MONSTER SCRATCHES

Hot Rod Art and Road Stories from BOMONSTER

CARS AND MUSIC

Have you ever heard a song that immediately puts you behind the wheel of a particular car?

I’m not talking about songs about cars—although there are plenty of good ones: “Baby You Can Drive My Car,” “Little Red Corvette,” “She’s real fine, my 409,” “I Can’t Drive 55.” And, of course, there was the band CARS, blasting across summer car radios for years.

I’m talking about something different. Can a song become attached to a car, a road and a single moment in your life? Years later, you can hear that same song while you’re sitting at home and, for a few seconds, you’re not just sitting at home. You’re behind the wheel again. 

What’s a car without a stereo sound system? I don’t know because I’ve never been without one. Neither car nor stereo. These days, my engine is usually louder than my music, but there was a time when I listened to Hank, my fellow commuters did too.

I’ve designed a couple of record covers for indie bands, but only after hearing their rough mixes to know if I liked their music. What I remember most, however, are the cool cars and motorcycles they drove.

Cars and music have always been a winning combination. But I was thinking about the reverse connection: not songs that remind us of cars, but songs that actually put us back inside them.

I was a pool man for one summer in high school, driving house-to-house and racing against the clock to finish my route before nightfall. One of my customers was Diff’rent Strokes TV actor Conrad Bain. His was my last pool of the day and the sky was just turning color. Today, whenever I hear “Radar Love” playing on classic rock radio, I immediately remember stumblinginto his Encino, CA pool in the dark.

That was the song playing on my truck radio after I misjudged his pool edge while skimming leaves from the surface and fell in. I could see his family sitting down to dinner through their lit windows. They hadn’t noticed my embarrassing sudden plunge. So I grabbed my pool gear and hustled out the side yard, back to my truck.

Today, whenever that song comes on, I can feel the sting of chlorine mixed with pool acid in my nostrils and remember shivering behind the wheel, driving in wet clothes and soaked running shoes.

“I’ve been driving all night, my hands wet on the wheel… It’s a half past four and I’m shifting gear…”

That’s the strange power of music. I don’t just remember falling into that pool. For a few seconds, I’m back in my’56 Ford truck, red faced and soaking wet.

The other night Mrs. BOMONSTER and I were at home playing dominoes. I have my own mix of John Lennon’s last album, Double Fantasy (with the lovely Yoko mixed out). It immediately brought me back to one night sitting in my car in the dark, made even darker by hearing the worst news on my car radio.

It was almost midnight. I had just come out of a restaurant after taking my favorite boss of all time to dinner to resign. Cheri Ramey owned two houses in the old-money neighborhood of Silverlake, CA, near Dodger Stadium. She lived in one and ran her own graphic design company out of the other. One of her clients was Chrysalis Records. Pat Benatar, Jethro Tull, Huey Lewis and the News were all clients. Look on the back of Blondie’s Parallel Lines album and you’ll see the name Ramey Communications. I designed Blondie and Pat Benatar standup cut-out displays for Tower Records.

She cried when I told her the news that I was leaving to take an L.A. ad agency job. It was December 8, 1980. After I gave her the bad news, she surprised me with a Christmas bonus and wished me well.

I walked out to my car and the late-night radio announcer came on as I turned the key:

“We are reporting the shooting death and apparent assassination of Beatle legend John Lennon…”

The whole night was an emotional, mind-numbing, lonely 30-mile drive home—and one that still lingers in my mind whenever I hear any song from that last album.

Maybe that’s why so many of us keep old cars, old radios and old records around. They don’t just remind us of where we’ve been. Sometimes all it takes is one song, and we’re back behind the wheel again.