For a few years our modus operandi was for Paul to pick me up in East Finchley a few evenings a week and we’d drive to a pub somewhere to meet up with friends. Sometimes we would start at The Beehive in Edgware, then head down the Edgware Road towards central London and end up at our favourite watering hole, The Swiss Cottage on Finchley Road. There we’d spend the rest of the evening in the company of people from all over Europe. The main bar at the Swiss Cottage was always full of young people, always very loud and the music was always good. We got to know a lot of people there and many of them were from Sweden. My visits to The Swiss turned out to be life-changing and in part the reason I’ve lived in Sweden since 1977.
One evening we drove to the Beehive and Paul and I had a biker mate with us: Simon W. Simon was on his 500cc Yamaha and Paul and I were in the beach buggy. After an hour at the Beehive, we decided to head for the Swiss, about 10 km away and Simon asked if I’d like to ride with him on his bike. I’d never ridden on the back of a motorbike before, so I said “of course!” But before we’d even left the forecourt of the pub Simon had a done a wheely and nearly thrown me off, which worried me slightly. Though admittedly it was quite fun too. Despite that scary start I didn’t chicken out and we headed down the Edgware Road with Simon and me in front and Paul behind us in the buggy.
Traffic was quite light as it was about 9 in the evening. We made good time and Simon overtook all the cars that we encountered on the way. As we approached the North Circular, the only road that circled the whole of London at that time, the long downward slope encouraged Simon to open the throttle just a little more. I’ve no idea how fast we were going, but it was probably around 100 km/h. Instead of overtaking the car in front of us he suddenly slammed on the brakes and the back tire screamed. It turned out that the car he had planned to overtake was a police vehicle. He noticed this just a little too late and before we could slow down enough to avoid it, we ran into the back of it.
The bump we felt was in fact only a small one. There was no damage to the bike or the car and we were incredibly lucky. If he had braked just a few seconds later, we would have been thrown over the top of the car when we hit it. We stopped, and Paul parked behind us but stayed in the buggy. We got off the bike and waited for the two police officers who had climbed out of their car. They walked at a leisurely pace back to where we were standing and calmly asked us what the hell we thought we were doing. Simon apologized and replied that he had been driving just a little faster than the police car but changed his mind about overtaking when he saw who it was. They obviously hadn’t seen the speed with which we had approached them from behind, which was a major piece of luck too. And in a very short space of time they let us go with just a warning to take it easy!
As far as riding on the back of a motorbike was concerned, that was it for me. I jumped into Paul’s buggy and never rode on Simon’s bike again. Or anybody else’s bike for that matter. A year or so later Simon slid on a manhole cover in wet weather, came off his bike and broke a few bones. When he had recovered he sold the bike and took to riding around in a three-wheeler Bond Bug. And obviously I was not even mildly interested in taking a ride with Simon in that.
Motor Bikin’ was a hit for underrated British guitarist Chris Spedding in 1975. Since then, as well as releasing several albums under his own name, he has played guitar with a large number of other artists. Just to name a few: the Sex Pistols, Sir Paul, Elton John, Art Garfunkel and fairly recently he toured with Roxy Music and Brian Ferry.