Pi Vèriss

Pi Vèriss, born Piet Visser, was a Dutch songwriter and composer probably best known for writing the Johnny Jordaan hit "Geef mij maar Amsterdam", an immensely popular Jordaanlied.^[1] He was awarded the Golden Harp in 1986 for his entire body of work.^[2]

Vèriss was the regular songwriter for Johnny Jordaan in the 1950s (apparently he wrote "Geef mij maar Amsterdam" in ten minutes^[3]), and wrote and produced a number of other Dutch hit songs, some of which he recorded in the home studio in his attic. In the early 1970s, he owned a building in Baambrugge, in which the Beach Boys recorded Holland (all other studio space in the Netherlands being booked).^[4] The studio inside that building was heavily modified from the four-track home studio Vèriss had built^[5] in a former chicken coop; the Beach Boys flew the studio equipment in from the United States.^[4]