Uncle Willem tells his story [from: An asshole is also human]

Amsterdam, Late seventies, twentieth century. It's an ordinary Saturday night like so many before, and probably so many to come, the city covers up in darkness and many rush to the city centre where neon lights and cosy restaurants await to lure them inside, like flies to a turd. One of those many is a long, uncertainly around looking person, walking through the Damstreet. In this person we will soon recognize Wimpy de Leeuw, who's going to an appointment in a bar by one of the canals which cross the Damstreet. Keeping to appointments and finding places are not his best quality's but he moves on this time, because his feeling tells him something unavoidable is going to happen, and a couple of moments later, like drawn towards it, his moist hand grabs the doorknob of the bar he was heading to. familiar sounds waver outside and through the glass he sees people which he never seen before in Amsterdam, but immediately counts as friends. Nervous and unsure he enters and is back in time, the time of rockers and petticoats. To understand how all of this happened, how our hero came to this important step we'll really go back in time when Willem was still Wimpy and could barely stand. I'LL CALL OUR HERO ME FROM NOW ON, SINCE IT IS ME WHO'S WRITING THIS SO I'M ME FURTHER ON. I could look then, and found myself already a strange guy, barely three years old, and wasn't aware that a great time was happening around me. Not that there was a lot to do around here, pretty boring actually and the radio in our pilastro rack didn't poor out a lot of R&R but still, there was something you could say there was something in the air, it was 1959. We lived in Badhoevedorp because of the house shortage then on the upper floor of a so called "duplex apartment" in the Exterstreet, and our house looked modern with a triangle shaped table a swinging sofa with feet at an angle artistic coloured curtains etc.

"Nozem noise" is what my old man called it when the radio played something wilder between Catarina Valente and Pat Boone. But greased hair wasn't allowed it was to ordinary. I grew older and crazier, I kept on looking at photo's in the photo basket, There was something about that time, something magical kept on pulling me . By then we moved to Amstelveen in the early sixties, and to two people who gave me life, also known as parents, worried about me staring at those photo's, I looked as if I wanted to crawl into them, back in time, because those beetles and stones didn't interest me at all, so uncle Willem turned into a weird kid at school. Sometimes one would hear a rock song from the fifties on the radio, but those days were over Hippies ruled the world and especially Amsterdam was invested with their love, peace and especially drugs (which never went away after that) Desperately I searched the bands of my radio and nearly crept into it when I heard something R&R like and dreamed of rock&roll heaven. I bought my first cassette player when I was thirteen, the thing had a little microphone which I held against the radiospeaker when there was something on it and I remember well, on a warm and humid summer eve late sixties, I made my first recording of "sixteen tons" by Tennessee Ernie Ford I played it for the teachers at school and for my parents who didn't understand it and thought of it as weird. My fate as outsider was settled in this time of "soulkickers" This guy started to stay away from school and to draw back in himself. By the time I attended graphical school in Amsterdam, but often I wandered through the city looking at stores, everything was ugly and became even uglier. Vacuum cleaners, toasters, underwear and the colours, ughh, orange, green, brown and the worst thing was, my parents went with it, cork on the wall,s, purple curtain's, shitbrown floor's weird looking lamp's and there wasn't an ordinary pair of trousers for sale, I had to wear this idiot shit tight around your upper legs and a low waist when I bended over I was standing in my bare ass, stupid wide pipes tight sweaters with a wide belt over it. Shirts with enormous collars which were tight as well, out of protest I bende over a lot when we had friend or relatives around and teared out of them, after that I would say "what a stupid time this is, who invents stupid shit like this". The staring at old photo's stayed and my longing to fifties grew, sentimental journey my mother used to say when she saw me like that.

Cole wasn't used anymore and we had an oil heater for a couple of years, the Cole shed, a little cabin in the box downstairs, wasn't used anymore and discovered by uncle Willem. I made a secret entrance to it, the first time I sat there piled up with two friends making weird plans making coins for the gumball machine which we robbed completely empty. The friends disappeared and made their homework lonely I stayed there with a little stolen radio and a candle in my stone cabin. Days I spended there throwing away my future wile in the street schoolbags were hanging from flag posts celebrating graduation, all I thought of was of the past . You could say that a great part of my youth was spent in that coleshed listening to Veronica and Noordzee radio, the latter announced that -on a Saturday I believe- a R&R show was being transmitted every week at eight! School was over and me, a loser and no good who would reach nothing in this world, the only thing I cared about was R&R, started working. Because of my job as salesman I could buy a pick-up and a tape recorder, and recorded the show I just mentioned. There was only one friend in my neighbourhood to share my fate with, an ugly glassed beatnik, but that didn't matter, on our just purchased Benelli's we drove of to the cinema, where American Graffity was showed, a movie which played in 1962 and symbolised the end of the rock&roll area, but it took uncle Willem more than ever. An album was released of this film, a double LP, it was my first record. Just when I dared to drive around with greased hair and second hand jeans (we were still in the absurd clothes time) the law changed and you had to wear a helmet on a moped, so I walked through the neighbourhood, had lots of comments thrown at me, but laughed at everybody like a rock in the storm I was, let them cows walk in pace with the trends, I was Wimpy the swinger and already the madman and beyond saviour.

