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Former Focus guitarist Jan Akkerman says he still loves the music he made with the Dutch prog veterans, but he’s learned to resist the temptation to return.
He co-founded the band with Thijs van Leer in 1969, but tensions led to his departure seven years later. He returned in 1985 and again in 1990 – however, as he tells Guitar World, he won’t sign up for a fourth time.
“The problem for me is not in the music,” Akkerman says. “Let’s put that upfront. I love the music of Focus. The problem is the right or wrong synergy – or whatever you want to call it. I said earlier that envy and jealousy are factors, and those feelings are often underestimated.”
He continues: “That’s the stuff that factors in for me, rather than how good the music was – it’s all good. Every album is like one of my babies.”
In 2024 van Leer told Prog he wasn’t in regular contact with Akkerman, and said of their relationship: “The creative tension helped, here and there. At other times it did not help. So it’s difficult to define that adequately.”
Asked about the chances of another reunion with van Leer, Akkerman says: “No. I mean, the idea is, of course, very tempting. But there are plenty of other tempting things in life. Life is basically one risk after another. To get involved in that again, part of me thinks that would be crazy.”
On the subject of his musical inspirations behind 1971’s Focus II – aka Moving Waves – Akkerman says: “I listened to a lot of John Coltrane, Django Reinhardt and all sorts of things. With Hocus Pocus, I remember I was listening to a lot of the Beatles’ White Album. I loved the craziness of that album.
“I’d be listening to that with one ear, the other fixed on the television, while sitting on the floor with a guitar. I’d come up with a heavy lick, and tracks like Hocus Pocus and that album came together. It has a lot of different influences layered in.
He reflected: “It’s a funny album because there’s a lot of heavy rock on there, but also yodelling to the point where it’s almost half opera! It was kind of like a big opera-type story. The only thing missing was stabbing a knife in each other’s back – but that happened later anyway.”
