A different song about cars and girls

Rock music is full of cliched songs about fast cars and girls. Little Red Corvette, Thunder Road, Pink Cadillac, Born to Run, and, ahem, Cars and Girls even. Nothing too high-brow and with enough grit and gristle to be on one of those ‘Rock n Road Trip’ collation CD’s you still find at the motorway service station till. The vehicle types may vary and head down different Routes, but the formula is as well-worn as the hot tarmac across country. But I recently came across a very different kind of song about cars and girls.

The UK band Big Big Train have been around for years (formed in 1990) but newly discovered by me. In their current form since about 2009, they write beautiful, complex (often long) and sophisticated melodic progressive rock. They have a bespectacled flute playing bald-headed singer who sounds like a young Peter Gabriel. They have also have had, in recent years, Dave Gregory of XTC playing with them, which is a bit like Marillion hiring, you know, Paul McCartney on bass for a couple of albums and a tour! I could eulogise about how good they are - but those who already know that, already know that, and it’s not that interesting simply trying to advocate the merits of a band who do 27 minute long songs about the source of the River Thames, or East Coast Steam trains. But give this story a try.

The penultimate song on their last album, Folklore, is called Brooklands, referring to an abandoned motor-racing track in Surrey. Brooklands had huge banked corners, 100 feet wide, and some of them can still be walked along today. The song is not about the race track, but a racing driver called John Cobb who was an amazingly accomplished and extraordinary brave driver. Cobb held the ultimate track record at Brooklands with an average speed of nearly 144 miles per hour in the 1930’s. He broke several land and water speed records and continued with his record breaking attempts into middle-age. He died on Loch Ness in 1952 whilst attempting to break the water speed record. He had recently married and his wife was at the Loch watching when he crashed and died.

The opening of the song sets the scene as Cobb is driving to Loch Ness to attempt the water speed record. As he takes his boat out onto the water he remembers back to his young days at Brooklands - a “lucky man”, and then his later life as a racer. It’s a stunning piece of music and moving in a way I didn’t expect. A clearer and more eloquent telling of the song’s inspiration is provided by Big Big Train’s Greg Spawton on his blog and the comments section to the story were clearly deeply felt - listeners struck by the songs portrayal of a visceral life lived to the full and this past year, with some having lost loved ones, that nagging sense of “where did all the time go?” It’s quite piece and posted below. Feel free to jump in, or, just let it pass by.