My record collection grew and the row of tapes as well especially since the program "the rock&roll methode "lived up the ether. First on a Wednesday night and later on Friday, they announced where a band was playing or a record market was being held, my parents watched this with growing worry and thought about psychic aid or medication, but for me, rock therapy was the way of survival. I started working at Fokker and was stationed at the incoming goods dpt. its 1977 and Elvis is about to leave us forever, something he should have done after his military service, sorry for me saying that. They put me behind a turning-chisel and I made so called "pull-tests" for all incoming materials, who were than tested in the lab. But on that chisel I did a lot of hobbying and made for instance aluminium fifties microphones ,,spinnin-turnin,Willem-Bill that's it!!! Bill Turner crazy nickname in rock circles. By now my room became to small and "bill" moved a room with someone in the Bijlmer and applied for a house in Amstelveen With the guy in "kikkenstein" I furnished my room cosy, bought a jukebox and a Heinkel scooter with which "Bill" moved around, stared at by all the Surinamers, like a real rocker. I went to some R&R meetings but never really felt at home, why I didn't know, when I arrived this boy first went to the toilets to change in his dancing clothes but I always felt like being on the side and never in the middle of things. One time, in Tilburg I think, where the Flying Saucers were playing uncle Willem rushed to the toilet with his suitcase straight after entering, I didn't dare to wear my Rock outfit all through Holland this time, so I looked like a desk clerk. Safely in the loo of ballroom "The Harmonie" where the party of the Platenboer was about to start, later known as the Rockhouse Meeting this crazy guy, because I am, changed and greased his hair, the suitcase with clothes I handed in at the wardrobe and entered the hall which was already filling up with greasers and petticoats. "Hey Hi there, aren't you the guy I saw a moment ago or am I wrong" I suddenly heard from a corner. I was discovered, by a guy named Gertje and admitted that I was, there was no escape, he had seen everything and saw that I needed psychical help.

That night we rocked around and I had the feeling of being more "in" it and My rock outfit fitted superb. "We have a sort of club with rockers in Amsterdam. Come on join us you look like a real Bopcat, that's our name you know." Gert said. So I agreed, maybe there was something useful in life for me, I felt better already . Before I went, I asked my mother for advise, but she said: "You're a big boy now" and didn't need her and my old man said something like "you have hair on your legs now so go!!" Rocked tired I went home and had the guts not to change back in my "normal" clothes and …,nothing happened on the way home!!! I wasn't arrested for wearing provoking clothes or anything! So now I'm here, in that bar.., the sour smell of stale beer drifts towards me, from the outside this bar looks as so many other bar's, in this sinister party parlour named Amsterdam where there is so little to do for a true Bopcat. I'm standing in Ko's café where I get a warm welcome from Gert who introduces me to the rest of the gang, around twenty people, guys and gals. So they are the Bopcats and if I want to or not Willem becomes one of them and soon a nickname as well "flatfoot" because my size 48 and there already is a guy named "Bigfeet" so in all this new impressions I forget my name Bill Turner but it doesn't matter, I have a true feeling of living! From the Café we often go in town, to see bands, it looks like rock&roll is back again, sadly enough also because of "Grease" and every rocker is judged like a John Travolta look-alike Yek…. No a true rock&roll movie, if you can call it that is "Rebel without a Cause", it shows a little the way I see it. The years pas by and the group bursts out of the café, but no panic, there's a new place for us "The Cruise Inn" (named after a record collection named cruising '55 ,'56 etc. with original radio recordings from that time) And Like a Rock in the sea it still stands there, and the Bopcats still come there, maybe even hundreds without knowing it…. Because an Amsterdam Rocker is a Bopcat;

There are no cats like Bopcats!!!

Wim "Flatfoot" de Leeuw.