7 songs about car crashes
We dedicated the May/June 2023 issue of Hagerty Drivers Club magazine to the deep connections between music and cars, including several fun lists featuring your favorite car songs. Come back often or click the Music & Cars tag to stay up to date on these stories as they roll out online. You can also jam with our custom Music & Cars playlist on Spotify, available here.
Hard-partying musicians are certainly well represented among the millions who’ve died in car crashes, but perhaps none of the songs written about such accidents has been as eerily prescient as Jan & Dean’s “Dead Man’s Curve.” A 1963 hit about a street drag race gone wrong, it echoed loudly in memory when, in 1966, band member Jan Berry drove his Corvette into the back of a parked truck not far from the dangerous corner whose legend he and partner Dean Torrence had helped to cement. Berry and the band’s career were never the same.
The pride of El Sobrante, California, Primus scored its first hit in 1991 with “Jerry Was a Race Car Driver.” Penned by the punk-funk band’s virtuoso bass-playing leader, Les Claypool, it concerns an “I’ll show them” type of guy who’s in over his head and meets his end driving an Oldsmobile 4-4-2 too fast after many too many beers.
Here are seven more hits about fender-benders—and worse.
Jan & Dean
“DEAD MAN’S CURVE”
Well, the last thing I remember, Doc, I started to swerveAnd then I saw the Jag slide into the curveI know I’ll never forget that horrible sightI guess I found out for myself that everyone was rightWon’t come back from Dead Man’s Curve
Sounds a lot like the automotive equivalent of “you’ll shoot your eye out!”
Ray Peterson
“TELL LAURA I LOVE HER”
He drove his car to the racing groundsHe was the youngest driver thereAnd the crowed roared as they started the race‘Round the track they drove at a deadly paceNo one knows what happened that dayHow his car overturned in flamesBut as they pulled him from the twisted wreckWith his dying breath, they heard him say . . .
” . . . I probably should have eased into this whole racing thing. Maybe some SCCA Solo, or just a high-performance driving experience to see if racing was right for me.”
Dave Edmunds
“CRAWLING FROM THE WRECKAGE”(Graham Parker cover)
Crawling from the wreckage, crawling from the wreckageBits of me are scattered in the trees and on the hedgesCrawling from the wreckage, crawling from the wreckageInto a brand new car
How’s about you crawl into that ambulance first? Then we can talk about a new car.
David Bowie
“ALWAYS CRASHING IN THE SAME CAR”
Every chance,Every chance that I takeI take it on the roadThose kilometers and the red lightsI was always looking left and rightOh, but I’m always crashingIn the same car
Maybe less looking left and right, and more eyes forward? Try that for a while.
Mark Dinning
“TEEN ANGEL”
Teen angel, teen angel, teen angel, oohThat fateful night the car was stalled upon the railroad trackI pulled you out and we were safe, but you went running back
PSA: Don’t tug on Superman’s cape. Don’t spit into the wind. Don’t mess with the Lone Ranger’s mask. And never, ever, crawl back into a car when a train is barreling down on it.
The Beach Boys
“A YOUNG MAN IS GONE” (about James Dean)
For this daring young starMet his death while in his carNo one knows the reason why
Obviously, The Beach Boys don’t read Wikipedia, because it says exactly why right there.
They Might Be Giants
“MINK CAR”
I got hit by a mink car
Hit by a mink car
Driven by a guitar
And the silver chauffeur says
That it’s all in your head
Or . . . it might be in that toad you just licked.
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Copperhead Road my Steve Earle
A little older and not rock but country and blue grass. Roy Acuff, Jimmy Martin and others “Wreck On THe Highway” I didn’t hear nobody pray.
Driving Too Fast by The Rolling Stones
455 Rocket by Kathy Mattea
Last Kiss by J. Frank Wilson and
DOA by Bloodrock.
WHAT?!?!
Where’s Warm Leatherette by Normal…?!! Sacrilege!
What about “Last kiss”…. covered by Pearl Jam
Well, I knew 3 of the 7!
D.O.A. By Bloodrock early 70’s
Phantom 409
Red Sovine
One of the all time great parodies of the genre is “Pizza Man” from the National Lampoon stage show, Lemmings, which was a parody of Woodstock.
“He saw two bright lights on the road,
And thought he’d try his luck.
He tried to ride between them;
He never knew it was a truck…”
https://youtu.be/1VYQpWRMVas
How about That smell by Lynyrd Skynyrd. “Whiskey bottle. Brand new car. Oak tree in my way.
“Chicken” by Bert Convy. Four teen hot-rodders died, so I win for highest body count! and maybe obscurity.
This was very well done! Enjoyable. A bit different but on the same idea. Leader of the laundromat by the Detergents, is loaded with Crash sounds.
Dead Man’s Curve actually provides directions to Jan Barry’s house, it is well known that he referred to the end of his driveway as “dead man’s curve”, due to its relation to the road/visibility. Throughout the first lines of the song, he provides landmarks throughout his encounter with the “shiny new Jag.” We “flew past LaBrea, Schwabs (drug store) and Crescent Heights, and all the Jag could see were my six (or frenched, depending on release) taillights…He passed me at Doheni, and we started to swerve, I pulled it out and there we were… at Dead Man’s Curve…”
Ironic foreshadowing of Jan Barry’s accident of 1966. Saw Jan and Dean in person in the early 90s in Bethlehem, PA at Music Fest. Great Music, Great Talent, both Jan Barry and Dean Torrence.
RIP true pioneers of the California Surf Sound.
Where is Last Kiss on this list? I wore that record out!