Rockers and Rollers: A Full-Throttle Memoir

by Brian Johnson

  Mam was soft with us, everything Dad wasn’t. She spoiled us with nothing but love, because she didn’t have anything else. She had come from a wealthy family in Frascati, Rome, to a council house with a view of Scotswood Road. She’d make extra money making wedding dresses; she was a brilliant dressmaker. We kids went to sleep to the sound of her sewing machine, pedal variety. I don’t have words for this lady. And lady is what she was. She died of an aneurysm in 1998 and didn’t know who we were. I was sick of crying when she died.

  And I’m one of what’s left of them. And every corner of every racetrack I drive is named after them—in my head, anyway. Gotta stop now.

  Chapter 23

  Popular

  KING OF THE ROAD

  The 1959 Ford Popular left a little to be desired. It had a three-speed gearbox with bakerlite switches and one windscreen wiper. If it rained, you couldn’t see a bloody thing. The color scheme was beige with a pink interior—not what you’d call a chick magnet, but I didn’t care. I was king of the road. After years of riding bicycles, finally here I was with my own set of wheels.

  The girl I was in love with at the time lived across the river, nine miles from Dunston. One Sunday night, I dropped her off and reversed out of the cul-de-sac where she lived. The gears jammed, leaving yours truly to reverse nine miles all the way home.

  Not the best way to end a date.

  Chapter 24

  The Isle of Man

  ESCAPING THE TAX MAN

  Paul Thompson is the drummer for Roxy Music. Paul’s one of the good guys. He’s a lovely Geordie boy, but getting a sentence out of him is like pulling teeth.

  Paul and I lived together for a while on the Isle of Man to escape the tax man. After six weeks on the island, I ran back to the tax man and begged forgiveness. I don’t care who gets upset. Don’t fucking go there, unless you’re a motorcycle fan or a Norman Wisdom fanatic—which I happen to be, but I still wouldn’t go back there.

  Paul’s mum was great. She was one of those ladies like your aunt or grandmother, who, though not dyslexic, just got words wrong. We were once driving from Carlisle to Newcastle on the A69 (you’ll notice there aren’t many freeways up north), and the first leg was through dark, twisting roads, about eleven at night. Halfway there, we see the orange glow of Hexham, and she uttered the immortal words:

  “Ooh, our Paul, thank Heavens we’re back to civil aviation!”

  Lovely!

  * * *

  P.S.: I’m telling you this because it happened in a car.

  Chapter 25

  Reckless on the Airbus 320

  “WHAT THE FUCK ARE YOU DOING?”

  I was given the controls of the Airbus by an Australian pilot. “Right, Brian, take the stick and she’ll just about fly herself.”

  We were at thirty thousand feet and approaching Sydney airport. The sun was setting and Sydney looked, well, clean, that “clean as a catwalk model’s bum” sort of clean. Corrr! Er, sorry. Anyway, there I was, Brian Biggles, flying this monster.

  “Okay, bring her down to twelve hundred, Mr. Johnson.” I pushed the stick forward a bit and down we went. I have to admit he was doing some fancy fingerwork on knobs and switches, but all officers like myself need a batman, or engineering butler.

  Oh my, there’s the Opera House, looking like three seagulls eating each other, and there’s the Sydney Harbour Bridge.

  “Has anybody flown underneath that in one of these?” I asked.

  “Yes,” replied the pilot. “And they’re all dead.”

  “Okay, a thousand feet,” a recorded voice in the cabin said. “Prepare to land, fasten seatbelts, and stop shagging in the restrooms.” You can’t beat an Aussie airline.

  “Wheels down.” I was getting a little nervous. “Watch out for that side wind.”

  “Oh yeah, a little left rudder.”

  Bollocks that Sydney Harbour Bridge looked inviting, you know. I could just squeeze underneath that Tyne bridge copy if I held my nerve. C’mon, Brian, son. I moved the stick over and down we went.

  “What the fuck are you doing, ya mad bastard?” the pilot said.

  “I think I can do it.”

  “No, you fuckin’ can’t, you Pommie git!”

