“Completely spontaneously, I started yodelling. It came from nowhere”: How an eccentric Dutch progressive rock group made the strangest hit single of 1973

Dutch progressive rock band Focus posing for a photograph in the early 1970s.

Focus’s Hocus Pocus is among the most eccentric hit songs of all time, its unforgettable mixture of high-intensity rock, polka beats and yodelling (yes, yodelling) mirroring the lunatic nature of the band that created it.

In 1970, positive reviews of progressive rock band Focus’s debut album In And Out Of Focus had failed to translate into sales. Such was the apathy that the Dutch group self-released a single called House Of The King.