Rockers and Rollers: A Full-Throttle Memoir

by Brian Johnson

  His wooden leg creaked at every step, so you always knew when he was coming, and he was always coming, especially at tea breaks. He was always after free tea. “Hey, lads, got any spare tea?”

  Every day he ate a teacake with jam in it. One time, he sat moaning about it: “I’m sick of bloody jam. Every day it’s the same bloody thing.”

  “Well, why don’t you get your wife to put something different in them?” I said.

  “I’m not married,” he replied.

  “Well, your mother then?”

  “I live on me own.”

  “Well, who makes ya sandwiches then?”

  “Me,” said Teacake.

  “Twat!” I said.

  Chapter 54

  The Italian Job

  DEATH AND DESTRUCTION

  It was summer 1966, and we were driving down the A1 to Dover to go on our first international holiday, to my Italian side of the family’s house in Frascati, near Rome. By “we,” I mean George Beveridge, Robert Conlin, and me. England were beating Germany 4–2 in the World Cup at Wembley. What a day! We gave two fingers to every German car we saw. This was the life: three nineteen-year-old lads in a quite new Renault 9—it was Rob Conlin’s (he was an only child, lucky git). We were going where our fathers had been twenty years earlier, but we weren’t going to get shot at.

  We boarded the ferry at Dover, and the cars were just unbelievable: Aston Martin 4s and 5s, Bentley Continentals, Facel Vegas, Ferraris, even a Gullwing Mercedes, all on one ship. We couldn’t believe there were so many rich people in the world.

  This was a time when you were really proud to be British. Honest. The Beatles and the Stones ruled the world, Minis were selling everywhere, though in Italy they were made under license and called Innocenti. British bikes still ruled the roost: Norton, Triumph, BSA, Ariel, James.

  We were off. The ferry left the port, and for the first time in my life I saw what the White Cliffs of Dover fuss was all about. The drive through France, Switzerland, then Northern Italy, then, on the well-named Autostrada Sud, to Frascati was just wonderful. We had a great time, and suddenly realized that cars were everything to the Italians. The beautiful Alfas, Giuliettas, Lancias. They were a little different.

  When we left, after two great weeks, little did we know what was about to happen to us. The family loaded us up with cardboard boxes full of wine and hams and salamis. We were hemmed in pretty good. Off we set, late as usual, and got lost a few times trying to find the road out of Frascati.

  After driving through the night, Robert Conlin was pretty tired by about four a.m. He wouldn’t let George or myself help him drive, in case “we broke the gears.” I swear that’s what he said. So we slept as best we could in the car. We were about a third of the way through France, on the dreaded N7 autoroute, notorious in motoring fraternities for death and destruction. We had to get to Calais for the ferry or we’d miss work in Newcastle on Monday. The day was Saturday, and the ferry ticket said four thirty p.m. departure. If we kept going, only stopping for gas, we’d be okay.

  Rob didn’t look that good, so we volunteered our driving services, but we were denied yet again. George Beveridge said to me, “Hey, how about a swap, Brian? I’m sick of sitting in the back.” The back did look like a mobile grocer’s, but it was my turn, so we swapped. That was the best swap I ever did in my life.

  One hour later, on the N7, there was a family of four having a picnic at the side of the road, by their Peugeot Estate. We had just passed a car full of English nurses, and we’d waved to each other. Rob Conlin fell fast asleep at the wheel doing 70 mph, and before we could do anything, he hit the Peugeot full-on. Everything turned black-and-white; I mysteriously went completely deaf; and it’s true, it was all in slow motion: “HOLY SHIT, is this thing ever gonna stop rolling?” It went over seven times, according to witnesses. The roof of the car was flattened to the door-handle level. There was complete silence.

  Then the screaming started. Rob Conlin was the screamer: the steering wheel had collapsed and the ignition key had gone through his rib cage. George had been catapulted out of the front seat into a field. I was trapped. This car was rear-engined. There was no way out. I took deep breaths and checked for blood. “None—that’s not possible. Ooh, you jammy swine,” I thought. The bloody awful French sirens were getting closer. Voices surrounded the car, English voices, girls’ voices, nurses’ voices. I sat and waited to be rescued, but the problem was they didn’t know I was there. They couldn’t see me.

