You've swooned! to lush's sumptuous dream pop; soon you can thrill! to their new single '500 (Shake baby shake)' about the Fiat 500; but right now just laugh like a drain! at their frankly pathetic attempts to answer even the most basic questions on the Highway Code. Johnny Cigarettes stifles his road rage and invites them to throw away their driving licenses-for everyone's benefit.
Emergency stops: Hayley Madden.
Those of you who have been reading this publication for some time may have been given the impression, from the relentless blizzard of adolescent emotional intensity, intellectual jousting and petty humour that rages across it's pages, that rock'n'roll is mankind's most important invention.
But this is not true. Several things have been more important in ensuring the survival and advancement of the human race. Sex, for example. Antibiotics. The telephone. Booze. Shoes. The list goes on. But it is generally accepted that Man's greatest breakthrough (after he invented fire and food and water) was THE WHEEL. Now, a few lefty do-gooders will tell you that within it lie the seeds of our destruction, through too much smoke and people getting run over. But what the f--- do they expect us to do? Ride around on f---ing BMXs? Eh? EH?! Hadn't thought of that, had you, lefty do-gooders? No.
Now, Lush would hardly be presumptuous enogh to suggest they could be counted as completely essential to the survival and advancement of mankind, but they have given joy to many thousands of shy people across the globe with their sumptuous, soaring dream-pop. As fashion survivors and media starlets for some seven years or more, they've told us what they know about all the above subjects, except the wheel. Now, though, they are about to release a single, '500 (Shake Baby Shake)' about a Fiat 500 car. So what better opportunity to find out everything you ever wanted to know about what Lush know about cars, but were afraid to ask. Well, we're going to do it anyway.
All four members of Lush can drive, which may or may not be a unique achievement among British two girls/two boys guitar bands. But the trauma of learning to drive and passing their tests has left emotional scars that surely infect their music to this day. Arguably.
"My driving instructor was a total pervert," remembers an ashen-faced Chris Acland. "He kept on touching my bollocks. He'd say, 'If you get this wrong i'll grab your bollocks,' and of course that used to make me more nervous so I would get it wrong. Eventually I had to tell him...erm, that i'd tell my mum or something."
Emma: "I had the nicest examiner in the world. This little old man, who said, 'Ooh, you do look familiar. I've seen you on the television and in a magazine, haven't I?' I told him I was in a band and he said, 'Really? Ooh, well i'm going to go into Top Price and get your CD, and i'm going to go up to the counter and say, "I know her!"'"
Miki: "My boyfriend used to want me to come out with him to drive his car for practice before I passed my test, but the only time i'd do it was when I was absoloutely hammered, and i'd drive round Sainsbury's car park in first gear! It was the only time I had the Confidence! I'm still like that. I passed my test in July and i've driven only once since then, driving around in first gear. It terrifies me. And no, I wasn't pissed that time."
Phil: "When I got my first car I got stopped by the police for driving too slow! I was driving at exactly the speed limit."
Emma: "That's outrageous! How can they stop you for doing the speed limit?"
Phil: "Well, it was round the back of King's Cross."
Miki: "Ah! That explains it then! You look like a kerb crawler. I bet you were leaning out of the car whistling at all the schoolgirls."
Phil: "Hmmm."
Being qualified to drive is one thing. Being proficent behind the wheel, a responsible road user and able to shout insults at fellow drivers without getting your head crushed with a baseball bat is quite another. One member of Lush in particular has long since abandoned all hope of achieving these things. Chris (for it is he): "I'm a shit driver. I won't drive in London now. Only when I go home to the Lake District. When we first started the band we used to have this British Telecom van. I was the only one who could drive, and I used to crash it all the time. I remember driving down Camberwell Grove one day and just crashing straight into a skip, for no reason. It just appeared there.
"I had so many bad experiences in London I decided to stop, before I killed someone. Now I just drive when i'm back home in the lakes. I borrow mummy's car and go round running over hedgehogs."
