Laurens ”Bakkie” Bakker (Leiden, The Netherlands, July 10th 1955) learned his first rudiments in a marching band at the age of 9, but he didn’t like his drum teacher, so he quit.
Years later, in high school, he took up drumming again and joined the school band as well as a band called Fase 5. During that period Bakkie first played on Hayman drums and later switched to Rogers. The set-up of his drums was a 24” double bass drum, 12”, 13”, 14”, 15”and 16” toms and 18”and 20” floor toms completed with 2 14”deep snares.
He already had a wide range of impressive cymbals back then, consisting of Paiste’s 602 series : bright medium ride 18”, medium ride 20”, bright medium ride 20”, medium ride 22”, heavy ride 22” and a 15” hi-hat medium and one 18” 2002 ride.
Later he was totally impressed by the Paiste Rude Series since they were to last longer which was a good thing for a hard hitting drummer as himself. Afterwards he was sponsored by Meinl.
Things became serious for Bakkie when he joined John Ridge & Cocon back in 1974. With them he toured the club circuit in Holland and Germany. After Cocon called it a day, John Ridge (John Boutkam) pursued his successful career in Sweden with the EF band, but luckily for us, Bakkie stayed on Dutch ground.
In 1977 Bakkie teamed up with Harry Bruintjes (ex- guitarist of Lemming) and bassplayer Rinus Vreugdenhil to form the legendary hardrock band Picture. Picture paved the way for many Dutch bands to come, since they were the first Dutch metal band to sign a record deal. But the influence of the band and of Bakkie stretched out far beyond Dutch borders as their records were distributed in over 80 countries and lots of them had the privilege to see our longhaired blond drummer play live. With Picture Bakkie recorded four albums : Picture (1981), Heavy Metal Ears (1981), Diamond Dreamer (1982) and Eternal Dark (1983).
Bakkie quit Picture in 1985 to turn up again at one single occasion to play with the original Picture line-up the song Eternal Dark, covered by Swedish metal band Hammerfall, at one of Hammerfall’s shows in 2001. The perfect combination of a song, written by the band who were forerunners of heavy metal combined with the band who stands for heavy metal today.
But don’t think that this was the last time we could see Bakkie play!
In 2007 Picture launched their own Myspace account and clips travelled around YouTube. When the band received lots of positive reactions from all over the world, a reunion was the next logical step.
As Bakkie puts it himself: “this is more or less the story so far but it will continue for sure”.
