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You are here: Backpacker Resources > Travel Books > Travel Book for May 2010

Travel Book for May 2010

Live Fast, Die Young by Chris Price and Joe Harland

18 OCTOBER ‐ LA QUINTESSENTIAL

On the flight over I drew up a to‐do list. As a birthday present to Gram we planned to end the expedition with a performance, on guitar and ukulele, of one of his most enduring recordings, ‘Return of the Grievous Angel’. This would present no significant problem for Chris, who has been performing the song to anyone that would listen for half of his life. I, on the other hand, have never strummed, plucked or struck anything more taxing than an air guitar. Top of my list then, are:

1. Learn to love the music of Gram Parsons.
2. Learn to play the ukulele.
3. Learn to play the music of Gram Parsons on the ukulele.

And for Chris:

1. Grow a formidable moustache.

By ‘formidable moustache’ he means the horseshoe, or what I’m assured is known in the trade as the ‘cockduster’. You will recognise this particular type as the trademark facial adornment of The Village People’s ‘Leatherman’, usually attached to two thirds of Crosby, Stills and Nash, or nestling under the nose of Dennis Hopper in Easy Rider. It extends vertically downwards on either side of the mouth, stopping level with the jaw line or, on the more adventurous wearer, protruding very slightly below. Easy Rider and CSN were fine by me; Joe’s reference points were more James Hetfield (who favours the more flamboyant downward protrusion described above) and Dave Grohl. It’s no coincidence that these men wield guitars in the fiercest rock outfits ever to have filled an enormo‐dome. In fact it’s nigh on impossible to carry one off if you don’t. Anyone contemplating wearing a horseshoe, but who shaves less than three times a day, should proceed with extreme caution.

Which is why I was a little uncomfortable with the ‘formidable moustache’ directive. For one thing the phrase is something of an oxymoron in my case. My beard has never approached respectable, much less formidable, in anything under two months. And Joe has a definite head start in the tache stakes. He has been wearing either a full‐blown cockduster (don’t you just love the use of the verb ‘to wear’ for facial hair, like it’s something you slip into before breakfast), or more often a goatee beard, for as long as I can remember. So for him ‘growing’ a formidable moustache is simply a case of shaving out a section of stubble approximately one inch by one inch under his bottom lip. (Which is a shame because his beard is an autumn of colour in this area – a fetching vermilion here, a touch of burnt sienna there.) I, on the other hand, must first grow a beard and then shave out as required, which is several weeks in the doing and we only had three. Just as Joe’s moustache was entering the realms of the truly formidable, mine would be somewhere shy of barely discernible, and then it would be time to come home.

And so to LAX airport, the setting for the beginning of a journey conceived nearly three years earlier; a dream of the open road in an open‐top car, of two fearless explorers driving coast to coast across the land of the free. The flight from Heathrow had lasted about ten hours over a distance of six thousand miles, but we’d come a hell of a lot further than that. This was the culmination of months, years of planning, of a trip that would see us catalogue some of the most significant landmarks in music history. A friendship built on a fascination for them was, we hoped, about to find its fullest expression. But LAX was also to be where that same dream, of distant vanishing points sucked in over the windscreen of a two‐seater, came within a hair’s breadth of being snuffed out.

Renting the car was Harland’s job. I had no reason not to believe it was in safe hands: Joe’s capacity for forward planning is the stuff of legend. We once made a radio programme featuring rock stars reading books, which required us to roam the backstage area of Reading Festival knocking on tour buses and politely asking their confused, unsuspecting occupants to give a recital from whatever literature they had lying around in their bunks (you’d be surprised). Joe, with his eye on the prize, had made arrangements to be tagged on to the end of the Foo Fighters’ press junket for the day. When his turn came to record lead singer Dave Grohl, the moustachioed rock god politely turned him down on the grounds that he had only ever read one book in his entire life – Catcher in the Rye by J. D. Salinger. So unless Joe just happened to have a copy of it on him right now, it was a no‐go. Cue Joe, to the astonishment of both Grohl and his press officer, reaching into his bag and producing a copy of the only book that Dave Grohl had ever read, having done his research that morning and popped into Waterstone’s on the off‐chance. Cue tape, hit record, and two paragraphs later my prized recording of the bass player from Editors reading Brave New World was looking altogether a little pathetic.

So as you can see, I had no reason to suppose he didn’t have this all worked out in advance. Arriving at LAX, we hopped onto a shuttle which took us to the car rental dealers about a mile or so away from the terminal. On the way I enquired whether Joe had brought all the necessary paperwork in order to pick up our shiny, convertible Chrysler Sebring.

‘Er, they did send me an email, but I don’t think I printed it off. Should be fine – they’ll have our details on file and I’ve got the credit card I made the booking with.’

Live Fast, Die Young by Chris Price and Joe Harland is published by Summersdale (paperback; £7.99). It is also available through amazon.com and all good booksellers.