Dutch Days

Discovering from the internet this week that the old Dutch headquarters of Philips’ Phonographische Industrie - or simply Philips Records as the company was known in Britain - is still up and running filled me with happy nostalgia. It was there, in Holland, that I worked for the best part of three years before joining The Scotsman, and the low-slung building depicted on the website was the old Koetshuis, or Coach House, the very place I worked in, and the big ground-floor window in the middle of the picture was that of the room I shared with others involved in the production of Philips record sleeves.

I was the organisation’s Hoezentekstenschrijver  -  meaning, merely, staff writer, though Dutch was such an invitingly lip-smacking language that the word sounded more impressive when spoken their way.  It signified that I was the company’s sleeve-note editor, writing endlessly about Beethoven symphonies on what were described as the backsides of record covers, while my colleagues designed the fronts, which looked so much more attractive in the days of twelve-inch LPs than the designs of today’s CDs.    

We were a small Philips family, who either lived on-site in a sort of Philips village, or in the rural Dutch town of Baarn of which it formed part,  or else a trainride away in Amsterdam. As a group - Carli van Emde Boas, Margreet Korsman, Gaston Richter, Walter Cohen, Cor Pul, Jan Huisinga, Annemieke Helms, Harry van Ramshorst and I - we were very much more together than our managers, either in Holland or London, the latter being in some cases such poisonous people that it was prudent to hide if you saw them arriving on a visit.  

But the real Dutch - meaning the ones I worked with - were a delight, funny and entertaining and speaking such good English that I wondered at times why they actually needed to employ me. If it was someone’s birthday, or someone’s wife had had a baby, all work stopped, while cigars and ice creams were passed round.  

Though evenings in Baarn were not exactly thrilling - the place, on the far side of radio city Hilversum, was nicknamed the Green Grave - Amsterdam was where I lived, appropriately in the Beethovenstraat near the Concertgebouw, the local Chinese and Indonesian restaurants as constant a pleasure as the concerts.  Amsterdam, it has to be said, was not quite  like it is now. It had its formalities, and if you sat down in the Vondelpark to eat a broodje, you were sternly rebuked by a park-keeper and told to clear off. 

Drugs in those days were still almost unheard of. Even to drink an oude - a shot of genever, Holland’s potent juniper-based spirit - could seem a bit daring, depending on the company you kept. But the repetitiveness of popular sleeve-note writing was what finally deterred me, more so than even the most routine aspects of music reviewing in Scotland would ever do.   So - regretfully - I left, though there would be times when I wished I hadn’t, and once when I nearly rejoined the old firm.   It’s good to know that the Koetshuis still flourishes, even if Philips no longer runs it. 

5 June 2014