Finch

Finch was founded in 1974 out of one of the less prolific line-ups of Dutch rock band Q65. Guitarist Joop van Nimwegen, bass-player Peter Vink and drummer Beer Klaasse teamed up and looked for a suitable singer. That didn’t really work out, so the band remained instrumental. After one year of rehearsals in the basement of the Paard van Troje venue in The Hague, they made preparations for their first album. In a rare and exclusive recent interview, guitarist Joop van Nimwegen recalls the early days of Finch. ‘Q65 actually never disbanded. I was asked to replace Ronnie Meyjes when the band was called Kjoe, and Meyjes and singer Johnny Frederiksz had left the line-up. Encouraged by the other Kjoe-guitarist, Joop Roelofs, who was also the band’s manager in those days and didn’t feel like playing anymore, the band stopped looking for a new singer, but continued as an instrumental outfit. At first I wasn’t very fond of that decision, but there were a lot of instrumental bands in those days. Because the change was so radical and my joining led to a slightly different musical direction, we decided to drop the name Kjoe. As both our bass player Peter and the newly added keyboard player Paul both had Vink as a surname, I came up with the name Finch.’