Pete Townshend, Who I Am
I was driving down the M1 motorway in the early hours when I ran into an accident that
happened ten minutes earlier. Warning lights weren’t set up and for a critical few moments I
ignored a man waving a torch, thinking he was trying to get a lift. When I hit the brakes they
locked and the car went into a time-freezing drift. At the very last moment of my skid, I smashed
tail-first into a Jaguar that had rolled over, and still contained two trapped elderly people waiting
for an ambulance. They already had multiple injuries so that bump caused them considerable
pain. I felt terrible for them, and shame for the habit I’d fallen into of driving too fast when the
road was empty. I was convicted of careless driving and heavily fined, although I didn’t lose my
licence.
Andy Summers, One Train Later
We were driving back from Newcastle, and it’s snowing and we have to cross the Yorkshire
moors on B roads. There are four of us in the car—me, Phil, Pat Donaldson, and Colin Allen—
Zoot having taken alternative transport. We aren’t driving fast, as the snow is coming down
steadily and head-on, but we are passing around a joint and I do have some apprehension about
Colin taking a hit because I think he might get mesmerized by the snow. Maybe he does, maybe
he doesn’t, but we suddenly go into a slow skid right off the road. The car hits the left-hand ditch
and goes into what feels like an eternity of somersaults. As if in a dream, I bounce in slow
motion from the roof to the floor to the window and back again, until with a final grind of metal
the car crashes to a standstill in the ditch. All is quiet; the snow gently pattering down from the
sky seems beneficent and peaceful as if gently whispering, Fuck you, fuck you.
Motley Crue, The Dirt
I had just bought a ’72 Ford Pantera, which is a fast, beautiful car, and Razzle wanted to see what
it was like to ride in. It was bright red on the outside, with a sleek black leather interior. We were
both fucked up and shouldn’t have driven, especially since the store was only a couple blocks
away and we could have easily walked. But we just didn’t give it a second thought. Razzle wore
high-tops, leather pants, and a frilly shirt—a twenty-four-seven rock-and-roll god, he wouldn’t
ever be caught in the jeans and Hawaiian shirt that I was wearing.
We screeched into the parking lot and picked up a couple hundred dollars in beer and
liquor to keep the party going. The car had no backseats, so Razzle held the bags of booze in his
lap in the passenger seat. On the way home, we were driving along a hilly road that wound up
the coast. It was full of little dips and hills, and as I was heading up a slight incline, there was a
small bend ahead, just before the top of the hill. It was dark, and for some reason the streets were
wet. Since I hadn’t been outside that night, I wasn’t sure if it had been raining lightly or if the
streets had just been washed. As I approached the bend, I noticed that the gutter on one side of
the road was full and was draining water and sewage into the gutter on the other side.
As the car rounded the curve, I shifted into second gear for the final stretch home. But as
I did so, the wheels chirped and the car suddenly slid sideways in the water, to the left—into the
lane for oncoming traffic. I tried to maneuver out of the skid, but as I struggled with the steering
wheel, a pair of lights bore down on me. Something was coming over the top of the hill and
heading straight for us. That was the last thing I saw before I was knocked unconscious.
When my head cleared, Razzle was lying in my lap. I forced my mouth into a smile for
him, as if to say, “Thank God, we’re all right,” but he didn’t respond. I lifted his head and shook
it, but he didn’t budge. I kept yelling “Razzle, wake up!” because I assumed that he had been
knocked out, too. It was like we were in our own little world. I didn’t even realize that this was
taking place in the Pantera until people began looking and reaching into the car, pulling Razzle
out to the street.
I started to climb out of the car, but the paramedics rushed over and laid me on the
pavement. “They reek of alcohol!” a medic yelled at the officers as he bandaged my ribs and cuts
on my face. I thought they were going to take me to the hospital, but instead they left me sitting
on the pavement.
It seemed like a bad dream, and at first all I could think about was my car and how badly
it was totaled. But then Beth and some people from the party arrived and started freaking out,
and it slowly began to dawn on me that something bad had happened. I saw a decimated
Volkswagen and paramedics loading a man and a woman I didn’t know into an ambulance. But I
was in such a state of shock that I didn’t realize this had anything to do with me or real life,
Then a police officer walked up to me. “How fast were you going? The speed limit’s
twenty-five.”
I told him that I didn’t remember, which was true. Only later did I recall the speedometer
needle pushing sixty-five.
He gave me a Breathalyzer test, which I would have refused if I was in my right mind,
and I measured .17. Then he read me my rights and, without handcuffing me, led me into the
back of his squad car. At the police station, the officers glared at me. They kept asking me to tell
them what happened, but all I could say was, “Where’s Razzle?” I figured that they had put him
in another room to give a separate statement.
