Beep Beep Mmm Beep Beep YEAH!

The Fabs didn't grow up car crazy. 

England isn't a car culture the way Southern California (Or Texas)  is, and they didn't have the money. At first, Mal Evans drove them everywhere in a crummy van with no heater. 

John had no driver's license until 1965. 

Ringo had a Ford Zephyr for hauling drums 

Apparently, George had a Ford Anglia pre-fame 

Hey, they were Ford guys, like me! 

By their early 20s, they were millionaires. The First Order of Automotive Business was a band limo. What’s an Austin Princess?

George swapped his Anglia for a Jag

Then he bought a second Jag, this one an E-type

And, since being the lead guitarist for the Beatles and driving an E-type Jag wasn’t cool enough, he bought an Aston Martin DB5

Ringo nearly missed an Indianapolis gig when the local coppers treated him to a few race laps around the speedway. Time got away from them, so they screamed along in a flotilla of cruisers, in the nick of time for downbeat.

Meanwhile, at the Lennon household, John passed the exam, and word hit the wires that he was looking for a car. A fleet of Swinging London’s Baddest Rides were presented for consideration. Blind as a bat, and having barely learned to drive, he made the sensible choice. 

A Ferrari.

Later that year, he acquired a snazzy Benz roadster

Predictably, the young, newly moneyed Brit bought a Rolls. Like the Chuck Berry song, “No Money Down”, he specified a double bed, a fridge, a TV, a phone (#Weybridge 46676), and decades ahead of the “Pimp my ride” guys, he got it “Murdered out” in matte black paint. Bored with that by 1967, he painted it psychedelic. He might’ve been high.

The car was later brought to the States where John and Yoko donated it to the Smithsonian for a $225,000 tax credit. 

John must’ve liked limousines. He had a ’56 Bentley 

And one of those super-cool, mile-long Mercedes limos. When he moved to the states, this one transferred to George

“Meeting a man from the motor trade” 

-She’s Leaving Home

That lyric actually refers to Terry Doran, who partnered with Brian Epstein on a Mini Cooper dealership. Eppy ordered four Minis spruced up with wood, wool, and leather interiors; power windows(!); a sunroof; and custom bumper and light treatments. Ringo used his, believe it or not, to carry drums

while George painted his all crazy, and loaned it to John

McCartney developed elegant taste overnight: fine art, the Theatre, and cars like this Aston

and this Lamborghini 

Here’s Paul's Mini...

...which he later totaled. 

Speaking of mishaps, as a superfan of Beatle music, I’m glad that the Germans build ‘em sturdy.

Here’s George’s  

Here’s Ringo’s

It’s not German, but here’s John’s boo-boo

When the Lennons relocated to America, John brought over an old Hearse, and had it outfitted with airplane seats. He might’ve been high.

Californians: Look for it on the road, it’s got the license plate “EMAJUN”. 

I like big crazy old station wagons (You can see the grille of my mom’s 1974 Gran Torino Country Squire in the above photo of my Galaxie 500). John must have, too, because he bought this for rolling around incognito

Ringo’s taste was all over the place, from Facel Vega ...

...to a not-very-collectible Mustang 

George was the real car guy. 

Race cars, really (That's actually him).

Ferraris as daily drivers 

and even as investing partner in a “hypercar”

AFTERWORD: McCartney has lent his name to Lexus Hybrids for environmental reasons; Ringo was recently spotted by our friends at AMagicalHistory Tour in Beverly Hills driving a Mercedes sedan; John’s last car was a 1979 tan Mercedes station wagon; and I like to think of George’s last car as the McLaren used by the “Threetles” in the Anthology videos. 

10 Swingin'-est Tour Buses EVER

The earliest Tour Buses for musicians were the tent revivals in the South. 
Those familiar with the details of the period know that there were various good reasons these folks needed to get out of town quickly and efficiently. 

“I want to take a ride in
 the car Hank Williams died in”

Wow. Just-Wow.

Elvis drove his own. 

He was a truck driver from way back,

and he kept odd hours anyway.

Um... couldn’t find anything on this Isetta, but, in trying to, I found this about Webb Pierce:

        "The strangest record Webb Pierce  made in his attempt to regain chart dominance was a 1956 attempt to merge two trends, one the maudlin child snuff ballad, a musical genre that has thrived in country music since its earliest days,  and that peculiar trend-- the "wop song", which are tunes done in a strange stereotyped Italian accent similar to that of Chico Marx..."

Information courtesy of The HoundBlog, http://thehoundblog.blogspot.com/2010_09_01_archive.html 

I don’t know the story on this. But I want to.

Willie Nelson's bus. Highway Roadkill is a constant concern. 

From the smell of things, this ‘un hit a skunk. 

