ROCK'N'ROLL DEMO DERBY

Part 1

The history of rockers and their car wrecks, fatal and near-fatal, is long and rich. Race car driving and playing rock and roll have much in common, not the least of which is the marriage of danger and excitement. 

Most stars would agree with Mario Andretti. “Except for death,” said the champion racer, “everything else is a minor injury.” 

Elvis totaled his first Cadillac in 1956 and would have many more close scrapes. But that didn’t stop him and the Guys from playing Chicken in their Harleys at 120 mph on Elvis Presley Boulevard.

In addition to all the guitars and hotel suites he smashed up, Hendrix totaled six Corvettes in two years. Once, hurdling down the winding roads of Benedict Canyon, the unlicensed, severely nearsighted Jimi nearly flew off a cliff. He walked away from his Stingray cantilevered on a tree and promptly bought himself another. 

Janis’s Porsche Cabriolet Super C with its psychedelic paint-job, “was her pride and joy,” remembered her producer, Paul Rothchild. “We both had Porsches. We’d race along Sunset Boulevard and Laurel Canyon. She was a lot crazier than I was – and I was nuts. She’d go against traffic on blind curves, with the top down, laughing, “Nothing can knock me down!”

Jerry Garcia who, like Lennon, lost his mother in a car accident, miraculously survived a crash of his own before founding the Grateful Dead. Later on, he was again spared when his BMW slammed through a freeway divider into oncoming traffic. Near the end, Phil Lesh, who had survived three near-fatal crashes himself, made the mistake of driving with a pissed-off, DUI Garcia to a detox facility. “To this day, I don’t think I’ve ever been so frightened in a car,” wrote Lesh. “… I had to wonder if Jerry was feeling suicidal – or murderous. I was shaky, and sweating bullets.”

Cobain enjoyed destroying stuff as much as the next guy, especially Strats, amps, stages, tour buses, and whatever five-star hotel was foolish enough to book him. As for driving, the son of the Texaco mechanic told The Advocate, “I’m not that bad a driver, and I get in a wreck almost every day.”