The long-anticipated ROCKIN' DOWN THE HIGHWAY exhibit at General Motors' Heritage Center just outside Detroit opened this week to great acclaim. Over 1,500 GM execs and key staff attended the opening. All the exhibit materials came from ROCKIN', and were hung to accompany historic cars from GM's own collection. We expect many hundreds of GM invitees to view the exhibit over the next month or two (it's open only to GM's own visitors). Some will be attending because they'll be arriving soon for the Woodward Avenue Dream Cruise.-
Those of us who worked on the project refer to it as "GM's ROCKIN'," because indeed it does.
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Here's how the intro reads, and what I said in the voice-over, as recorded at Fantasy Studios (see previous blog):
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"CARS AND ROCK & ROLL--they're essential parts of exactly the same thing, like the ingredients that make up a cheeseburger. From Elvis to Bruce Springsteen, from "Rocket 88" to "Little Red Corvette," rock & roll, in a car, sets a mood that's hard to beat. And, there are millions of people with a love of music so completely intertwined with a love of cars that you can't tell where one stops and the other begins.
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It's about total sensory gestalt: the color and shape of a car, the purr (or roar) of the engine, the chords and notes swirling from the car stereo that are rockin' the driver and the passengers . . . this is an experience so fundamentally American that for more than 50 years it's been an integral part of our cultural heritage.
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All the great rock musicians have had an affinity for cars. Neil Young, Chuck Berry, Jackson Browne, the Beach Boys, ZZ Top--their great car-themed songs (along with the lyrics, album cover art, and concert posters) are ones we celebrate every day. And it's fitting that General Motors, whose cars ruled the roads over rock's entire lifetime, not surprisingly continues to receive more mentions in song than any other manufacturer.
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Cars and rock & roll are elemental means of transport to another time and place, whether back to the past or forward to the future. But it's really about right now, 'cause there's not much better in life than the most modern surround-sound in the hottest--and coolest--cars, rockin' down the highway.
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Indeed . . . same as it ever was."
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A huge shout-out of thanks to Detroit's Joe Schulte, the communications genius who dreamed up the project, got it funded and saw it hung. And, to all the GM execs who backed his (and my) proposal from the get-go. For me, it was a particularly awesome moment to see Mark Arminski's "How the MC5 Got Their Sound" chapter 6-opening-painting joined overhead by Stanley Mouse's album cover for Mitch Ryder's Detroit band (see photo to left), surrounded below by the classic cars themselves from one of the world's greatest manufacturers.
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Now, time to turn it all into a great television action-documentary . . . which is what I'm busy doing right now. "Brought to you by General Motors"? Could very well be, as we rrrrrock on down the highway.
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