  “We won the Ashes,” I said. “Piss off!” I started to sweat; he started to fret. The bridge was getting closer. No way out, Brian, son, and you gotta go for it. Go, son, go! I was under! I’d done it! Then the cabin rocked violently and we hit the water. The tail had hit the bridge. The pilot looked at me and said:

  “Get the fuck outta my simulator.”

  Chapter 26

  Land Rover LR3

  CHEERING UP CLIFF

  I bought a new Land Rover (LR3, as they’re known in America) at Christmas 2005. I liked the look of it. My wife, Brenda, said it was sexy. She’s American, which explains that. Anyway, we also have an aluminum Airstream, a beautiful throwback of U.S. flair. One day we heard the dreadful news that Cliff (yup, Ferrari Cliff) had got himself in a bad way. He had tripped over a log or something whilst carrying a paraffin lamp. The glass smashed, he fell on it and cut himself pretty bad. By that I mean the tendons to all his fingers were severed. Not good for one of the finest bass players in the world.

  Six hours of microsurgery later, he was put back together, but he was in extreme pain, plus he didn’t know whether he would play again. This happened at his summer home at Lake Toxaway, North Carolina, a gorgeous house in the Smoky Mountains. I said to Brenda, “Shit, let’s go and cheer him up.”

  So I hooked up the Airstream to the Land Rover and off we went. Nine and a half hours later, we arrived at Wherethefuckarewe campsite, situated in a beautiful valley, accessed by a perilous downhill unpaved road. And by downhill, I mean, frikkin’ steep.

  There was a beautiful brook running right by the site we camped at. Cliff and Georgeanne, his wife, came to visit us, and we had prepared dinner. It started to rain, Jacques Cousteau stuff. Georgeanne took Cliff back home, before the Prozac wore off, and the brook became a river, the river became a torrent, and the torrent became an evacuation order.

  The campsite owner was screaming, “Everybody leave now. The valley’s flooding. Leave your vehicles and walk up the road as quick as you can!”

  It was two in the morning. The water was up to the axles on the Rover and the Airstream. I jumped out of the trailer and hooked it up to the LR3, water up to my knees. Then I got in the Land Rover, started her up, and hit the magic yellow button which guarantees to pull you out of Hell if need be.

  The park owner shouted, “You guys are nuts! You’re never gonna make it!”

  I didn’t care. I just knew it would do it, and as we pulled that Airstream out, up a very steep hill, on non-tarmac breaking-away-at-the-sides road in Horrific Conditions, I started to laugh. That little bugger was doing it, nonstop, slow, sure, steady, sooo English. We will fill up our walls with our English dead, and let all those who lie abed this day think themselves accursed, for we shall cry, “Harry, England,” etc., etc. Whoa, sorry, guys. Got carried away there. But I gotta tell ya, it really felt like that.

  The best SUV in the world.

  Chapter 27

  Road Trip

  DRIVE THIS

  I love to drive on “special” roads, roads that make you smile. Like the roads in the Alpine passes, the Pacific Coast Highway, the “Dragon’s Tail” in North Carolina. But there are two special drives in England that get me every time. Yes, England. Where it takes five years to build five miles of motorway, where there will never be an out-of-work cone-maker, where you never see anybody actually doing anything, anytime (except at about ten at night, so they can shine those huge zillion-shagawatt lights in your eyes so you can’t see what they are not doing), where motorway service stations are anything but (the food is rotten, the staff wooden, and the gas unarmed robbery).

  Anyway, I digress. Take the A69 to Haydon Bridge, and just before you get there, turn left on the A686 to Alston. Then just sit back and enjoy. The scenery is g
reat, and the road exciting enough to make you pay attention.

  After about forty-five minutes, you come to Alston, the highest village in England, so I am told. Check out the cheese shop—there is some wonderful stuff in there. Cow’s Udder Edam, Mrs. Thompson’s Cheddar, The Woman Down the Road’s Camembert. Well, not exactly, but you get my drift. Then on to Melmerby, where you’ve got to stop at the baker’s and try the cheese scones. As my good friend Red from South Carolina would say, “They are sooo delicious they make you wanna slap yo’ momma!” They are very good and as light as a butterfly’s bum.