  I must admit to a smidgen of panic, because the car was on its side, gas was leaking everywhere, and the engine was hot. I started shouting, but I was told later that everybody was looking after Rob or in the field with George, who had horrendous injuries.

  I decided to try to get out through the engine bay, daft bugger. I pulled the seat away—not difficult in sixties’ Renaults—put my hand through and promptly burnt myself. I screamed, “OOYAH!” Just then a pompier saw me and shouted, “Cet git anglais entre l’auto est FUCKAYED!” (I think.)

  They got me out and laid me down. Shock was setting in now, and the enormity of the swap I did with George. There was my best pal on a stretcher, lookin’ so dead, being rushed into an ambulance. Oh, George, don’t die . . .

  Everybody was looking at me kinda weird, I couldn’t understand it. I’d just survived a major prang and they were looking at me like it was my fault. Then the policeman asked if we’d been drinking, and that’s when I realized I was drenched in Italy’s finest wine. The only reason we weren’t done for that was because I pointed out that all the corks were still in the bottle necks. And that’s when the pain in my chest kicked in. So I hadn’t got away with it; it was an inside job—three broken ribs.

  I was put in a village B&B. They were so nice to me. The others were in the hospital, I’ll never forget that night. I was alive, but I didn’t know if George was. Next day, I went to the hospital. The lads were alive. A little battered, but that didn’t matter. We had no money at all, so all we worried about was getting out of there. George had stitches all over his face and was still bleeding. What we did was, I rubbed some of his blood on my face, jumped into bed, and pretended to be George, while George, with Rob’s help, dressed in a cupboard. We then proceeded to the train station to catch the train to Paris, with hospital staff chasing us to pay the bill.

  A wonderful guy from the British Embassy had got us tickets to England on the boat train, but it was to London only. We had no money for food and, God, we were hungry. When we got to King’s Cross, after walking through London with our clothes in cardboard boxes, we got three tickets home by promising to pay the people who’d lent us the money back within a month.

  Finally, on Sunday afternoon, we arrived in Newcastle. What must we have looked like—George like young Frankenstein, and me with blood all over my pants? That’s when Rob Conlin pulled out his wallet and said he was getting a cab home. The bugger had had money all the time! George and I dragged our sorry asses to Dunston, our home village, about four miles away.

  At 7:25 on Monday morning, I clocked on at C. A. Parsons & Co. Ltd., broken ribs and all. George went to the hospital to get more glass out of his face. He still has a piece in his head to this day.

  Chapter 55

  La Dolce Vita

  HOW ITALY CHANGES YOU

  In 1970, Maurice bought a Hillman Hunter, a white one. (Hang on a minute, all Maurice’s cars were white. Even the Lamborghini poster he was caught masturbating to was white. Hmm! Even if he felt good at the time, it must have been horrible to watch.)

  “Brian, how about driving to Italy and visiting the Italian side of the family?”

  “Ah, that would be great, mate.”

  “We’ll have to take the wives,” he said.

  “Pardon?”

  “The wives. We’ll have to take ’em.”

  “Reason being?” I said.

  “Because we’re married to them.”

  I hate small print, but he was right. It was actually a litt
le tough for me, thinking about the terrible accident of a few years before, in the Renault. George Beveridge was still picking bits of glass out of his face. But it was a great two weeks. The sun shone, the ferries were on time, there were only a couple of squabbles.

  The family lives on a beautiful estate just above Frascati, in a village called Rocca di Papa. Yup, it’s where the pope’s country gaff is. The cars on the driveway were just like a magazine poster, with the vineyards in the background. My cousin Giacomo’s souped-up Innocenti (Mini), Alfa Giulias, Veloces. A Maserati here . . . We hid the Hillman Hunter behind a copse of trees. We ate outside: wonderful food, wine; then under the stars, then more wine; then under the table.

  So this was where Mam came from. These were the rich Johnsons, only their names were De Lucca (whom I name my race team after) and Cristafonelli. These guys had never seen a Standard Vanguard or even a Wall’s pork sausage, or laughed at a Robin Reliant. All the cars in Italy were Italian, and I mean every one.

