|
Shocking Blue was a Dutch rock band from The Hague, the Netherlands, formed in 1967. Their biggest hit, "Venus", went to #1 on the Billboard Hot 100 in February 1970, and the band had sold 13.5 million discs by 1973, but the group disbanded in 1974.
The initial line-up consisted of:
Robbie van Leeuwen (guitar, sitar and backing vocals)
Fred de Wilde (vocals, 1967–1968)
Klaasje van der Wal (bass guitar, 1967–1972)
Cor van der Beek (drums)
Later members were:
Mariska Veres (vocals, 1968–1974)
Leo van de Ketterij (guitar, 1970–1971)
Martin van Wijk (guitar, 1973–1974)
Henk Smitskamp (bass guitar, 1972–1974)
Shocking Blue was founded in 1967 by Robbie van Leeuwen. The group had a minor hit in 1968 with "Lucy Brown is Back in Town". After Mariska Veres took over the vocals, the group charted a world-wide hit with the song "Venus", which reached #1 on the U.S. Billboard Hot 100 in February 1970. Initially the disc was a big hit in the Netherlands, where it reached #3 in the summer of 1969. It subsequently sold 350,000 copies in Germany, and topped the U.S. chart for three weeks, becoming the Netherlands' first American #1 hit. It sold over one million copies there by January 1970, and received a gold disc awarded by the Recording Industry Association of America. Global sales exceeded five million copies. The song was based on “The Banjo Song” (1963) by The Big Three.
Other hits include "Send Me a Postcard" in 1968/69 and "Long and Lonesome Road" (often mistakenly named as "Long Lonesome Road") in 1969. Shocking Blue's songs also received quite a large amount of radio airplay on Dutch channels.
"Venus" was followed by "Mighty Joe" (flip-side "Wild Wind") in 1969 and "Never Marry a Railroad Man" (flip-side "Roll Engine Roll") in 1970, which both sold over a million records. Later songs - including "Hello Darkness" (1970), "Shocking You", "Blossom Lady" and "Out of Sight, Out of Mind" (1971), "Inkpot", "Rock in the Sea" and "Eve and the Apple" (1972) and "Oh Lord" (1973) were successful in Europe, Latin America and Asia, but failed to chart in the U.S..
In 1974 Mariska Veres left the group to start a solo career until 1982. Her singles "Take Me High" (1975) and "Lovin' You" (1976) were mainly popular in the Netherlands, Belgium and Germany. Other known singles were "Tell It Like It Is" (1975), Dusty Springfield's "Little By Little" (1976), and "Too Young" (1978). Most of these songs today are rare.
Nirvana covered the Shocking Blue song "Love Buzz" as their debut single in 1988 and it also appeared on the re-release of their 1989 album Bleach.
|
