Robby Valentine seemed to become the biggest star of his generation in the early 1990s. He scored a mega hit with the rock ballad Over and Over Again and signed a lucrative international recording contract. But the rise of grunge bands such as Nirvana and Pearl Jam and the necessary health problems threw a spanner in the works. Now he can hardly see anything and the man from North Holland has to record albums by touch.
In the autumn of 2023, his work Embrace The Unknown was released, a record that he put together with the patience of a saint. Of course, stars like Stevie Wonder and Ray Charles have spent their entire careers doing nothing but recording music blindly, but going blind during the recording process is something different. In addition, Valentine played and sang every note on the album. The man from Hoogkarspel will not let anything or anyone stop him. His support and support is his wife Maria Catharina. She is also a professional singer and reached the final of Idols in 2004. Prior to the interview, she had already indicated that she wanted to address her husband first before the conversation. “After all, he has to look like Robby Valentine, the artist!”
Her husband is a rock star in the classic sense of the word: long dyed hair, sleek, shiny suits and a beautifully styled and made-up head. He had to pay for that striking appearance with a huge beating in the summer of 2018. “I took my daughter to school in Hoorn and was followed by a few boys who called me ‘faggot’, among other things. When we arrived at the school, I asked two fathers if they wanted to walk back to the train station with me. We met those guys again on the way. They started cursing and I ended up with a hard slap on the face. I was used to being scolded, but I had never experienced this aggression before. When we lived in Almere, this happened all the time. That was also the reason for moving to Hoogkarspel at the time.”
His wife is always the one to take care of her husband’s makeover. However, he is no longer able to admire the result in the mirror. His vision has deteriorated rapidly in recent years and with only 2 percent viewing power, his visual world has disappeared. His own studio, located on the top floor, is the place in the house that he literally knows like the back of his hand. “I make everything here. Singing, playing guitar, drums, bass, keyboard work…I do it all myself…by touch.” While pronouncing these sentences, Valentine’s long piano fingers flutter along the buttons on the table. “It’s a good thing I learned everything the old-fashioned way. I always enjoyed turning knobs and fiddling around, even though everyone who answered with a laptop passed me by. If I had had to do it via a laptop like all those modern musicians, I would have been lost now.”
In his own studio there is a lot of memorabilia from his long and sometimes impressive career. The world was literally at the feet of the Hilversum-born mega talent. “I had a great bond with musicians who later went on to play with Candy Dulfer and Marco Borsato. I got a lucrative and long-term Japanese contract, toured with Queen guitarist Brian May and could do whatever I wanted.” Just as Prince did in his paradise Paisley Park Studios in Minneapolis, Valentine created his own home studio since 1993. He also has his own recording Valhalla in this North Holland bungalow.
“It was the dental practice of our previous dentist. You know, I’ve had some luck. When I was 38 years old, I sold my house and moved in with my mother. With that surplus value we were eventually able to buy a house and sell it again. We still benefit from that.” It is a bright spot in Valentine’s life that the last two years in particular have not been all roses. “At the beginning of 2020 I stepped into a world I didn’t know. A difficult world. When we moved into this new house in April of that year, I was just able to connect all the cords. So I know where they are. When my sight almost disappeared, I spent almost six months in rehabilitation at the Institute for the Blind in Apeldoorn.
I learned a lot there. Ergonomic tips, learning to walk with a cane and more skills.” It is a fact that the difficult accessibility of hospitals during corona times has accelerated the process. “I could no longer go to the clinic, but you cannot properly measure the eye pressure from a distance. It deteriorated so quickly and when everything opened up again, they intervened operationally by placing an implant. That was simply too late.”
It doesn’t bother him that Valentine, now 54, despite a series of great rock albums, never became a world star. “I just keep doing what I do. I find it much worse that I can no longer do the father things with my daughter that my dad did. My father used to stand on the sidelines at football games to cheer me on. I can’t do that and I find it damn difficult.” His hands move towards an electric piano that is covered with all kinds of stickers. “Then at least you feel where the keys and buttons are.” He will be behind it again on Saturday, October 21, during the album presentation. “On stage everything falls away and I am Robby Valentine the artist again.”