Miki: "'Mummy! Can I borrow your car?' 'Yes, Christopher. Which one, the Rolls-Royce?'"
Emma: "Can't you get a chauffeur when you're at home?"
All very cosy. But we happen to be in the company of a 4AD press officer who very nearly died last year when he swerved to avoid an obstruction in the road and went straight into the front of a double-decker bus. Can any of these so-called 'rock'n'rollers' match that?
Miki: "My dad always buys a car for £200, and never buys insurance. He was driving me to the station one time and saying to me, 'There's something wrong with the steering on this car.' And just as he said it he drove straight into a brick wall! So the police were called and he was pushing it round the corner to hide it, because he's got no insurance or tax on it!"
Phil: "We nearly died in a minibus on the way to a gig in Preston."
Miki: "Yes, I remember it well. Valentine's Day, 1992."
Phil: "We got a flat tyre on the bus, and had to change it. We drove off and started wobbling. Then the new wheel fell off! In the middle of the motorway! Then we looked to our right and we were gliding rapidly into the path of this articulated lorry! It was like one of those comedy films where everyone's faces just turn to skulls."
Chris: "And the lorry driver was the grim reaper!"
Phil: "Anyway, eventually we managed to stop safely on the hard shoulder. But we had a bit of a shaky gig that night."
Chris: "No, it was great! A life-affirming gig!"
Pah. So much for living fast and dying young. We need some more sex and drugs to go with our rock'n'roll anecdotes. After all, cars are essentially penis extensions, are they not?
Miki: "You've got to be pretty f---ing sad to think it's a penis extension. I mean, I dunno what the f--- a Fiat 500 would say about your penis!"
Chris: "I don't think they're remotely sexy. As a kid you're either into cars or you're into punk or football. I was a punk."
Emma: "I've only ever had one boyfriend who had a car. When I first went out with him I was quite impressed, but that soon wore off. He had a 2CV, and when it rained it came through the roof and you'd get soaking wet. It broke down constantly, and eventually he decided to get rid of it. He took it to this garage and they gave him a tenner for it."
Very nice. But have you ever had sex in a car?
Chris: "Yeah. In the back of the old British Telecom van, on a soggy mattress."
Miki: "Yes I have. No, i'm not going to go into detail."
Chris: "Come on then. Tell us about it."
Miki: "Noooo! I have, a few times, where there was nowhere else to go...actually it was a van. In the back seat."
Chris: "It's a youth tradition, shagging in cars."
Emma: "Well, I never had any sex when I was young."
Chris: "Was it good, though, Miki? Was it comfortable?"
Miki: "It was alright. It takes a bit of manoeuvring..."
Chris: "Ever done it in a taxi?"
Miki: "Had sex in a taxi?! What the f--- are you on about? I've snogged in a taxi, but you'd have to be pretty desperate to shag in one."
Have you ever driven when you were under the influence of alcohol or drugs?
Emma: "I've driven on cocaine, which was awful, because I must have seen about five police cars in about a mile."
Miki: "I took some driving lessons where I was still drunk from the night before. And it was actually better, because I actually had more confidence."
Chris: "After my 21st birthday, having been up all night drinking, I drove down to the local shop and then on to the cricket pitch to take some magic mushrooms. Then, when they kicked in, I was driving along the hedgerow and all sorts. That was really stupid."
Incidentally, we ought to bring the single into this. It compares a car to a lover, and then exhorts the poor thing to, 'Shake, baby, shake.' Hardly an advertisement for a smooth-driving motor, is it?
Emma: "Well that's part of the charm of a Fiat 500. They do shake. They sort of rattle. I fell in love with them when there were loads of them in the background in The Italian Job. And I was sick of writing about bloody men, so I wrote about being in love with a car. They're more reliable than men."
Chris: "Wahey! I knew we'd get round to man-bashing sooner or later!"