  The scenery changes there, to moorland, cold and bleak, but there’s more to come. You have to come back down, and that’s when you think you are in Switzerland. The road zigzags all the way down to the M6, and it’s steep and lots of fun. You think some guy’s gonna stop you and charge you for it! Once over the M6, you shoot on to the A66 past Underskiddaw until you get to Keswick and the Lake District—which is everything you think it is going to be.

  I know the M1 is not a great driving road, but it’s what’s at the end of it that counts for me. You see, driving up from London, Newcastle’s at the end. When I see the Angel of the North (which I still think looks like a guy saying, “Honest, it was this big!”), I smile a lot. I still love driving to Newcastle. I still feel like I am driving home, even though I haven’t lived there for twenty-five years.

  The countryside in Durham and Northumbria still fills the eye with an unexpected beauty, and the colors of the fields at sunset make you feel poetic. But no words match, no language can re-create it, so it’s best to drive and drink it in with your eyes.

  To see it yourself, drive to the military road just off the A69, west of Newcastle, on the way to Hadrian’s Wall. The road itself is a fabulous roller-coaster ride. That makes the car tax feel worth it. Except it was built by the Romans!

  Chapter 28

  Brendan Healey

  DRINKING FRACTIONALLY

  Brendan Healey, who played keyboards in Lindisfarne’s latter days, is one of the funniest and most brilliant musicians I have ever met. His motorcar stories are legend. You see, Brendan’s modus operandi is to buy cars on the edge of extinction and drive them until they stop. He says this saves money, as there is no devaluation. Every car he buys is immediately fitted with a fundamental element that Brendan cannot do without while traveling the length and breadth of England, performing. No, not a GPS, not a hands-free phone, not a Bluetooth. It’s a kettle. Yup, he likes to brew a cup of tea on the move. He says there is nothing dangerous about it: “I have got my seat belt on.”

  When his last car expired, on the M6, the AAA mechanic said, “Mr. Healey, when was the last time you put oil in this?” Brendan replied, “Where do you put that?” So now I think you are beginning to understand him . . .

  I was with him once when he took his latest piece of crap to a garage-mechanic friend because the engine wasn’t pulling too good. His friend pulled his head out of the engine bay and said, “Nothing wrong with it, mate. I think you’re just getting too fat.” Without a pause, Brendan replied, “The only reason I’m fat is because every time I shag your wife she gives me a chocolate biscuit.” That one dropped me and the mechanic.

  Brendan bought a Volvo. Being six foot four inches tall, he loved it, and it lasted for about four months (a keeper). But one fateful night, at the Beehive pub, the sky was as black as a hippopotamus’s unwiped arse and the rain was lashing down. Brendan, refreshed after libations with fellow libationists, got into his Volvo. He roared out of the car park and into five feet of water that had gathered in a severe dip in the road. The police and fire brigade found him sitting on the top, dangling his feet through the sun roof, smoking a cigarette and soaked to the skin. He said, “Brian, if that car hadn’t had a sun roof I could have drowned! Thank God I didn’t have my seat belt on!”

  But my favorite Brendan story is the one when he was stopped by a policeman one night.

  Policeman: “Have you been drinking?”

  Brendan: “Fractionally.”

  Policeman: “Right. Out of the car now.”

  Brendan poured himself out of the car, a little groggy. Just then there was an almighty bang behind the policeman. Another car had hit a lamppost.

  Policeman: “Stay here, don’t move—I know ya face.”

  After about thirty minutes, Brendan got bored and drove off. The next morning, a policeman was at his front door.

  Policeman 2: “Mr. Healey, were you out driving last night?”

  Brendan: “No, not me, officer.”

  Policeman 2: “You do have a car though?”

  Brendan: “Oh yes, I do.”

  Policeman 2: “Where is it?”

  Brendan: “It’s in the garage.”

  Policeman 2: “Could I see it?”

  Brendan: “Certainly.” He opened his garage door.

  Policeman: “Mr. Healey, how long have you been driving a police car?”

