I signed up, then had to go straight to parachute school. Anyway, I thought I could now buy a second- or thirdhand car. North Shields is a good place to come from, and that’s where I lived. With my own wheels, I could leave anytime, and I wanted to so badly. The money from two weeks of bloody scary Cold War exercising in Germany helped me buy a secondhand PA system with two four-by-eight speakers and a hundred-watt WEM amp. Oh boy, now the only trouble was I was so busy at work and in the TA and at technical college (for I would be a draftsman—a rotten one, I’ll admit, but I was one once).
Automobiles in the shape of vans became my focus. Cars were for normal people; us musos wanted vans. Of course, Ford Transits were quite new—the Beatles and the Stones had them. I’m afraid our vans were more agricultural, clapped-out Ford Thames/Commer crap. My very first van was a Hillman Husky, a legend in van culture. All Hillmans rusted before you got them home from the showroom, and this one was ten years old! I did have a brake-light guarantee from the used-car bloke. Once you hit the brakes and turned the corner, it was over.
When I was in a band called Fresh, we had a Commer incident. We were driving to some village near Newcastle one Saturday night. We were gonna play a gig to the yokels, and the tottie was supposed to be hot. On the way, the whole back floor of the Commer collapsed, just went down, and there were the back tires, bald, of course, spinning ’round, and our gear starting to fall out the back. We stopped as quickly as our brakes—and I use the term loosely—could stop us. We were fucked. I can’t remember how we got back.
Chapter 44
Car Porn
MAKE SURE THE DOOR’S LOCKED
To show you what man can do with metal, I give you the beauty of:
1942 Alfa Romeo 6C 2500 Tipo Sport
1963 Maserati Vignale Spyder
Chrysler Duel Cowl Phaeton
Jaguar XK 120
1962 Ferrari 250 SWB
Bizzarrini 5300 GT Strada
Lamborghini Muira
1960s Bentley Continental Flying Spur
Mercedes 300SL Gullwing
Bentley racer, 4.5 litre, supercharged
Jaguar SS100
1960s Rolls-Royce Phantom
McLaren F1 . . .
. . . and any McLaren race car
Duesenberg SJ Lagrange Phaeton
Rolls-Royce Silver Ghost
Bugatti Type 57 Atalante
Morgan
Facel Vega
ISO Rivolta
ISO Grifo
MG MPB Magnettes
Shelby AC Cobra
The big Austin Healey
Alfa Romeo 8c Scuderia 193
Ferrari Daytona
1930s Alvis Tourer
Lagonda M45
There are a lot more photos I could put in, but there wouldn’t be room for anything else. Hang on, that’s not a bad idea. Beauty has always been there when they built these, practicality maybe came second in the thirties and forties, and even up to the seventies. Now the Ferrari 430 is as reliable as an Audi or Toyota. The Audi R8 is a luscious, lip-smacking, liberational libation of loveliness. That’s why I bought one!
You’ll notice there are a couple of American cars there, the Duesenberg and the Cobra. The Cord was a groundbreaking car but not many were made. America was taken over by bean counters, those horrible, faceless little bastards with glasses perched on their noses the size of a garden gnome’s dick. You won’t need this; that’s too expensive. Sack three hundred people and the profit goes up. Don’t let management have prostitutes; tell them to have a quick one off the wrist. These useless twits were responsible for some of the most dangerous cars in the world. Remember all those Dirty Harry movies in the seventies, where shit-box Dodges and Pontiacs chased Mercs and BMWs ’round mountain roads? The way they handled, the American plodders would’ve been straight over the cliff at the first turn.
Anyway, it’s sad. America’s a country of car nuts, and they love their hot rods and their V8s, and there’s racing on every weekend, racing of all kinds.
