By The Landlord
“All he needed was a wheel in his hand and four on the road.” – Jack Kerouac
“I may not have ended up where I intended to go, but I think I have ended up where I intended to be.” – Douglas Adams
“If you’re on a road trip, you need driving music.” – Edgar Wright
Seated, belted, ears on, radio tuned, revved up and ready? It's time to go on a different journey. There are many thousands of songs specifically about road trips, driving, cars, trucks, and buses, many of which have been playlisted in the past, but what makes a song somehow perfect for that trip, capturing, and also enhancing the sensation of the experience, the strangely magical movement of human and vehicle through landscape, the accompaniment to the journey?
It's a highly subjective topic, but one, this week, we hope to explore and discover in a musical road trip of the mind and body. And in some ways it might run parallel with a past topic, not specifically about walking, but songs and music express the pace, movement and feeling of walking.
No doubt lyrics pertaining to cars and road trips, with details of passengers and passing landscapes and the road itself might enhance the experience, but this is a more instinctive subject, one that accompanies rather than specifies, one that shows rather than tells.
Driving covers many forms of experience, from the start-stop frustration and anger of city traffic jams, to gliding freedom of the open road, from the noisy furore of a roaring motor to the silent bliss of electric cruise control, gliding through beautiful countryside, the wind in your hair, a sense of discovery, around every bend, and long out in front of you. Breezy or gentle? Like the music that accompanies it, the ideal car journey seems to be all about freedom, escape and discovery.
Perhaps there's a particular formula, a combination of certain beats, rhythms, tempo, sounds, a controlled release of accelerating energy, a certain structure of musical spring and sprocket, axel and engine, oil and water, a change up into instrument and voice that all make this work.
And some songs, and artists, seem to have a knack to smoothly move into just the right gear, capturing that sense of release, escape, dream-like movement, wonder, and exploration of driving. So what makes a song, or a piece of music feel like a car on a journey? Can we find that? And when they do, are lyrics also in harmony with sounds to create a perfectly oiled machine of musical experience?
Cadillac with radio
There are hundreds of road trip playlists online, easy to find, but do they take you where you want to go? Certain artists and genres seem to come up again and again. Perhaps that's partly because have dominated the airplay of car radios across America, from the chugging, meaty Chevrolets of Bruce Springsteen to the country-pop-rock comfort of Fleetwood Mac, the soft rolling rock of The Eagles or funky momentum of The Doobie Brothers, the gentle gliding voices of Simon & Garfunkel, the restless, more frenzied trip-a-long rhythms of Talking Heads, or even Roxette, to the bounce-in-your-seat party energy of the B52's, the clever emotional gear-change of The Cardigans, and smooth cruise control of, of course, The Cars.
But can we attempt to create a better, more discerning, more exciting, sensual, and varied journey of prime drive-time songs? This is the place to start. And there are many other genres to pick, aside from mainstream pop, country and rock, from folk to electronica, international traditional and beyond.
To get you in the mood, let's explore a few inspiring, classic road movies and see what feelings they capture in sights and sounds, and show just what variety is out there, not only in their stories but the musical styles that express that experience.
Yes, an obvious place to start is Easy Rider, that superbly stoned poem to hippie freedom with Peter Fonda, Dennis Hopper, and Jack Nicholson, featuring classic tracks by Steppenwolf and The Byrds.
But trying to take a road less travelled in this topic, how about Wim Wenders' own motorbike movie, Kings of the Road (1976) about a projector-repair mechanic Bruno Winter (Rüdiger Vogler) who picks up depressed hitchhiker Robert Lander (Hanns Zischler), travelling on the western side of the East-German border in a repair truck, visiting worn-out cinemas a film all about dealing with depression and seeking escapism, with music by Axel Linstädt.
The freedom of the road rarely drives more beautifully, and bleakly, that in Terrence Malick's masterpiece Badlands, in which on-the-run Martin Sheen and Sissy Spacek are accompanied by Carl Orff's Gassenhauer:
Perhaps you might want to up the pace with the sexy slide-guitar country rock of Hans Zimmer and his soundtrack to Ridley Scott’s feminist-adopted escape movie Thelma and Louise (1991), the heroines leaving behind various controlling men on the run to see the spectacular landscape of New Mexico before, famously heading to the Grand Canyon ...
For another musical flavour and landscape entirely, how about the operatic and simmering folk passion in the car journey that stirs up the Ingrid Bergman and George Sanders in Journey to Italy by Roberto Rossellini (1954), one Akira Kurosawa named among his favourites, and a film that very much influenced the French New Wave?
Talking of which, how about a little classical trip down French country lanes with Jean-Luc Godard's Pierrot le Fou (1965), where we are suddenly being talked to as if passengers in the back seat, a so-called breaking of the fourth wall?
Then there's the gentle, dark-comedy indie charm of 2006's Little Miss Sunshine, featuring an arguing family on Volkswagen van, and with a soundtrack that includes the likes of Sufjan Stevens at the wheel to calm the tensions of such journeys. Who hasn’t had a row or tense time with family on a long road journey, but is it ever this funny?
Not all journeys feature conversations or charming music. In a striking debut, long before his mainstream hits, Steven Spielberg's 1971 Duel is about an anonymous evil truck that inexplicably just keeps following. The soundtrack, composed by Billy Goldenberg, strings, harp, keyboards and heavy percussion with Moog synthesizer effects, brass and woodwinds, is sparse barely discernible amid all the engine noise and rising dust.
Or how about some even bigger blood and thunder, some mighty orchestra and petrol-headed heavy metal to capture dystopian, death-or-glory desperate desert journeys of the future? Check out George Miller's extraordinary last Mad Max movie - Fury Road (2015). Hold on tight …
Then again, we could slow things down with a little jazz. There's John Lurie's score, and also his starring role in the deadpan, downbeat film by Jim Jarmusch - Stranger Than Paraside (1984). Or, an even gentler sound to the trip. While David Lynch loves a dark, scary, disturbing open road (see Lost Highway), there's also his beautifully serene, and rather atypical The Straight Story (1999), about a retired farmer who, without car licence, travels many miles to see his sick brother, to whom he hasn’t spoken in over a decade, on an old lawnmower, accompanied by a delicate score by longtime collaborating composer Angelo Badalamenti.
So, what am I driving at? It's not about getting there quickly, nor even slowly. It's all about the journey, and how it sounds and feels. Where does your musical road go? It's time to suggest songs. And alongside your suggestions, please describe what makes your choices into great driving music. Stories about personal car journey are also very welcome.
Taking the wheel this week to create playlists from your suggestions is the perceptive pejepeine! Deadline for nominations is 11pm UK time on Monday, for playlists published next week. Start your engines ...
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