The phone rang, and the commanding officer left the room. He came back and said,
coldly, “Your friend is dead.” When he spoke those words, the impact of the accident finally
caught up with me. I felt it not just emotionally, but physically, as if I had been smashed with a
hundred whiskey bottles. My ribs tore at my torso so bad I could hardly move, and pain shot
through my face every time I spoke or winked. I thought about Razzle: I would never see him
again. If only I had gone alone, or walked, or sent someone else for booze, or left the liquor store
thirty seconds later, or skidded at a different angle so that I was dead instead. Fuck. I didn’t
know how I could face anyone—his band, my band, my wife. I didn’t know what to do with
myself.
T. Rex
Led Zeppelin, Hammer of the Gods
Ace Frehley, No Regrets
Ace in Connecticut, waiting for a limo ride to the airport for a KISS show. The limo driver had
backed the limo into a rock garden around a fountain.
“I ran down to the garage and fired up the four-wheel drive—a Chevy K-5 with monster-truck
wheels. I pulled up in front of the limo and tied the bumper of the car to the back end of my truck
using a thick nylon rope.
The limo driver’s eyes widened.
“Mr. Frehley, I’m not so sure this is a good idea.”
“It’ll be fine. Get behind the wheel and put it in neutral. I’ll pull you right out of there.”
I had a little hangover from the night before, and I had popped a few Quaaludes to ease the sting.
I began revving the engine. The car started to move, accompanied by an awful scraping sound—
the undercarriage being dragged along the rocks. The sound, I later discovered, had spooked the
driver, prompting him to throw the car back into park. Physics took over from there. The rope
snapped and my K-5 was catapulted forward—right into the front of my house! The car smashed
through and came to a stop in the closet of my baby daughter’s bedroom (she wasn’t there at the
time, thank God).”
Delorean story
Sammy Hagar, Red
That song [“I Can’t Drive 55”] changed my relationship with the California Highway Patrol. At
that point in my life, I’d had thirty-six tickets. My license taken away three times. I was paying
$125,000 a year for car insurance, because I had all these hot cars. I’d been to traffic school. I
had hired attorneys. I erased as much as I possibly could, legally and financially, and I was still
in bad shape. “I Can’t Drive 55” changed everything. Since I’ve wrote that song, I’ve had maybe
two citations. I’ve been pulled over at least forty times, stopped and let go.
Some of the stories are classic. I was driving my Ferraru one night from San Francisco to
Malibu with Betsy—this was later, during my first year with Van Halen—and was rolling
between 150 and 160 all the way down Highway 101. As I approached Santa Barbara in the Ojai
area, where there are all these speed traps, I decided to cut my speed. I had been checking my
rearview mirror the whole way and couldn’t see anything behind me.
Up ahead is a roadblock, two California Highway Patrol cars. I didn’t think there was any
way this was for me when I pulled over. About the same time, a helicopter lands, and three other
Highway Patrol cars pull up. They had been chasing me for a while. I just didn’t know it. Those
little five-liter Mustangs are good for 140 miles an hour, max. I was blowing them off so bad I
couldn’t see them in the rearview mirror.
The cop got out of his car, shaking, with his gun in his hand. “Get out of the car,” he said.
I got out. “You better have a good excuse,” he said.
“Sir, I do not have a good excuse,” I said. “I was just having a good time. I have a fast
car. I’ve been to driving schools and taken racing car courses. I didn’t think I was in danger. I
was not reckless-driving.”
He backed off and holstered his gun. He walked off, took off his hat and wiped his brow,
replaced his hat and came back. “Okay, how fast were you going?” he asked.
“I wasreally going fast,” I said. “Probably around 150.”
He threw his hands in the air, and marched back to his car to the other guys to confer.
Everybody was worked up. “My life was in danger,” one of the other cops kept yelling at Betsy.
Finally the cop with the gun sent everybody else away. They took off.
The guy took his hat off again and pulled me over to the hood of my car and leaned
against it. He started telling me his trouble. He had looked at the license and knew who I was.
“You know, I’ve got kids and this is a really stressful job,” he said. “And here you are, a
rock star, your life’s in your hands. You’ve got anything you want. I was chasing you down the
road thinking, ‘I want to kill this guy when I pull him over.’ And then you sit there so calm. You
tell me how fast you were going. You didn’t lie to me.”
He sat there forever, singing the blues to me about his life. At the end, he stood up, put
out his hand, and said, “Nice to meet you.” The wackiest pull-over ever.
