Focus yodelled their way from a Dutch Hair pit band to Hocus Pocus
Before they were famous, the Dutch rockers Focus earned their living as the pit band for a Dutch production of the musical Hair, six shows a week. Two years later their album Moving Waves, opening with the yodelling, whistling frenzy of Hocus Pocus, reached number 2 in Britain.
Thijs van Leer, a keyboardist, singer and flautist, met bassist Martijn Dresden and drummer Hans Cleuver at radio sessions in Hilversum in mid-1969. In November, guitarist Jan Akkerman sat in on a rehearsal and they jammed for hours. Akkerman later explained the chosen name: focus, a Latin word meaning concentration, understood in many languages. Early gigs at the Bird's Club mixed covers of Dylan and Procol Harum with originals.
The Hair job, from December 1969, gave them steady money, free afternoon rehearsal space and somewhere to store gear. Their debut album, recorded in London during breaks from the show, sat unreleased for eight months while they hunted for a label. Van Leer felt singing English with an accent weakened the vocals, which pushed the group to strengthen its instrumental side. One legend says Akkerman's instrumental House of the King grew out of a contest in Mallorca in June 1970, where the band overran a 15-minute limit on a Rodrigo piece and had the power cut.
Tension followed. Akkerman wanted his old drummer Pierre van der Linden and threatened to quit unless the rhythm section went; van Leer refused to drop his co-founders, but the line-up changed anyway. Moving Waves, recorded in London in 1971, blended progressive rock with jazz and classical touches, and Akkerman switched to a 1957 Gibson Les Paul so he could make the guitar sing to cover weak vocals. The album went gold in Britain, the Netherlands and the US, where 500,000 copies had sold by 1973.
Focus 3 brought another hit, Sylvia, and Hamburger Concerto followed in 1974, but the band dissolved in 1978. Van Leer revived it in 2002, van der Linden returned in 2004, and Focus 12 appeared in 2024. They remain among the most successful rock acts the Netherlands has produced.
Source: Focus (band)