  Well, as you can imagine, time went at its own speed—the trip was over too quickly, and we headed home, sad but happier for the time we had had. No dramas this time, just driving back into Newcastle on a rainy Sunday evening. I realized that I never remembered seeing it this gray. Maurice dropped me and my wife off in North Shields outside our damp flat, 13 Chirton West View. Even more depressing.

  I had the look of defeat in my eyes, but tomorrow was another dream. Maurice felt the same. “We got to get out of here, bro,” he said the next day.

  “But how, mate, how?”

  Maurice did well. He started his own beautiful restaurant in Tynemouth, called Beaujolais. It was a waste of time, because everybody went to the kebab shop and the Indian ’round the corner, where you could get all-you-can-eat heartburn for tuppence ha’penny. He got into catering for the music and film industries, and runs a huge company called Gigabyte. Bruce Springsteen loves him. And I remember Shania Twain sitting on his knee and saying, “Hey, Brian, your Maurice is a lovely cuddly teddy bear.” Of course I wasn’t jealous, but later I dropped a red-hot french fry down the crack of his arse. That took the smirk off his face, but not the lump out of the front of his trousers.

  But Maurice has never changed. When he first got his Porsche, a few months back, I phoned from America.

  “Well, mate, how is it?”

  “I’m just looking at it,” he said.

  “Oh bugger, Maurice, I’m sorry, mate. It’s two thirty in the morning, your end.”

  “I’m just sitting in the garage looking at it, and I can’t believe it’s mine.”

  Y’know, not all Porsche drivers are pricks.

  Maurice’s best friend ever was Dennis, a lovely black man. Maurice and Dennis drove to Italy themselves about four years after our trip. In 1996, Dennis developed a fucked-up version of cancer and he knew he was dying.

  “Maurice,” he said, “please drive me to Italy one more time.”

  “When do you want to leave, mate?”

  “The sooner the better.”

  And off they went, two mates for the last time, in Maurice’s Ford Fiesta. Of course, my eyes are misty as I write this. Isn’t it wonderful that he wanted to be in a car with his mate, to revive the happiest time of his life for one last time?

  Dennis took his last drive a couple of months later.

  Chapter 56

  Aston Martin Zagato

  WHEN A RENZO MARRIES A ZAGATO

  One of the great moments in my life with cars happened in 2004 in Sarasota, Florida, my hometown. Down the street from where I live resides a man called Piero Rivolta. He is the son of Renzo Rivolta. He has long hair, twinkling eyes, and a Billy Connolly beard. He is about sixty-five years old, always smiling as he rides his push bike up and down our little island. We always chat, and he always says, “Ah, Abrian, you musteletta me beeld youacara espezial, solo per tuo. I canna makeet for maybe one or twoa million but ees uniquea!!”

  He’s not kiddin’, either. Let me explain.

  His father, Renzo, after the war, started a manufacturing company in Italy. He designed kitchen appliances, fridges, washing machines. But the workers didn’t have the money to buy cars. Cars were too expensive, so he set to designing something cheap and that wouldn’t get road-taxed. He designed the brilliant Isetta bubble car. Simplicity itself, and it even looked cute. The whole front of the car was the door. If you needed a car cover, you just used your wife’s DD bra.

  His son Piero started designing cars, too. Gorgeous, sexy ones. In the sixties and seventies, he figured that sports cars were way too complicated, so all he did was buy American love-muscle engines and slot them into Italian beauty—the Iso Griffo and Iso Rivolta were two of my favorites.

  But the luxury touring car’s day faded along with the Facel Vega and the Jensen Interceptor—they all looked like Monte Carlo driving down the road, with Terry-Thomas at the wheel. So Piero came to America and started designing beautiful buildings and beautiful boats. He sails on one of his boats from his back garden to Italy every year, single-handed.

  He invited me to his daughter Marella’s wedding. She was marry-ing Andrea Zagato. “Holy Moly! The Zagato? The car designer?” “No, isa hees sonna.” Piero’s son Renzo told me it was going to be the wedding of the year. Oh, Marella and Renzo are designers, too, and so is Andrea, so basically it was a designer wedding (geddit?).

  I arrived at the reception. Marella looked beautiful (and very shaggable, I might add). Piero summoned me over. “Let mee intrrroduce you to my friend”—and there was an immaculately dressed man in his eighties, tanned and with silver hair like a halo.

