It’s exactly 52 years ago that Lenny Kuhr woke up the day after: as the winner of the Eurovision Song Contest 1969 with ‘De Troubadour’. During that special edition with four winners, where she shared the victory with Lulu from the United Kingdom, Salomé from Spain and Frida Boccara from France
On stage she played her iconic guitar, a guitar she lost along the way… but suddenly resurfaced!
When Lenny was a young girl, she bought a guitar at Mr. van Erp’s music shop in Eindhoven: a brown one of the Swedish brand Lewin. After winning Eurovision, Lenny got into a relationship with a guy named Jaap, but they lost track of eachother after the relationship ended.
Almost 50 years later, Lenny received an email from Els, Jaap’s wife, to inform her of him passing away. When clearing out a room she found a guitar, wrapped in bubble wrap, of which Jaap had told Els that it belonged to Lenny!
This made Els think it was the guitar Lenny had won Eurovision with and wanted to give it back to her. They met up at a cafe terrace in Amsterdam and Els gave her the guitar. Lenny was in doubt because this guitar looked much darker but she took it home anyway. Well at home she knew it for sure: this was a different guitar of the Japanese brand Yamaha!
Lenny didn’t wanna hurt her feelings so she kept quiet. But after a little while, Els phoned her: she had found another guitar!
They met up at the very same cafe terrace in Amsterdam and what happened then…
Lenny tells:
The guitar I got to see was a lot darker than I could remember. The guitar had deep cracks on both sides, but it did have my guitar teacher’s nameplate on it. I had the guitar cleaned and checked by a luthier who compared the grain structure of the cover sheet with photos of Madrid. And yes: this was the guitar with which I won the Eurovision Song Contest in 1969.
This brought Lenny new inspiration for a new album that she’s recording right now, an album on which the returned guitar will also be played. Her winning Eurovision song ‘De Troubadour’ will also make a comeback in one of the songs, but Lenny won’t reveal yet in which shape or form…
Let’s listen to her winning song once again:
Lenny Kuhr is one of the artists who will be part of the special Rock the Roof interval act during the Grand Final on May 22nd!
