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THE STORY OF INDO-ROCK

The Netherlands had a fascinating subculture of emigre Dutch-Indonesians (Indo's, Indonesian Eurasians and Polynesian Moluccans) who hit the instrumental rock scene in the years 1958 - 1965 and constituted the "Indo-Rock" movement, with groups like The Tielman Brothers, Electric Johnny & his Skyrockets, The Black Dynamites, The Crazy Rockers, Oety & his Real Rockers, The Javalins, The Hap-Cats and many more.

The birth of Indo-Rock (1955-1959
In the mid fifties an unique instrumental music genre raised from Dutch-Indonesian musicians who repatriated to the Netherlands due to their home-lands independence at December 29, 1949. They brought their tropical culture and a passionate love for the guitar. The guitar was imported in the Indian Archipel by the Portuguese explorers in the 14th Century. The traditional Portuguese song styles saudade and fado with guitar accompaniment became later krontjong (Malay) music. Krontjong is characterized by guitars which are talking to each other and the guitarists play rhythmic and melodic parts by the feel. Except this musical baggage they had a predilection for Hawaiian-music (also popular in the Netherlands) and they knew the American country & western and the hot rock & roll repertoire from the radio stations in Indonesia via American (AFN) stations from The Philippines and Australia.

The very first Indo bands The (Real) Room Rockers (1957 - since 1959 The Hurricane Rollers), The Hot Jumpers (1958), The Bell Boys (later: The Black Dynamites) and The Rhythm Stars all originated from The Hague. At he same time it happened in Rotterdam with Oety & his Real Rockers, Electric Johnny & The Skyrockets, The Rocking Diamonds and The Blue Eagles. Also in Amsterdam, Groningen, Zaandam, Maastricht and other towns you could find a scene of Indorock groups. They played on stage a mix of rock & roll, c&w, evergreens, Hawaiian- and Indonesian folksongs and also the well-known instrumentals of that period. With the instrumental stuff they were at their best. The Indo-Rock bands were identifable with their three guitar line-up; they had a second lead guitarist in the band who played counter melodies and reinforced accents. They admired the guitar riffs of Les Paul (in fact one of their biggest influences) and later The Ventures and the unique sound of The String-A-Longs was a great inspiration for them.

The first guitarists started with cheap accoustic guitars + added electric pick-up. Later they could buy real electric guitars which were available on the Dutch market at that time. First of all the Indo guitarists were mad about the German Höfner guitars and the violin bass (later made famous by Paul McCartney) was also very in demand. Another popular German guitar was the Framus (model Hollywood) and next to the Italian Eko guitars we had our own Dutch Egmond electric guitars. However The Fender Jazzmaster became in 1961 their favourite guitar and the status symbol of Indo-Rock.

(photo: Wim Markenhof)

The Tielman Brothers - Andy Tielman the uncrowned king of Indo-Rock.
In 1957 came the Tielman Brothers to the Netherlands. Andy Tielman and his brothers Reggy, Ponthon and Loulou played already together in Indonesia as The Timor Rhythm Brothers. In Breda they started as The Four T's. They secured a job at the 1958 Brussels World's Fair in the "Hawaiian Village" section of the Dutch pavilion. Hired to play for only fifteen minutes when the Hawaiian band took their break, the Four Tielman Brothers stole the show with their wild rock'n'roll songs and acrobatic antics. They tossed guitars across stage, played the guitar and the bass with their toes and teeth, and played their instruments behind their heads and upside down.

The Story of The Tielman Brothers

It was the start of their club career in Germany (they started in the Ringstuben -Sputnik- at Mannheim). They first played on Egmond guitars and also had Egmond amps, but since 1958 they were the first owners of imported Gibson Les Paul models in Holland. Their professional show with speedy light-fingered guitar-tricks, gentle smiling to the girls in the audience and swinging top-down, became the start of the Indorock scene in Germany. Many Dutch Indo groups got contracts in Germany during the early 60s. In the Netherlands at that time, bands could only play on weekends for little or no money at all; in Germany bands could get a contract for a month or at least a couple of weeks and make scandalous much money.

The 10 string Jazzmaster of Andy Tielman (by Cees Bakker)

In 1961 Andy Tielman and the other guitarists in the band (The Tielman Brothers) changed from Gibson Les Pauls to Olympic White Jazzmasters, mainly because he found the Les Paul too heavy. Andy found the sound to thin and he decided to convert his Jazzmaster into a 10 string. For that he made 4 holes at the non-tuner side of the peghead with a red hot big nail. A rather clever idea, because drilling in a lengthwise cut piece of hard maple is risky, as you can see with my own Jazmaster (picture below). Also it’s most likely that because they stayed in hotels, he had no proper drilling machine. He installed spare tuners and an extra string retainer. He made extra sleeves in the nut. The bridge was no problem, as you know the sadlles had 8 grooves each for string spacing. The problem was the holes in the string hold of the vibrato unit. Not a tremolo unit, Leo Fender introduced this wrong name. Tremolo is a modulation of volume an vibrato is a modulation of pitch. Andy solved that problem quite cleverly. As you might remember in those days the thinnest string was 0.012. So Andy used thinner banjo strings. His tuning was as follows:

1. single E
2. B  normal + B one octave up  (Banjo A string) 
3. G  normal + G one octave up  (E string)
4. D  normal + D one octave up  (B string)
5. A  normal + A one octave up  (G string)
6. single E

Now you may wonder why Andy didn’t use an electric 12 string like a Rickenbacker. If you listen to their music you know why. With a 12 string electric the octaved A and E sound more lose and the single ones are tighter and super tight playing was the hallmark of the Tielmans. Also they tuned down their instruments 2 half tones down and during their Gibson years even 3 half tones. That gave a deeper sound and less tension on the strings.