Adrian vandenberg

This post is about one of Holland most talented and successful guitarists Adrian “Adje” Vandenberg. He is the founder of the early 80’s band “Vandenberg” and former guitarist of Whitesnake. He has formed the band “Moonkings” with some talented young musicians and an awesome singer.

Although originally Adrian is born in The Hague , we all know him as a real “tukker” Tukker is a nickname for people who come from the east of Holland. From the age of 14 he lives in Enschede. Adje has made music almost all of his life, but he had finished the art-academy first.
In 1980 Adje formed the band Vandenberg, a dutch rockformation. With this band Adje had some great successes. The song “Burning heart” was a worldwide hit which opened new doors for the band.

At some time the band split up, the frontman “Bert heerink” was fired from the band and turned to be a real crook. They are still fighting in court to get the name “Vandenberg”, he together with the former bass player “Dick Kemper”. The have lost already a lots of lawsuits but are staying prosecuting. The funny thing is that Adje founded the band but most of all it is his lastname. And they just wanted him to give up his last name….What were they thinking.

Whitesnake

Adje got great attention of David Coverdale of Whitesnake, he asked him already a few times if he wanted to play in Whitesnake. Finally Adje agreed and started playing and touring with Whitesnake. Coverdale and Adje turned out to be a great golden combination, the have wrote some monsterhits together.

This picture is (obvious) an old one 😊 but how cool to see a Dutch guitarist playing in one of the most successful rockbands in the world. Disaster strikes for Adje, he got a injury on his wrist (which turned out to be a problem from his neck) and couldn’t play with Whitesnake no more on their “Slip of the tongue” tour, it was double painful for Adje because he has written the entire album together with David Coverdale, and now he couldn’t even play it himself…`

They arranged a substitute for Adje.. Steve Vai (yes the virtuosi Steve Vai) which turned out to be a quite big ego at that time, he had to proof himself while starting with Whitesnake, he was a rising star..

I saw a documentary recently about Adje and there was Steve Vai saying that Adje is on of a kind guitarist with so much soul and timing in his playing… Great to hear a musician of his caliber saying that about a ‘local dutchie’ 😊

Adje has toured all around the globe with Whitesnake and had his biggest success , it made him famous all around the world…

Moonkings

Since 2013 Adje formed a new band “Moonkings”. This is (besides a great band) a nice story. The singer (Jan) is farmer for a living and sang in some cover bands. When someone attended Adje on this great singer Adje contacted him trough social media with a fake name, not to reveal himself directly but to test if he was available as a singer in his new band. When Jan’s reaction was positive Adje told him who he was and that he wanted to visit Jan to talk about the band. At that point Jan thought he was fooled, who would believe that the mighty “Adje Vandenberg” would come and visit you to ask you for a new band….. Well, it turned out to be true and so Adje visited Jan and the were both very enthusiastic.

Jan is a farmer for his profession and has told adje that whatever happened he will stay working at his own farm because of his family. Adje respected that and they (still) plan everything around the company of Jan, when Jan has to harvest they aren’t touring. When they play in Europe Jan goes with his own car instead of the tour bus because he want to be able to leave to his farm whenever it is needed.. Jan told in the documentary that once Adje wanted to record some songs, but at that time Jan was very busy with harvesting so Adje decided to bring a portable studio so they could record during and after harvesting… How cool is that?

The bassplayer and drummer are two young dudes which played one time before with Adje when he wrote a song for the soccerteam of his hometown. When they heard that Adje wanted to start an new band they asked if they could do an audition. Adjes said “No, you are freaking on the band, no audition necessary” … So cool….

So check out some moonkings, they are awesome…

Have a great evening

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