Heading Out To The West Coast

Despite saying in my piece on Warren Zevon a couple of months ago that I had no interest in the Los Angeles music scene of the 1970s, the city itself has always had a strong allure to me.

Naturally, the whole of the States can have that to those of us left behind in the old world. Though reality always brings us back down, the vastness of America has a huge romantic pull on us. Places just sound better over there, hence why you can't really write a song about Leeds as easily as you can New York or San Jose.

I was lucky enough to spend a couple of weeks in LA six years ago. I'd moved to Manchester and managed, for the first time in my life, to earn enough money so that I had enough to treat myself. Then when I got a couple of hundred quid on a tax rebate, a friend out there suggested I pay a visit. So I did, via a pleasant journey where I knocked back enough free Jack Daniels to ease any nerves and enable me to watch The Spongebob Squarepants Movie about three times in a row and still laugh everytime.

Flying across Canada/the States allows you to appreciate just how huge it is. From ice fields to deserts, it seemed to go on forever. I was lucky it was a clear day, and looking down could see the roads below populated with trucks hauling across the Roman-straight roads. When we finally prepared to land at LAX Airport, the city below was beyond anything I'd seen below. Sure, Manchester is fairly big, and London is obviously massive, but Los Angeles was something else.

The two weeks that followed were nothing but golden. A lot of people aren't too keen on the city, but this occasional traveller felt right at home. I remember the first song I heard on the radio when being driven to my temporary accommodation was Crash by the Primitives, which was very cool and set the tone nicely. For perhaps the first and only time in my life, I acted like a proper tourist, a mindset aided by the fact I was crashing in an apartment in Hollywood. Strolling down Sunset Boulevard, I couldn't help but gawp at landmarks I'd seen in TV and film.

Not that I viewed the place with over-idealistic eyes. Two of my favourite films, L.A. Confidential and To Live and Die In L.A. show the seediness that lurks in any town - though what grabbed me more was a guy stood at a roadside with a piece of cardboard asking not for money, but a job. It's been said many times before, but the contrast between that guy and the millionaires living round the corner in Beverley Hills was jarring.

Being brought up on the coast, I've long had a thing about staring out over the water and drifting into daydreams. Sat on the beach at Santa Monica, looking out over the Pacific and knowing there was little between me and Japan, I felt a kind of peace I've been trying to catch up with ever since.

Just about the only downside of my whole trip that comes to mind is that we went to see the Hitchhikers Guide To The Galaxy film, before which I bigged up the genius of Douglas Adams. Sadly, it was complete and utter cack of the highest order, leaving her to question my reputation as a man of good taste.

Luckily, I was able to redeem myself by spending a huge chunk of my cash at Amoeba Records, where she worked, on albums that had been hard-to-find back home. Babe Rainbow and A Spy In The House of Love by the House of Love and Flipping Out by Gigolo Aunts all got the nod of approval from the woman who years earlier had steered me in the right musical direction by taping albums by Mazzy Star and the Jesus and Mary Chain for me.

When I got back, I ended up growing my hair out to try and look like the Dude from The Big Lebowki, an experiment I'm not sure really worked. I've not been back out west since, sadly, though I always mean to as an ambition of mine is to drive up the coastline in an open topped Cadillac (like Don Draper in that episode of Mad Men), or at the very least a Dodge Challenger like Kowalski went crazy with in Vanishing Point. New York? You can keep it. My heart belongs to the Pacific.