Marco & Music

Marco is a Dutch singer/songwriter, entrepreneur, designer and music-producer currently living in Zeist (Utrecht), The Netherlands. Born in the town of Best, in the south of Holland, he lived with his parents and younger sister at various places in Holland and Belgium, with steady intervals of 2 years, until moving to Spain at age 14, to Hong Kong at a 16, and back to Europe to live by himself at age 18 (France).
Having taken up violin- and piano-lessons at very young age, music always was important to him. Being left-handed, he somewhat struggled with especially his violin-teachers until age 13 when he dropped violin and taught himself to play guitar, “because all my friends convinced me that violin was for sissies and that only a guitar was cool”. Less than 6 months later Marco joined a garage-band named ‘Tilt’, a  popular band still active today. 

In Hong Kong Marco joined ‘The Dregs’ as rhythm-guitarist, and a few years later, in France, formed a new band called ‘Lyrique’, together with 2 friends from Madagascar, as leadsinger and rhythm- and bass-guitarist. “Even today I’ve absolutely no idea how in the world I managed to play both bass and rhythm at the same time, but I did, owww what a great double-neck that was. I sold her 20 years later, for a lot of money, yes, but nevertheless it felt like selling her out, I still regret that moment.”

It was -again- 2 years later, when Marco left France for Spain and Portugal, that he stopped making music all together, to concentrate on a career in footwear, just like his father and grandfather before him. At first as free-lance shoe-production supervisor and later-on as successful children’ shoe-designer he lived and worked in many different places around the world, Italy, Spain, Portugal, France, Brazil, USA, China, Indonesia, Taiwan being amongst them. “I even lived in Holland again back in the 80’s for eh… yep, you guessed it, two years… …or was it just one year?”
After a brief career-switch from international footwear to Spanish real-estate he moved back to the Netherlands, with “a back-pack stuffed with super-high ups and extremely low downs plus 276 Euro’s in my pocket, a Dutch passport and no return-ticket I arrived in Rotterdam, it’s over a decade ago but it feels like yesterday. Which is a good thing, I guess, because it reminds me of where I come from and especially of where I’m capable of going”.

When asked what happened to music, he answers: “At first, after I arrived in Holland, which I thought was a dull, small, boring country, I was really busy rebuilding everything I thought I had lost, I’m talking material things. I felt extremely sorry for myself, which made me both angry and sad, and I felt a constant emptiness inside me, which I constantly tried to fill with senseless things like a Mercedes Benz cabrio, a 4-bedroom house with a fireplace, all things I obviously didn’t need and couldn’t afford, but that I thought I somehow deserved. Once I had it, it wasn’t enough so I wanted more. And more. Same with booze. Always more, never ever enough.
At a certain moment I became aware that I had not really been “living” my life, but that I'd been “surviving”, so to speak, so I forced myself to make substantial, even radical changes in order to live. Literally. So I made those changes, not all at once or in one day of course, but gradually, with the help of many people. 

I bought a violin and a guitar, and started playing again. I already was writing poetry, but for my 50th birthday I decided to turn a poem called ‘La Lune’ into a song. ‘Moonlight’ I called it, and posted it on my internet blog and a few months later ‘Moonlight’ was being played on Internet radio. Funny fact is that the violin I played when I was a kid, went with me to Spain, to Far East and to France, till I gave it away now 40 years ago. Then, 30 years later, around the time I recorded 'Moonlight', that violin found it's way back to me! True story! Anyway, I continued writing songs, and began gigging for people, literally, via charity. At least 20% of all my gig-proceeds, sometimes more and sometimes even all of it still today goes to various charities. I’ve noticed that if I keep music for myself, it is not effective, it has no power. The power of music is that it connects. It connects me with people, of course, but it also connects me with everything around me; it grounds me. I believe that music is a gift from ‘somewhere’, Universe let’s say, and that I should do something with before passing it on. If I choose not to accept that gift, do nothing with it, keep it to myself or not pass it on, I become ungrounded, disconnected, unsatisfied, unhappy. That’s how important music is to me. It keeps me in check so I can be free. And, not less important, music makes sure that I stay well-balanced in my other activities such as design, entrepreneurship, education.”