Travel Book Review ~ WILLIE'S BAR & GRILL by Rob Hirst

A fascinating and very funny book, the author is the drummer from rock band Midnight Oil. Willie's Bar & Grill follows the band on tour in America shortly after September 11. It's a travel book, a rock music book and book of cultural observations all in one. America as seen through a bus window.

Here's a great passage on LA in those strange days not long after the Twin Towers fell:

Los Angeles certainly looks, sounds and smells familiar, with it's wattle, bottlebrush and gum trees lining the freeways, but now that the barbarians are at the gates, the wheels are really falling off Tinsel Town. Post-September 11, the happy pills aren't working, the table-thumping televangelists are being taken seriously, the fearful are fleeing to Lake Tahoe, and the driving wounded are looking shell shocked and exposed, as if a golden horde of Mongols have just galloped their Bircher-muesli breakfasts.

The US flag is everywhere, sold in thousands by those guys at intersections who clean your windscreen whether you like it or not. It hangs from private verandahs and office windows, and it's stuck to the bonnets and boots of countless Chevvies, Hondas and Beemers. Some have been justly hoisted in sympathy and solidarity for the victims of 'the Incident' - 'Time to Pray' urges one hotel's flashing billboard, next to a massive flagpole from which the Stars and Stripes ripple splendidly. Elsewhere a blunter message is conveyed" 'It's butt-kicking time' reads the slogan on a baseball cap clearly visible through the rear windscreen of a rusty Dodge. Another enterprising jingoist is selling t-shirts with the warning 'Don't F*ck With Us. We F*ck Back' (just the sort of succinct, coded statement the Oval Office would doubtlessly love to release.

Another passage which stuck in my head is this:

Over the years of touring in the States, we've discovered that there are at least four distinct 'Americas', depending on your route and means of travel, and each of them leaves a very different impression. The monotonous fast-food, truck-stop America you pass on today's interstates is altogether blander than the front-porch, small-town America that hugs the old highways of the pre-free-way age. And this again is different from the coal-dust, old-industry USA seen from a Pullman railway car, or the mile-high, relief-map America you look down on from the window of a 737.

And interesting bits about the practicalities of living on a tour bus:

As for [bus driver] Slim, he's seen it all. He's a highly qualified road man, and as such, always in demand. Bands and crew often request specific people that they know and trust, so old hands like Slim work an average of 300 days a year, doubtless preferring the perpetual motion to sedentary suburbia. As you lie in your bunk, you quickly become accustomed to the manner in which individual drivers nurse 46,000 pounds of metal, fluid, water, luggage and human cargo down the country's interstate.

Bunk selection can be critical. You can choose from a dozen inviting options - although every bunk feels as if you're entombed in a constantly vibrating chest of drawers, while above and below some ogre rummages for lost socks. The bunks at the bottom can be hot and too close to road hum, while the top bunks can develop a nasty sway, leaving the occupant sub-consciously gripping the bed-rails all night. The rear bunks are prone to diesel noise, gear-changing clunks and the regular thud of door-slamming insomiacs. Which leaves the forward middle bunks as the preferred option, although it's all quite academic really. If you can't switch off and let go, then wherever you try to sleep - even in a specially extended bunk or stretched out in the aisle - you're in danger of becoming an irascible, red-eyed bus-zombie with issues. If you're still awake in the morning, gazing groggily down the freeway as heat chimera form and dissolve, while the sunrise cuts mercilessly through the bug-splattered front windscreen, it's best to admit defeat. Make some coffee and embrace the new day, the new state, the next exciting episode in this boy's own adventure.

I read this while on holidays in Hong Kong and highly recommended, it's an easy and entertaining read. Rob Hirst is a great writer.

We have some copies of this book in stock at the time of writing, click here to see if we have some in stock.