Mariska Veres, the voice and face behind Shocking Blue’s international hit Venus, merits an affectionate obituary in the Parool, under the headline ‘1970s Sex Bomb’. Mariske, who was 59, died of cancer on Saturday.

She was, the paper says, the ultimate sex symbol and an exotic pop icon for a generation of adolescents. Internationally Shocking Blue was a one-hit wonder but in the Netherlands the group had 13 top-40 hits.
After the group broke up, Mariska tried to go solo but ended up staging Shocking Blue reunion shows in which she was often the only member of the original line-up. Jazz and gypsy music releases in the 1990s flopped as well.
And the sex symbol image? ‘That is not how I saw myself,’ the paper quoted her as saying. ‘I had all those leather outfits with straps and laces that the magazines wrote about. But they were made by my mum.’