  I’m not going to write anything more about this wonderful man, because he’s got his own book to write and I want to read it first.

  Chapter 29

  Crackerjack

  IT ALL STARTS WITH THE TOYS

  Jimmy Nail is an articulate man on subjects ranging from global warming to the vagaries of a politician’s brain. Alas, this all goes down the toilet when the subject of motorcars comes up: he is a majestic car crackerjack.

  “Phwoar! Look at that, man! Hey, Jonna, I’ll bet that’ll go some.”

  Yup, it’s funny how we are all drawn together; like flies ’round shit, as my good friend Red from South Carolina would say. Jimmy says it’s an automatic hard-on! Auto erection, and he’s dead right. Hot babe—Ferrari—hot babe—Ferrari—hot babe—Ferrareeeee, and bingo! You’ve had an orgasm.

  Jimmy, like me, was brought up on a council estate, the projects in Newcastle. He was, and still is, a big lad, “as fit as a butcher’s dog,” my dad would have said. He had the same dreams as me: music was the passport and playing was the visa. All he had to do was get them stamped. Jimmy raises an interesting point. “Brian, what kind of model cars did you have?”

  I’ve forgotten all about my toys. They were all cars and airplanes, and of course my bike with a lollipop stick in the spokes to make it sound like a car (it sounded more like ten people eating spaghetti with chopsticks). Like Jimmy, and a thousand other kids, we had a Scalextric race set, and we both remember the smell of melting dynamos and oil stinking up the house. Jimmy says Hillman Imps played a big part in his life, because the police were using them as panda cars. (Only in England could we call a police car a “panda.” What was that all about? Oh bugger, I’m digressing again.) How they got him into the back of one of the smallest piece-of-shit cars on the planet is a mystery of David Copperfield proportions. I had a Hillman Imp. I drove it for a week, and then it sat in my backyard for a year. My stamp collection was more useful.

  Jimmy served his apprenticeship at C. A. Parsons, same as me, and had his own adventures to reach the “Toppermost of the Poppermost” (© John Lennon. Read his book!) and become very famous, but he still had to go through the group-van phase, and all that.

  Now he has an Audi S8 with four hundred horses pulling him down the King’s Highway. I was with him once. I swear the man whoops like a Wells Fargo stagecoach driver. When that turbo kicks in, you see he can’t help it. That’s why I love him. Car nut.

  Chapter 30

  Take a Backseat

  “DON’T BE SHY, YOUR MOTHER WASN’T.”

  In the sixties, the place to take your “lass,” as we called them in Newcastle, was Tynemouth car park on the sea front. Bouncing up and down, these old (and I mean old) cars looked like they were making a rough Channel crossing. Seeing a female ankle in a handle strap was a sure sign someone had triumphed.

  Geordie love echoed across the tarmac:

  “Gerrin’, you fucka.”

  “If you come inside of us, I’m telling my dad.”

  “Move over, you cow.”<
br />
  “I’ve told you before, don’t come inside us.”

  If you had a Mini Cooper, you were in business. They were so convenient, you see, because they had sliding windows. A lady could position herself quite comfortably by sticking one of her legs out of the window, the other over the driver’s seat, leaving me, for example, to position myself in her nether regions.

  You could count on me to say something romantic. You would be surprised how many times “Don’t be shy, your mother wasn’t” did the trick.

  One night, a girl’s father came running out of his house as I was dropping her off. He wanted to know what had been going on. “Nothing” was the reply.

  Then he spotted the semen on the top of her blouse. I gunned it.

  Chapter 31

  The Phantom

  THE BLACK VELVET HUMPBACK WHALE

  I loved my Bentley Continental. It had the look, the speed, the comfort and holy-fucking-shit acceleration. I swore it was all I ever needed.

  But my good friend and snake charmer Monty Patterson, the Orlando Rolls and Bentley dealer, had other ideas. He rang me.

  “Ah, Brian. I hope I find you in good favor?” I smelled a rat. “Isn’t it a lovely day?”

  “It is a lovely day, Monty,” I said. “What’s afoot?”

  “How long have you had your Bentley?” he asked. Oh no, here it comes.