Liner notes 5 Cyril

These liner notes appear on the 1973 album Cyril by Cyriel Havermans

In the beginning five musicians* gathered in Holland and formed a new group. They captured the ears of the Continent and England. They became the hottest and most progressive group in America.

The group is Focus.

The members of Focus are all individual and extremely accomplished musicians. One of the members was particularly interested in vocals and the fuller use of the voice, not only in lyrics, but as an additional instrument. Since FOCUS was primarily instrumental in approach, he decided to leave the group and explore on his own. The parting was amicable. The man is Cyril Havermans and he's out of Focus.

When MGM Records Senior Vice President Toni Scotti first heard Cyril's demos, he recognised a new force in music.

On his debut LP, Cyril is fully backed by his friends from Focus and presents a selection of his own material. He employs basic and primitive sounds with modern progressive forms and combines them into a completely fresh experience. Flute and full throttle guitars mingle with strings and an assortment of percussion instruments. The harmonic structure and polyrhythmic approach paints an aural picture. It is the work of a man who thinks individually about his music.

*It is unclear why the number five is given. Probably whoever wrote this was rhinking of Focus, a four man band, plus Cyril.

Moving Waves Documentary

Some good news now bad news - the 1997 documentary on the making of the album Moving Waves was briefly available on Youtube. The bad news for monoglot English speakers was that the documentary is in Dutch. However, as it was made up of performances and interviews with Mike Vernon and Jerry Boys there was quite a bit not in Dutch. Die hard fans might even have been able to work out what was being said in Dutch as van Leer describes the writing of Hocus Pocus, perhaps, or as Akkerman describes his early career and Havermans is asked about the bass parts! Anyway it is gone for now.

PS It is on the 50 year anthology box set

Personnel Graph 1

Double Click

Focus not Focus

There are a small number of almost forgotten tracks that are not exactly by Focus but that technically do feature the band.

The oldest of these are the 1969 or 1970 recordings of the Amsterdam cast of the controversial musical Hair. Van Leer, Akkerman, Dresden and Cleuver form the nucleus of a 10 piece orchestra led by Del Newman with the cast singing. They can be heard, for example, on the opening introduction to Aquarius and the closing Hare Krishna. From that period there is also a short recording with Ronald Snellenberg called Mijn Overtuiging.
In the same period Van Leer was working with Ramses Shaffy and on an album containing two long tracks on each side, Sunset and Sunkiss, the whole band plays on Sunset. In 1969 a Ramses Shaffy single (the highly didactic The shrine of God b/w Watch out for the ugly people) appeared with Focus as the backing group. Slightly later, Van Leer was involved in producing an album by Hans Cleuver's wife Bojoura (Beauty of Bojoura) and the band again appear on The Last Thing On My Mind. (The Akkerman, Van Leer composition Why do they go back home seems to feature Akkerman, Van Leer and Dresden but not Cleuver.)
In 1973 Focus' bassist Cyriel Havermans left to make a solo album (Cyril) and called on his former colleagues for help. Pierre Van Der Linden is on several tracks usually with Van Leer but Share Those Dreams is the only track featuring Van Leer, Akkerman and Cyril.

It is perhaps also worth mentioning here that Jan Akkerman performed with the Van Leer Band in the 1980s but no official recordings were released.
(For the Ramses Shaffy single check here)

Focus Vocalists

Surprisingly, perhaps, there are over 20 Focus vocal tracks of various sorts. Most of these feature Thijs Van Leer but there are a number of P J Proby vocals, of course, on the Focus Con Proby album and Bert Ruiter sang I need a bathroom on Mother Focus (though it is sometimes said that it is Akkerman). Akkerman can certainly be heard with Van Leer on Avondrood. Cyriel Havermans's voice is heard on Moving Waves. Jan Dumee sings briefly on Focus 8. On Focus 9 Jo de Roeck sings Just like Eddy.

Focus Bassists

Of these there are really four. The current player is Bobby Jacobs. The longest serving was Bert Ruiter. The first was Martijn Dresden. On Moving Waves the credit goes to the man best known as Cyriel Havermans, although Jan Akkerman apparently did most of it. One also ought to mention Tato Gomez on the first four tracks of the 1985 Van Leer Akkerman album and Ruud Jacobs and his double bass on Beethoven's Revenge from that album.