  “Emilio, these eesa Abrian, what I wassa telling you.” Did he say Emilio? Not the great and legendary Emilio Zagato? I’ve lusted after his cars for years. Even the quirky ones. I started to act, well, a little bit like a big girl’s blouse. I flung myself down on one knee and offered him my fiefdom. I mean, this was the pope of purism, the duke of design! Pininfarina sharpened this guy’s pencils! I was having an epiphalectic fit.

  He put his hand on my head and said, “Calma, calma.” I said I already had a drink. “No, no. Rise, my son, rise.” Sweet Jesus, he even talks like the pope. I rose and we chatted, and he was just a lovely fella. Later he said his feet were killing him, so me, Piero, and Emilio went into a back room, ordered beers, and had a game of dominos. The old bugger took $7 off me.

  The result of the union was the Aston Martin Zagato. You see, on that day, not only did their children marry, but so did their companies. The two kids went on their honeymoon and designed that beautiful car (and did some designer shagging in between).

  I was having lunch with Piero recently. “Ah, Abrian, joosta letta you know, Marella and Andrea avva joosta feenish thee new Bentley Zagato.” I have a Bentley Continental, and I love it, but I can’t wait to see the kids’ new baby.

  Chapter 57

  Citroën DS

  “RIGHT, I’M UP AND I’M STAYING UP UNTIL I GET A SHAG.”

  The first time I saw a Citroën DS was in Tynemouth as a child. It stunned the crowds heading to the train station at the end of a day at the beach. The reason is it looks otherworldly. It’s superb, it’s sexy, it’s mechanically advanced and a mechanical nightmare at the same time. The way the thing rises up when you start it is, like, well, getting an auto erection: the car says, “Right, I’m up and I’m staying up until I get a shag.”

  Well, you know I had to buy one, and I did, in 1998. I still have it, and love it still. It’s a 1973 DS23 Pallas, and it’s a very French delta-blue. The thing about these cars is that they are used on just about every futuristic movie made in Hollywood, and they look perfect, because that’s where they belong. These cars were designed by dreamers, not practicalists, by lovers not shaggers, and there must not have been an accountant in sight. (I think the French Revolution got rid of most of them.)

  In 1997, I was in Northumberland in a cottage I’d rented to finish a musical with Brendan Healey. I got a call from my then-accountant, Alvin
Hardworker, and the band lawyer, John Clark, who needed to tie up some legal stuff. I picked them up at Newcastle Central Station in the Citroën—they had just flown in from New York. “Jump in, lads, and I’ll take you to the cottage and we’ll get those papers signed.”

  Off we went. They sat in the back, marveling at the comfort. “Hey, Brian, first class ain’t got nuthin’ on this.” He was right—it was as smooth as a gravy sandwich. About five minutes later, they had fallen fast asleep, two heads together on the backseat. I tried to wake them when we got to Slaley Hall, but after a while I left them there. They looked so peaceful. Two Manhattan boys asleep in a Citroën in Northumbria—what a picture.

  I left that car garaged in the U.K. when I returned home to Florida, but after about three months I missed it so much I had it shipped to the U.S., where it still turns heads. People can’t pronounce Citroën properly though. I know I can’t. The French say it swiftly, like “Sitron.” I pronounce it “Sitrowen.” That’s why Fords are so popular, I suppose. (The car will soon be coming back to the U.K. to my brother, Maurice, who’s gonna adopt it—probably for life.)

  In the 1960s, it was President Charles de Gaulle’s favorite official car. He was the French president everybody loved to hate—basically because he was a complete twat. He was so French the French couldn’t stand him. He was an enormous snob, with a honker to emphasize it. He could speak English but never did, except to say no. During the Second World War, he lived in England and ran the Free French Army—the only reason he was in charge was that he was a faster runner than all the other French generals and got to England first. He even told Montgomery (another twat) and Eisenhower that he wanted to be in charge of the whole shooting match in Western Europe. Much merde came from this arsehole’s mustachioed mouth. I think that Jackal lad was unlucky, because I heard that not only was de Gaulle a git but he was a very tight-arsed git to boot, which is why the Jackal missed him. De Gaulle spotted a ten-centime coin and bent down to pick it up and the bullet went over his head—making him a spawny git . . .