As luck would have it, our photo shoot with Lush and a gorgeous red Fiat 500 witnesses scenes of high drama when our photographer's boyfriend's car has it's wing mirror knocked off by a passing van. But no road rage here, kids, the two parties sort out their differences in an amicable and civilised manner. Which brings us round to the second part of our Lush cars-and-motoring-related interview-driving etiquette. All too often in these days of shabby public morals and slack social discipline, drivers act like common imbeciles, without a moment's thought for the safety or emotional well-being of fellow road users. We aim to find out if Lush can set a more noble example to any youngsters out there who might be thinking about forming a band and answering pointless and irrelevant questions about driving.
You are cut up by some arrogant fat bastard amid heavy traffic. Do you smash their car, and indeed their face in with a blunt instrument?
Phil: "My only experience of road rage was when I was coming out of a party, and getting in the car with my girlfriend. This load of football fans drove past shouting 'wanker,' and all that. I flicked the Vs at them, and then next thing you know they've got out of their car and they're running up the road after me! We stopped at a red light, and my girlfriend was being sick out of the window, 'cos she was really drunk. I just managed to get her inside and close the windows and lock the doors when they jumped on top of the car. In the end I had to drive off, through a red light, with them still on the bonnet!"
A hitch-hiker is waiting, soaking wet and shivering, by the side of the road, with a sign for your destination. He is, however, a crusty of quite foul personal odorousness. Do you pick him up?
Chris: "Oh God, I can just imagine what he'd smell like. But I used to hitch, so i'd probably pick him up."
Miki: "If it was 15 minutes drive away I might, but not if it was a four-hour journey. These two mates of ours, two girls, went hitching in Ireland, and it was the first time they'd ever done it, so they were dead nervous. Their first lift was this white-haired, middle-aged bloke in a company car, and he took them for a meal, he was really friendly and everything. Then they got dropped off by him and another bloke just like him turned up, and this bloke was an absoloute raving pervert. He'd be squeezing their legs and turning everything they said round to sex. Then the third bloke who picked them up was a young bloke, seemed alright. They got in and he said, 'I know a really good place to get the next ride from. It turned out to be the middle of f---ing nowhere, and when they got out, he gout out with them, and went into this cornfield. Then they looked to see where he'd gone, and he was having a wank! So they panicked and ran in front of this lorry and forced it to give them the next lift. F---ing scary."
You are trying to park in a tight spot. You bump into the car behind leaving a dent in their bumper. No-one seems to have seen you. Do you drive off, or leave a note owning up?
Emma: "Drive off, obviously. But I just can't park anyway. One time I was trying to park in this really tight spot, and this ambulance came along. I was stuck half out in the middle of the road, and this ambulance needed to get past. So eventually the ambulance driver got out and parked it for me. Sooooo embarrassing."
You stop for petrol at a deserted filling station late at night. The cashier is asleep. Do you drive off or pay?
Miki: "I'd pay."
Emma: "I'd be too scared of them waking up and getting my number."
Miki: "Some mates of mine did it, though. They had no money to pay for petrol, so two of them went in to distract the cashier, then the one getting the petrol drove off, and they all jumped in down the road. Half an hour later they got stopped by the police. They thought, 'Oh f---, they've got us.' But htey weren't stopped just by one car, there was about eight of them. So they thought, 'This is a bit excessive.' Anyway they got taken down to the station and it turned out they matched the description of some blokes who'd committed an armed robbery earlier that night. So they had to confess to nicking £12 of petrol earlier that night as an alibi!"
You run over a rabbit on a deserted country road. It's not quite dead. Do you 'put it out of it's misery,' so to speak?
Chris: "Yeah, i'd reverse back over it. I'd always be wondering whether it survived otherwise. If it wasn't badly hurt, though, you'd take it home or something to nurse it."
Miki: "And then stick it in a box and bury the poor bastard."
So what have we learned from these role models for a generation about rock'n'roll motoring? Not much we didn't know already. Springsteen be damned, it seems cars and rock do notmix. Most of the things a self-respecting modern rocker holds dear-sex, drinking, drug abuse and kindness to cute fluffy animals-are anathema to the mundane horrors of life on the open road. But in a final effort to see if Lush really qualify to write songs about cars we set them a simple little questionnaire. The results may well disturb you.