Guys like Walt Bohren. He was an IMSA national champion in the early eighties. I’ve codriven with him many times and he basically taught me everything I know about racing cars. He is a wonderful anglophile, a francophile. He races airplanes and motorcycles, owns a Mini Moke, a Citroën SM, and a 2CV, and he’s raced an Aston Martin prototype. He mourns the passing of American muscle but believes the new Callaway Fords are the real deal. He now lives on a huge catamaran in the British Virgin Islands (oh yeah, and I visit him at every opportunity).
The thing is, I don’t want the Yanks to lose what we lost, our national identity. Because that’s what our cars were, for better or worse.
Chapter 45
Lots of Trouble, Usually Serious
WHAT L-O-T-U-S REALLY STANDS FOR
Times move on, and in 2007 I bought a brand-new, British-racing-green Lotus Exige S. Nought to sixty in a vinegar stroke. What a gorgeous-looking car! I had a stage-two exhaust fitted so’s I couldn’t hear anything. The noise, oh that noise, it was absolutely fabulous! Heads turned and jaws dropped as I drove by.
Now, here’s where the problem was. On the second day, my inside door handle came off in my hand. The dealership took it away; it came back four days later: “All fixed, Brian, no more problems.” “Hold on,” I said. “Don’t leave till I try it.” So I got in, tried it once, tried it twice, oh, fuck me, it’s off again. The car goes back on the truck for a replacement door, and ten days later it’s back. Now I’m a little suspicious of everything. And, you see, the door handle on this car is important, because the outside one doesn’t really exist and the side window’s too small for you to reach back and hit the button. So if you crashed, you’d be trapped. Hallelujah, it worked!
Off I went, and it started raining, Florida rain, swathes of the stuff comin’ at you. I turned on the one big windscreen wiper. I want you now to imagine a noise like Mariah Carey singing full-throat with a prize leek up her arse. I nearly shat; I thought the cat had got into the engine bay. When I stopped gasping “What the fuck was that?,” off it went again to the dealership. Five days later, it came back. The guy looked me straight in the feet and said, “Hey, Mr. Johnson, the destrangulation millipod was congratulating the semihydrosternic anticular.” I nodded and said, “Did ya fix it?” Still looking at me square in the feet, he said, “I don’t know what it means either, but the wiper’s working again.” Right then, I’d had this car three and a half weeks and I’d got forty-five miles on the clock.
Off we go again. My wife, Brenda, said, “Let’s go for dinner in it,” which was strange, because getting in and out of the bugger you had to have the moves of a young Olga Korbut. “Okay, let’s go!” I was driving into town when a police car stopped me. My old mate Officer Dee. “Hey, Brian, do you know you have a brake light out?” “I can’t have, me darlin’, the car’s brand-new.” She put her foot on the brake, and she was right. I couldn’t believe it! She said, “Get it fixed tomorrow. You know it’s the death penalty in Florida.” Funny, very funny. This was just getting worse—what else could go wrong?
Folks, get this. I drive on and come to a stop at the traffic lights in downtown Sarasota, then the right-hand headlight fell out. I mean, it popped out, it was just hanging by the wires—much to the amusement of everyone watching. Officer Dee, who was behind me, got out of her car and said, “Did you build this yourself?” That was it. I just started laughing along with everyone else.
The Lotus dealership said they were sorry, but a few other Exiges’ headlights had been popping out. “Oh, well, that’s all right then.” They sent their top man to Tampa to go over the whole car, and I got a nine-page report on the things that hadn’t even gone wrong yet. This time it was gone for two weeks—one last chance, I thought.
After two weeks, the telephone rang. It was my buddy Nick Harris, who was with the Minardi race team at Sebring. “Hey, Brian, come over. We’re testing our new cars.” Great, because it’s a fantastic drive to Sebring from my house, St
ate Road 71 then on to Route 66. It was 99 degrees outside. I was enjoying the drive, with the air-conditioning on full blast. Then, twenty miles from the track, it packed up. It was getting hot, and I was leaking like a pirate’s poxed-up dick. God, it was hot. I made it to the track, and the Minardi guys checked over the car, said the cabin was 125 degrees.
