Radar Love
“Radar Love” opens with a bass figure so familiar that it functions as a kind of password. Rinus Gerritsen came up with the intro, and it locks in before the drums arrive. George Kooymans had the melody and started with it on rhythm guitar, and the band built around him in the studio that night. Eelco Gelling added slide guitar in the chorus. A horn section came in and thickened the arrangement further. What emerged was a 6:26 track that the single edit compressed to 5:04 without quite capturing the same thing. The song was Golden Earring’s 19th single and their ninth album, Moontan, was the vehicle. Both versions feel like driving at night when the road empties out ahead of you.
Barry Hay wrote the lyrics under a deadline. His friends went out that night and he had to stay home. The first opening line was “I’m sitting in a bathtub” and he changed it because it felt wrong for the song. He put the narrator in a car instead. The lyrics drew on his interest in extrasensory perception at the time. The story is about a driver with a telepathic bond to a lover. Hay confirmed the driver dies at the end. The line “one more radar lover gone” is not ambiguity. The lyric mentions Brenda Lee’s “Coming On Strong” as the last song the driver hears on the radio. It took Hay about three hours to write. His tour manager came back at five in the morning, read the lyrics and said they were probably the best Hay had ever written and would ever write. Hay took the compliment. He also heard the ceiling in it.
Fifty-three years ago today, Golden Earring released this song in the Netherlands. The chart run started August 25, 1973 and reached number one. The UK single followed in late 1973, peaking at number seven. The US got it in 1974 and it reached number thirteen on the Billboard Hot 100. None of those numbers capture how the song actually spread. Planet Rock polled listeners in 2011 on their favorite in-car track. “Radar Love” came first. Deep Purple’s “Highway Star” finished second and AC/DC’s “Highway to Hell” third. Barry Hay has estimated around 800 cover versions exist. A 2017 film, Baby Driver, built a chase scene around it. The song did not need the charts. It needed the open road.