Start of the Jitterbugs Tent
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Then in 1990 he asked me to perform a song at the Stan Laurel Centenary. He asked me about four months before the event. He knew I was a singer in a Hardy-rock band and, as always, I couldn't say "no". I had never performed on my own and never played a guitar. To perform a song I needed to have a guitar. When the celebrations arrived and when Marijke and I arrived in Greenodd, where we stayed at the Ship Inn, we caught up with Bill. We saw an interview he did on BBC television and here he announced my participation at the event: "We have a boy from Holland who is doing a song on Stan Laurel." I had forgotten the whole thing and I never thought he was serious about this. The celebrations were the next day and he wanted me to do a song? He asked me if I had brought along my guitar, but I had to tell him I hadn't. He grabbed me by the arm and took me in his car to a local radio station. We were on the air in less than ten minutes of our arrival. Bill promoted the event and asked listeners if they could donate a guitar for me to perform my song. "We have a very well known rock musician from the Netherlands who will perform on the night and we need a good acoustic guitar."
With a song from my own band in mind I started to figure out how to play it and within two hours I could play a song which my band originally wrote as a tribute to Greenpeace's boat Rainbow Warrior. The next step was to write the lyrics and melody. About four to five hours later I finished the song, went over to visit the Cubins and I had Lucy check the lyrics to see if they were any good. The next day I was on stage, nervous and almost drunk, as someone gave me a bottle of champagne in the dressing room, which I by accident drank entirely. Well, the rest is history. The next day Bill and I did a few things at the museum and he started to talk about the idea of me having a tent in the south of Holland. He said, "You should name your tent Jitterbugs, firstly because you are a musician and there is no Jitterbugs Tent in the world, and secondly you had the jitters yesterday!" When I got back home I organised a Laurel and Hardy exhibition and after that I started the Jitterbugs Tent. Hans Ligtenberg |
It
started when I visited Bill Cubin in 1988 when he
spoke to me about me starting a tent, as there was
no tent in the area where I live.
Within
the hour he had a guitar for me. Now I had to learn
how to play the thing and write a song and try to
play it and sing it at the same time. I went to my
room at the b&b and started to figure out how
the strings would respond to my fingers moving. I
quickly found out that if you put one finger on a
certain spot you could use another finger to make
the sound of a chord. Then a third and a fourth
finger and before I knew it I had a chord.