Music is created in many ways. When a group of musicians join together to become a ‘band’, the dynamic within that group initiates the music they produce. Sometimes, this creativity comes from harmony, sometimes from conflict. Most often, it is a combination of the two. It’s different for every group, of course.
Take Jan Akkerman and Thijs van Leer of Focus, for instance. It was the lure of becoming a jobbing musician that, like his English contemporary Rick Wakeman, tempted Thijs away from his formal studies. For Jan, it was the beat boom of the early 1960s – albeit the version in his home country – that lured him into professional music. The two musicians were never really friends and were at loggerheads from very early in their musical collaboration. We’ll speculate on that shortly. Nonetheless, the tensions between them arguably produced some of the most distinctive and beautiful music of the 1970s. For Jan, it was his bold and experimental take on rock guitar that gave him such a distinctive edge. For Thijs, it was the classics and, more specifically, his beloved J.S. Bach (the 18th-century composer of the Baroque period), which rarely left his influences. It was jazz that led them to meet in the middle, with Jan, in particular, an almost evangelical improviser. This approach was also embraced by Thijs – but only up to a point, and it was this which led to some of the tensions. Indeed, when Focus were at the height of their powers, one of the conflicts between the two musicians was about the level of improvisation, with Jan bemoaning Thijs’ tendency to play – and indeed yodel – the same things night after night. Jan, however, rarely played in the same way twice. You never quite knew what he was going to do next, which might be both thrilling and terrifying in a live setting.
The fact that their music was almost entirely instrumental gave Focus a universal appeal. While it was considered unwise to attempt to become ‘rock stars’ without singing actual songs, there has always been a valuable niche for instrumental acts. Think Mike Oldfield or Jean Michel Jarre, for instance, or even the Pink Floyd of the early 1970s, for whom vocals were often a secondary consideration. In an era of vocal groups, Focus really stood out.
It was a star that burned brightly but all too briefly. The band’s ‘classic’ lineup – Jan, Thijs, talented rock bassist Bert Ruiter and drummer Pierre van der Linden (who was heavily inspired by American jazz legend Buddy Rich) – only recorded one album (Focus 3) while the group’s masterpiece remains its predecessorFocus II (akaMoving Waves) on which Jan allegedly played most of the bass parts. The van Leer/Akkerman partnership lasted for five studio albums in total, while the 1970s incarnation of Focus itself recorded only six (plus a live album and a compilation). Yet, even during the band’s 25-year slumber, before the Thijs-led revival of the group in the early 2000s, they were never forgotten. Part of this is due to the sheer ubiquity of their untypical, unique track ‘Hocus Pocus’ – used in countless TV shows and movies over the years. But this is also due to two other pieces that have also seeped into the public consciousness worldwide – the 1973 European hit ‘Sylvia’ and their early chart success in the Netherlands, ‘House Of The King’. Nobody ever
