we would have remained an underground band,” the 74-year-old musician thinks. “I also thought that was fine, I felt good about that too. Success came with his fantastic commercial genius. He shook up everything: songs, lyrics. We complemented each other very well and also appreciated what we were good at.”
great plans
entertainment">The two men still saw each other regularly: “Then I, together with guitarist Jan Hendriks, stayed in his country house and we sat by the campfire all evening. To chat, or to sing. Sometimes Henny read poems.” Doe Maar was about to make a comeback tour when Vrienten became ill. “We still had great plans: we were going to tour, we were going to play somewhere one day. All of that is suddenly no longer possible, that is suddenly all gone.”
entertainment">Jansz still performs a lot with his other band. “I am very grateful that I can still do that,” says the musician. “I enjoy the things I have more because I realize that it can end this way. I realize what a wealth I have: my children, my wife, my house, the trees in the yard.” During the tour he only sings one song by Doe Maar, Time enough: “I have always found it very successful.”
Nuclear war
entertainment">Jansz thinks his ‘most interesting song’ from the Doe Maar years is the song Good, on the threat of nuclear war. “At the time, in the early eighties, I also had the feeling that we were neglecting so many important things: meeting other people, for example. We are mainly concerned with things that ultimately matter less, such as making a career.” Jansz notes that this text is still just as relevant in 2022 as it was forty years ago.
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