Dutch punk legend Peter ten Seldam dead at 82

Punk pioneer Peter ten Seldam, frontman of legendary Dutch band Panic, has died at the age of 82. Bill Wilson, who knew him in his heyday, shares his memories of an outstanding performer.

I have just learned of the sad passing away of Peter ten Seldam, following a fall at his Amsterdam apartment in December.

Peter was the main songwriter and all-round driving force behind Panic, the energetic and anarchic Netherlands punk band.

Panic’s high-octane 1970s performances can still be found on YouTube, with the band shocking staid, conservative Dutch sensibilities even more than their UK counterparts did here.

Active between 1976 and 1978, one legendary 1977 gig in Leiden, the first ever in the city, saw them play with London band The Boys.

Under his stage name of Peter Penthouse, ten Seldam would leap, roll and dive energetically around stage, literally firing up the crowd with stunts such as fire-breathing and letting off fire extinguishers.

For the latter, he clad himself in a red cagoule with the hood tightly tied around his face, which gave him the air of a demented Dutch mariner in the middle of a musical storm.

Panic released one LP and a handful of singles, and held the distinction of being the first Dutch band to play legendary New York indie club CBGBs in 1978, the same year their album 13 was released.

I was lucky enough to be acquainted with Peter when I lived and worked in Amsterdam in the early 1980s.

By then, Panic had folded. But a new iteration, Panic Special, had been created, which played intermittently with a revolving roster of musicians. Again, they can be seen on YouTube.

Panic Special also released an album in 1981, Wat Kan Het Leven Toch Mooi Zijn (How Beautiful Life Can Be) and a single of the same name.

The first time I was introduced to Peter, it was a slightly nerve-wracking experience. Towering well over 6ft tall, he was heavily tanned, gaunt, and had a large S tattooed (as I thought) on his forehead.

He explained it stood for Special from the band’s name.

To an unemployed teenager from the north of England, he cut an exotic and extremely interesting figure.

“You are very light on your feet,” he said, which was an unusual first greeting.

That led to us discussing our shared love of running.  In his youth, he had clocked up over 100k a week, and – despite his leather-jacketed rocker demeanour – could still be seen running along the canal sides on an early morning.

Despite the age difference, he was fascinated to hear tales of British punk and New Wave bands, and what were the up and coming sounds and genres.

In pre-internet, pre-mobile days, the only way information about bands could be traded was through word of mouth or the music press.

Early 1980s Netherlands was still very much living in the hippy/psychedelic/heavy rock days of the late 1960s: when you went out, you were just as likely to hear Hocus Pocus by Focus as Sandinista by The Clash.

And Peter, who was in his late 30s and early 40s when I knew him, straddled those three decades from the 60s to the 80s.

Born in 1943, he had been an active participant in the Dutch protest movement against the Vietnam War, which included helping to hide US Army deserters in Amsterdam with fake IDs.

Peter also regaled me with a cloak-and-dagger tale of how he had gone to Prague to collect the alleged debris from a US fighter plane which had been shot down somewhere in South East Asia it should not have been.

The details escape me, but his task was to bring the plane wreckage back to Amsterdam where it could be used to denounce American war crimes.

A few years after that, he said, he had been a stand-in for Burt Lancaster in the paella Western Valdez is Coming, filmed in Spain in 1970.

His role had been to ride a horse for the numerous long-shots of Lancaster’s cowboy lawman character. He said he’d never seen the movie, so didn’t know it they made the final cut.

Peter hinted that his childhood had not been easy. He would say how lucky young people were in the 1980s and to make the most of life.

He had been a teacher in yet another previous life, and it was easy to see him standing in front of a class sharing his adventurous, positive and humorous outlook on life.

Although having said that, any mention of Dutch rocker Herman Brood, or “Herman Bread” as Peter sneered, would drive him to distraction.

It was from the days when they shared a record label, and Peter felt Panic had been ignored and all marketing efforts had been firmly behind Brood.

In fact, Panic’s CBGBs adventure was in some ways inspired by a desire to put one over on Brood. As a form of one-upmanship, he had fibbed to his musical rival that they already had the US gig secured.

His fellow band members went into a panic and clubbed together the fare for Peter to go to New York and explain all to Hilly Kristal, who fortunately took pity on them and agreed to the gig.

After Panic Special folded, Peter spent much of his time in his Singel flat bashing away on an old typewriter for hours on end. He never did tell anyone whether he was writing a novel, his memoirs or new songs.

By the time I left the Netherlands in 1983, he had acquired a British Rover saloon car, a rather eccentric choice at a time when progressive Dutch thought considered all things British (music aside) as Thatcherite-tainted evil.

In 2020 a documentary, Jimmy Is Punk, was released telling the band’s story and featuring a chaotic concert in Gouda in 1978. It was shortlisted for Best Music Documentary at Raindance Film Festival (2020).

Peter was a vegetarian, sceptical of organised religion and a very honest, friendly and straightforward man. In later years, he had been caring for his long term partner Miriam, who unfortunately has also passed away.  At the time of his death, he had been grappling with the onset of Alzheimer’s.