Brilliant. How was I gonna get home and not die? I remembered Ice Cold in Alex, the British war movie where they started killing each other because they were, yeah, sweating. Christ, I might kill myself with the sweating thing. Calm down, lad, easy. I said my good-byes to the lads after an hour and gritted my teeth. “C’mon, you can do it.”
I was driving into the sun; I had to get out two or three times to cool down in the 97 degrees outside. I got home and never put a foot in the car again. After much humming and buck-passing, I eventually got my money back, less the $12,000 the government took for tax. Governments are funny like that; once you give them money, they never wanna give it back. I told my old friend Red the story, and he said, “Braaaan, in South Carolina they say Lotus stands for Lots Of Trouble, Usually Serious.” He wasn’t fuckin’ kidding.
* * *
P.S.: Lotus America said, “We’ll give you your money back as long as you don’t tell anybody about this.” Since when was telling the truth illegal?
P.P.S.: Lotus, would you please tell your blind, deaf, and dumb quality-control fella to get a grip, but not on anything on a Lotus—it’ll come away in his hand.
Chapter 46
Paul Newman
GENTLEMAN OF THE TRACK
The rock ’n’ roll fraternity is a strange and very close one, apart from the fact that no one talks to each other—unless Bobby Geldof and Bono have a charity bash, where everybody revels in their own self-righteous glory. (Oooh, I’m glad I got that off my chest.)
My bandmates, obviously, and the people I know in rock ’n’ roll and music in general, are, I’m proud to say, good guys. Jimmy Nail is as hard as his surname but a pussycat underneath. (For God’s sake, don’t tell him I said that, or he’ll knock the living shit out of me.)
Mark Knopfler; Tony Joe White; Donald “Duck” Dunn, the greatest bass player that lives, from Booker T and the MGs. Also he played on “Midnight Hour,” “Knock On Wood,” “Sittin’ on the Dock of the Bay,” and a shitload of other good stuff. “Green Onions,” “Time Is Tight”—check these out yourself. Scotty Hill from Skid Row, Robin Zander from Cheap Trick, Billy Joel from Billy Joel, Jesse James Dupree from Jackyl, Joe Lynn Turner, Gary Numan—a great race driver and, believe it or not, a very entertaining and funny guy. It’s been a pleasure and a privilege to know them all.
But one man I’ve had the honor to meet had nothing to do with music at all. But he was a racer. And he passed away three days before I wrote this very sentence.
I met Paul Newman about three times in drivers’ meetings and on the track, but I never bothered him, because I knew he didn’t like the fuss. A bit like myself, he thought racing was racing. The autograph and photograph stuff was taboo.
In 2000, I was recording in Vancouver, and the Grand Prix was on one weekend. I was invited to join the Newman/Haas team. That Sunday, it was black skies, then sunshine, then showtime. The race started. I was in the hot pit. Roberto Moreno was driving, and no one knew what tires to put on, wet or dry, because the weather was changing all the time. Paul “Handsome as Fuck” Newman was standing there next to little Geordie me. He turned to me after about thirty minutes and he said, “Well, what do you think, wet or dry?” I looked straight into his piercing laser-blue yaks and said, “You know, I don’t work for you.” He looked at me again and said, “Are you sure?” I told him who I was. “Yeah, I heard of you.” Lying bugger.
In 1992, I was at the Cleveland Grand Prix in the celebrity race. It was there I met Mario Andretti, lovely man. I told him I’d love to take up race driving but thought I was too old. “No way,” he said. “I taught Paul Newman when he was forty-four.”
Forward to Daytona 2000. I was driving a Mazda rotary race car, and I had Paul Newman right up my arse in a 962 Porsche—as everyone knows, the “wanna fuck you” of racing cars. He was catching me, of course—he had a bigger engine—and we were going into turn two on the banking when my engine let go. It was a Jeremy Clarkson of a blowout. I slowed from about 170 mph down to 90, and I was expecting to receive a Newman enema, but he was so quick with his reactions that he drove around me. I wasn’t hurt, and I knew then and there he was a great race driver. This guy raced cars, smoked tabs, and drank beer—perfect.
