From the archive: what makes a good tribute band?

This is not a new interview. We read what tribute musicians, and one of their strictest judges, have told the press in recent years. We quote them briefly with source and date, and add our own reading alongside. The quotes are taken word for word from the articles named.

The judge: Cesar Zuiderwijk

In January 2022 The Tribute – Battle of the Bands started on SBS6. On the panel sat Cesar Zuiderwijk, drummer of Golden Earring, the Dutch rock band that had stopped performing shortly before. The magazine TV Gids asked him what a good tribute band has to deliver.

(Translated: "The most important thing is to get close to the original. A good tribute band gives you the same feeling.")

He set the bar for the look as well: an ABBA tribute, in his view, needs spectacular outfits, and with the Stones there is no getting round Mick Jagger's mannerisms. As a drummer he listens first to drums and bass, "the rhythmic foundation". On the role of tributes in general he was clear:

(Translated: "Tribute acts keep the music alive, especially for bands you can no longer see live.")

Our reading. Anyone who never saw Golden Earring live can now only hear Radar Love this way. What stands out is that a member of the original band says this. Zuiderwijk sees tributes as an extension of his own work.

The Brabant band: Brucified

The same first season featured Brucified, a Springsteen tribute of nine musicians from Eindhoven. The regional broadcaster Omroep Brabant spoke to the brothers Nick and Mike Dekkers. Mike explained why Springsteen in particular:

(Translated: "I think the stories Bruce Springsteen tells in his songs are magnificent. Bruce always sings about working people, which is what we all still are.")

And Nick, asked whether they think they are as good as the original: "There is only one Boss. We think his music is fantastic and we try to get as close to it as we can," he said (in Dutch).

Our reading. Mike describes a bond between musician and material that you can hear in a good tribute. Springsteen sings about working people; Brucified is made up of people with day jobs. Brucified finished third that season.

The purists: The Analogues

For ten years the Dutch band The Analogues played the Beatles albums from 1966 to 1970, on instruments from that era, with a string quartet and brass. Singer Felix Maginn told the British site SuperDeluxeEdition in 2022 how they worked:

On dressing up as the Beatles he said: "We really shy away from that. For us, it's really about the music." They saw their project as modern classical music, performing an album the way an orchestra plays Beethoven.

When the band stopped in 2024, co-founder Bart van Poppel summed it up in Maxazine:

(Translated: "The Beatles took three years to record all those great songs. And it took us ten years to reproduce it all.")

Our reading. The Analogues showed that a tribute can be a reconstruction. They played music The Beatles never played live; the arrangements with strings and brass could not be performed on a stage at the time, Maginn said. That is copying and making something new at once.

The newcomers: Treasure

Treasure, a Bruno Mars tribute built around singer Steven Smits from Eindhoven, won the fourth season in 2025, a year after the band started. Omroep Brabant asked whether he hopes Bruno Mars will one day respond:

(Translated: "It would be amazing if he ever responded, but that isn't what we are aiming for. We want to honour his name.")

Our reading. Treasure honours an artist who is still touring hard. That fits what music researcher Colin Outhwaite described in The Conversation in 2024: in Melbourne a Taylor Swift tribute played to thousands of people while Swift herself was performing a kilometre away. He concluded that tributes "aren't just imitative; they have their own personality".

What we take from it

All four are on the same page. They all want to get as close to the original as they can, and they all talk about it with respect. Where they differ is in what 'close' means: Zuiderwijk wants to see the clothes and the moves too, while The Analogues left those out. We sit somewhere in between. We play the Red Hot Chili Peppers note for note where it counts, and we jam where the Chili Peppers jam themselves. Why, you can read in our column.

More names from the Dutch tribute scene are in The best-known tribute bands in the Netherlands. Who we are is on the band page.

De Peppers editorial team

Written by the editors at De Peppers, the Red Hot Chili Peppers tribute band from Noord-Brabant, the Netherlands. Every fact is sourced at the bottom of the piece. Spotted a mistake? Email info@mia-automation.com and we will check it.

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