Sad to hear of another rock’n’roll death, this time of George Kooymans, lead guitarist and co-founder of Dutch rockers Golden Earring.

Just like Ozzy, his career had been celebrated at a tribute concert – Golden Earring: One Last Night – in Rotterdam earlier this year, when it was known he was close to death with the dreadful degenerative disease ALS.

Forever to be remembered for their 1973 hit Radar Love, Golden Earring were far more than one-hit wonders, with a career that lasted an amazing 60 years – most of them with the same line-up.

Kooymans was just 13 when he started the band in 1961 with his next-door neighbour Rinus Gerritsen, calling themselves The Tornados… until they found out the name was already taken.

Switching to The Golden Earrings, after the name of a song by The Hunters, a British band they once supported, they began as a pop group, recording a jangly “beat” single called Please Go. Their second single, That Day, reached No.2 in the Dutch charts.

Shortening their name to Golden Earring in 1967 when Barry Hay joined the band as lead singer – he’s the handsome leading man in Dick Maas’s B-movie film noir video – they had their first chart topper in 1970 with (I kid you not) Dong Dong Diki Diki Dong.

The Eurovision-adjacent title was misleading: their cd ug album Eight Miles High was, as its title suggests, a psychedelic affair notable for a superb 19-minute version of The Byrds’ title track which went on to become a staple of their live shows for decades to come.

By then the band had been joined by drummer Cesar Zuiderwijk, completing the quartet that would carry on as Golden Earring until Kooyman’s forced retirement four years ago.

In their heyday Golden Earring supported Hendrix, Led Zeppelin and Eric Clapton, Santana, Rush and The Doobie Brothers – and in the period when Radar Love was a hit they headlined above their own support acts Kiss and Aerosmith.

Although they never had another UK hit after 1973 when Radar Love reached the Top Ten, Twilight Zone was a big European hit ten years later, with its spy movie video based on the book The Bourne Identity.

Their next single, When The Lady Smiles, might have brought them another hit were it not for its equally ambitious video, also directed by Dick Maas, being banned from MTV for its “unholy desires about a nun and a lobotomy.”