He was one of the most decent human beings I have ever met.
Chapter 47
Pimp My Ride Rant
MAKING BEAUTIFUL CARS AWFUL
Janis Joplin, the most fucked-up, drugged-up, and propped-up female singer of the sixties, famously wondered in song why the good Lord wouldn’t buy her a Mercedes-Benz. I am so happy she never actually drove one whilst I or any of my family members were around.
Today I live in America and I see Pimp My Ride cars driven by rap stars and I just laugh. What on earth makes them think they can out-think a BMW, Bentley, Mercedes, or Porsche car designer? But these buggers have chorus lines like “I shot my granny in the temple, not inside the temple but in the temple, shit, you know, the one on the side of the head, on the side of the road.” And some of their chromium penis extensions are majestically awful; some of the wheel rims look like they’ve been designed by Ray Charles or George Dubya Bush’s geography teacher. The gold-toothed, sixteen-charm-wearing, diamond-through-the-nose cretins who drive these cars designed for aristocraps make a regular guy wanna cry. These are the cars that should be keyed or used in a ram raid, preferably with the owners strapped to the front. These are the cars that should be stolen without delay, and shipped to Russia or China or Romania, anyfuckingwhere but near me! These cars make my arse feel like a breakaway republic, and that’s not pleasant.
Woah, Brian, son, steady, take a deep breath. Shhhh, there, there. Phew, that was a close one, I nearly lost it there . . .
Chapter 48
Awesome Bill from Dawsonville
HOW MOONSHINE MADE RACE CARS
A couple of months back, I was racing at Road Atlanta. It was the “Walter Mitty” race week, a brilliant gathering of vintage race cars. I also had to do a documentary of me driving my favorite car ’round the roads of Georgia, the car being the Rolls-Royce Phantom. So, bright and early Monday morning, the producer said, “We’re going to a place called Dawsonville.”
“Never heard of it,” I said.
“It’s basically where NASCAR had its origins,” he said.
Now, Europeans usually get a little snotty when NASCAR is mentioned, because they just go “ ’round and ’round.”
Well, I’m here to tell you that I drove one of those big buggers ’round and ’round Indianapolis Raceway, and my admiration for those boys knows no bounds, those guys go fast.
Anyhow, I arrived in Dawsonville, pulled up to the Georgia Racing Hall of Fame, and met a wonderful gentleman called Gordon Pirkle, who was the curator. Now, apart from all the fabulous cars in there, there was a moonshine still, right in the middle of the hall. Hmmm! Strange, I thought. “What’s that thing for?” I asked.
“Well,” Gordon said, “the first illegal liquor runners drove from Dawsonville to Atlanta fifty miles away, at night with no headlights.” (They couldn’t use the headlights because the revenue men were after them.)
“How did they do that?” I said.
“Well, they had to follow the telegraph poles, but only when the moon shone, ’cause you couldn’t see them otherwise.” Ah-ha!
“Moonshine.” I suddenly got it.
When I asked Gordon if he ever ran moonshine, he said with a twinkle in his eye, “Oh yeah.” And through those eyes, I saw a young man and a dusty road, driving the bejesus out of a V8 souped-up Ford on a moonlit night with no headlights and lots of balls following those telegraph poles fifty miles to Atlanta on Thunder Road
. Well, people being people, they started to bet on who was the fastest driver, Gordon said. “If you came first you won, if you came second you went to jail.”
So, in a strange kinda way, that’s how the competitive edge came into it.
Gordon asked me if I wanted some lunch, and he happened to run a great little restaurant that served something called a Bully Burger. I asked him what was in it; he said with an extra twinkle in his eye, “Oh varmints and such.” Being English, I thought it was the size of Oprah Winfrey’s wallet and the best varmint sandwich I’d ever tasted. I also had some “white lightnin’,” and found after drinking it that Chinese arithmetic ain’t that hard.
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