SLASH
Duff McKagan, It’s So Easy
I had another run-in with the police on my way to work at six o’clock one morning. The brakes
went out on the Maverick. I drifted into the intersection of Hollywood and Highland and caused
a six-car pileup. The name tag on the cop who pulled read O’Malley; I happened to be wearing a
green sweatshirt one of my brothers had sent me—it read IRELAND across the chest. The
drivers of the other cars—all Mexicans—were irate. Officer O’Malley looked at my sweatshirt,
then at the other drivers.
“Ah, your brakes went out, what are you going to do? It’s not your fault.”
He let me walk.
After I totaled my car, I had to walk everywhere.
Keith Richards, Life
There was a character called Arndt Krupp von Bohlen und Halbach, whose name I remember
because he was the gaily painted heir to the Krupp millions, and a degenerate even by my
standards. I believe he may have been in the car during one of the most terrifying moments I’ve
had in a motorcar and one of my closest shaves with mortality.
Certainly Michael Cooper was in the car, and maybe Robert Fraser, and one other, who
might have been Krupp. And had it been the heir to the munitions empire, it would have been
ironic what nearly befell us. We’d gone on a trip to Fez in a rented Peugeot, and left at night to
go back to Marrakech, across the Atlas Mountains. I was driving. Up there among the hairpin
bends, halfway down, round the corner right in front of me, without any by-your-leave, coming
at us there were these two motorcycles, military I realized by the uniforms, and they were
covering all of the road. So he managed to swerve there, I managed to get round here, but down
below is half a mile of forget-about-it. So I pull back in and swerve around, and in front of me
now is this huge truck, with more motorcycle outriders, and I ain’t going over, so I clipped one
of the motorcyclists and I went right by the thing. They went bananas. And as we were passing
by it, there’s a huge missile, a rocket on the truck. We’re going around the bend and we’ve just
made it—I’ve got one wheel over the abyss; I just managed to save us. What the fuck is this
doing in the middle of the road? And seconds later, booom. It went over. We hear this huge crash
and explosion. It was so fast I don’t think they knew what happened. This was a long, big
motherfucker, an articulated truck. But how we got away with it I don’t really know. Just drove
on. Foot down. Deal with the hairpins. My night-driving abilities were famous at that time.
KISS, behind the mask
Peter Criss
DAVID LEE ROTH, Crazy From the Heat
CLARENCE CLEMONS, Big Man
I played offensive center and defensive end for a semipro football team in New Jersey. Charlie
was my teammate and also my supervisor at the school. We were going to the pros together.
All that changed in 1968 when the accelerator jammed on that dark blue Riviera on the
long , tree-lined driveway leading to the crowded square in front of the school. The car shot up to
a hundred miles an hour in seconds. A motor mount had snapped, and there was no way to stop
the car. I tried the emergency brake but nothing happened. Finally I took my eyes off the road
and bent down to physically lift the gas pedal. It was a desperate move and it failed. When I got
back up behind the wheel I was inches away from the tree.
There was no pain. No pain at all. I was floating up above my body watching the
paramedics work on me. I heard one of them say I was gone. But I was there in this light. All I
felt was euphoria. I felt like I should let go, but then I thought, I’m not finished. I’ve got to go
back. So I did.
The Beatles, Hunter Davies
ERIC CLAPTON
I had no game plan at this time. We were just enjoying playing, getting stone, and writing songs.
George Harrison was a frequent caller. He had recently moved from Kintauns, his bungalow in
Esher, to a sprawling mansion in Henley called Friar Park, and his visits gave me plenty of
opportunity to flirt with Pattie behind Paula’s back. One night I called up Pattie and told her “the
truth,” that it was not Paula I was interested in, or any other girl she might see me with, but that
she was the one I really wanted. In spite of her protests that she was married to George and that
what I was suggesting was impossible, she agreed to my coming over to talk to her. I drove over
there, and we talked about it over a bottle of red wine and ended up kissing, and I sensed for the
first time that there was some kind of hope for me. I knew then what I had suspected for some
time, that all was not well in her marriage.
I was so buoyed up by what had happened with Pattie, as well as being a bit drunk, that
on the way home, driving a little Ferrari Dino that I’d just bought, I took a corner in Clandon
much too fast and hit a fence, and the car flipped over onto its roof. I didn’t pass out, but I found
myself just hanging there upside down. Somehow I undid the seat belt and got out, and, realizing
that I didn’t even have a driver’s license, made the decision to run home and make out that
someone had stolen the car. So I set off running, but soon realized that I was heading in the
wrong direction, back toward London.
I then thought that I would hide somewhere, so I opened a gate in the hedge, walked into
what turned out to be a graveyard, and sat down…and was unhurt, and luckily the police never
got involved.
ANTHONY KIEDIS, Scar Tissue
HENRY ROLLINS, Get in the Van