Written driving test questions.
It used to be called The Highway Code, and nobody gave a toss about it. You could get only one out of six questions right, and stillpass your test. But now you have to take a written driving test. Here are ten actual possible questions from the test, answered by Lush.
1. You are carrying a ten-year-old child in the back seat of your car, with his parents. Whose responsibility is it to make them wear a seat-belt?
Emma: "The driver." (Correct!)
Miki: "I'd demand they strapped the little bastard in. And gag him."
2. You are driving at night, and are dazzled by the lights of an oncoming car. What should you do?
a) Flash your lights.
b) Slow down.
c) Close your eyes.
d) Pull down the sun visor.
Chris: "Flash at 'em. Dazzle them back. Give 'em a taste of their own medicine." (Wrong!)
Miki: "I bet it's 'Slow down.' It's always the most boring, safest answer." (Correct!)
3. A vehicle has a flashing green light. What does this mean?
a) The vehicle is slow moving.
b) It is a motorway police patrol vehicle.
c) It is carrying hazardous chemicals.
d) A doctor is answering an emergency call.
Chris: "Hazardous chemicals."
Emma: "I think it's the doctor because I can see the book." (Correct!)
4. Stopping in good conditions at 30mph takes at least...
a) Three car lengths.
b) One car length.
c) Six car lengths.
d) Ten car lengths.
Emma: "Six."
Miki: "Three."
Chris: "Six."
Miki: "Ten?"
Yes, it's six. But as Meat Loaf once said, 'Objects in the rear view mirror may appear closer than they really are.' Although that doesn't matter.
5. You have just passed your driving test. How likely are you to have an accident compared with other drivers?
a) More likely.
b) Less likely.
c) The same.
d) Depends on your age.
Emma: "I think it depends on your age."
Chris, Miki and Emma: "Less likely."
ACK-ERRRK! They're all wrong, because it's MORE likely. Makes you think, doesn't it? For about a second.
6. You should switch your rear fog lights on when visibility drops below...
a) Your overall stopping distance.
b) Ten car lengths.
c) Ten metres.
d) 100 metres.
All: "Ten metres."
Quack quack oops! It's 100 metres! Well, it just goes to show, you can never tell, etc, etc.
7. You intend to park on a road without lights at night. Which of the following is correct?
a) Your vehicle must be visible from at least ten metres.
b) You must park facing opposite the traffic flow.
c) The road must have a speed limit of 30mph or less.
d) At least half of your vehicle must be parked on the pavement.
Miki: "Opposite the traffic flow?"
BAAAAAALLS! it's c). You don't deserve to be on the road.
8. You are driving on a motorway. You have red reflective studs on your left, and white ones to your right. Where are you?
Chris: "On an airport runway!"
Miki: "Oh, God. Fast lane! Must be."
Emma: "Is it when you're coming off?"
Phil: "The hard shoulder?"
Emma: "Well there's green, there's red, there's white...and then there's amber as well, isn't there?"
Chris: "You're approaching a railway crossing. On acid..."
DOGS! It's the slow lane, you dolts!
9. You are in freezing conditions. Which three of the folowing things should you do when approaching a sharp bend?
a) Accelerate into the bend.
b) Drive in as high a gear as you can.
c) Slow down before you reach the bend.
d) Keep your clutch down throughout.
e) Gently apply your handbrake.
f) Avoid sudden steering movements.
Miki: "Slow down, definitely."
Phil: "You can't go round with the clutch down, because you're not in control of the car then."
Miki: "But you can't go in a high gear, can you? You must have to pull the handbrake."
Emma: "Ha ha ha ha! Great! A handbrake turn on ice!"
DOH! You have to drive along in as high a gear as you can, supposedly. Although what logic there is to that frankly escapes me.
10. You have had ten pints of lager, 80 magic mushrooms and a gram of cocaine. An old lady steps onto a zebra crossing just as you approach it...(That's enough driving -Ed.)
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