Roll up for the mystery tour... will this EVER be released on DVD?

My fave. 12 of these caravanned the US in 1939 to spread the message. 
I’m unclear on WHAT message, exactly, but this is the baddest thing on wheels, EVER!!!! Contemporaneous youtube here 

Witchy Woman vs The Indians

Eagles - Witchy Woman (Link to "Live in Japan" video.)

They say that a guy who shines shoes for a living walks around all day, and notices nothing but shoes. Similarly, a musician listening to the radio hears nothing but his instrument of choice. I'm what some call a "Rhythm guitarist", so I always listen for the John Lennon parts and the Keith Richards chords (note: on most Stones records, Keef clips the big E string of his guitar, and tunes the 5 strings remaining to an open G chord, as in the intro to "Honky Tonk Women").

 It's a peculiar way to go through life, I grant you, but ,on the bright side, it does make crappy pop singles more interesting to dissect. I was in that dreamy headspace when my beloved 70's station (Mesquite's KEOM, staffed entirely by high school students born 20 years after most of these records were made. Weird.) played  the first hit single by what I'm told is The Biggest Band in the History of Civilization, The Eagles. I'm pretty much in The Big Lebowski camp regarding the works of Henley, Frey,  Leadon, Schmidt, Felder, et. al., but the song came on, and I listened.

Witchy Woman. So, this broad not only has raven hair and ruby lips, but it is reported that sparks fly from her fingertips. This turd was a hit ten years prior to the birth of MTV, yet I dimly recollect seeing it in some sort of primeval rock video, featuring a singing drummer(!) who sported a 'fro like Bernie on Room 222. He later grew up to become Don Henley, Inc.

So. Oh yeah, the rhythm guitar part. It's a bright chord "Chink-chink"-ing  on beats two and four:

"Raaaa-ven (chink) hair (chink)

And ru (chink)-by lips (chink)"

       A precursor to The Great Reggae Scare of the Mid-Seventies (I Shot the Sheriff. Yeesh).

This insistent "chink"-ing runs like a thread through the entire song, all except for the hook. So now I'm committed to listening to this turkey, when a line worthy of Dylan hits me.

"Crazy laughter from another room

She drove herself to madness with a silver spoon"

You either get that, or you don't. I'm not gonna 'splain ya.

 So I was drawn in by a hypnotic rhythm guitar part, and by a lyric that gave me the shivers. Like Henley, I know about being a fish-out-of-water Texan in Hollywood, with its attendant silver-spoon-madness-induced laughter. A moment later, just as I'm rethinking my Anti-Witchy Woman Stance, things turn ugly. Mighty ugly. THE DUMBEST GODDAMN AMERICAN INDIAN GROOVE YOU EVER HEARD kicks in. I say the dumbest ever, assuming you never heard "Cherokee People" by Paul Revere and the Raiders, or the soundtrack to a Roy Rogers serial western.

Kee-rist! The early 1970's was absolutely the end of the 250-year epoch of goofing on Indians. I grew up in a Dallas suburb next to something called "The Reservation", so-called because of streets called Arapaho, Cherokee, Mohawk, Seminole, and Commanche. Your classic White Man Move: Steal the real estate, chop down the trees, then name streets after them. And not just streets: The Washington Redskins. Think deeply about that one for a minute. Go ahead-I'll wait.

You back? Okay. The first I ever heard of taking a revisionist look at all this was the night goofy-ass Marlon Brando refused the Best Actor Oscar for his portrayal of don Vito Corleone. I (and all of America) watched with my jaw hanging open, as the announcer boomed out the winner, but, instead of Brando, up to the mic walked one Sacheen Littlefeather. She was, in my memory at least, dressed in traditional Indian princess garb, and she read a scripted complaint of the treatment of Indians in Hollywood. Wow. I mean WOW. Soon after, she appeared in a Playboy Pictorial which lives on in my mind seven presidents later. Remind me to Google her.

Just as Brando was first to the party with Method Acting, so he was ahead of the game on this deal, too. For it was a mere 15 years after Sacheen's Playboy spread that I worked on a lavish film produced by Robert Redford, no less, which was ultimately scuttled,  on grounds that the film's leading man contained insufficient quantity of Cherokee blood to satisfactorily portray the hero, Jim Chee. One minute, old Jewish comedians comprise the Heckahwee  Tribe on F-Troop (sample dialogue:"Where the Heckahwee?"),

 and the next minute, an actor has to submit to DNA profiling to play "Cowboys and Indians" in moving pictures.

I haven't seen The Eagles live, but I'll bet you five bucks that  we'll see Henley in a Billy Preston afro again before you'd hear "Witchy Woman".  I bet he still cashes those royalty checks, though.