Various Artists: Motorway City – The Golden Age of Car Travel 1966-82
Released 31 July 2026
CD | Vinyl
4.0 out of 5.0 stars
Highway cruising never sounded so sublime: Bob Stanley has trawled through the library music archives to piece together a sonic excursion with a mood for every road trip. But as the world prepares to embrace the driverless car, these Motorway City serenades to the joy of old-school motoring already seem frozen in time. Robert Plummer buckles up for the ride.
How would you even begin to soundtrack the present-day road-rage hellscape of Britain’s cities? Stuck in eternal tailbacks, with the absurd 20mph speed limit often more of an aspiration than a restriction, motorists must be tempted to seek out the most seething sounds imaginable. It’s a far cry from the days when the internal combustion engine was a force for liberation instead of a planetary scourge.
Fortunately, the past is another country and they drive differently there. That’s the key to appreciating the latest compilation by Saint Etienne frontman and music journalist Bob Stanley, chief curator of an ever-deepening series of musical excavations on the Ace label. The aim of Motorway City is to recall the heyday of the car, an era of post-war optimism in which starry-eyed planners reconfigured the UK’s urban topography to favour the motor vehicle.
From Chuck Berry to Golden Earring, countless hymns to the automobile have rolled off the rock music production line: this is not that kind of collection, however. These 28 instrumental tracks are drawn from the world of library music, tunes recorded specifically for use by TV and film producers. Designed originally to provide background ambience, such albums have since provided a ready source of obscure beats for hip-hop crate-diggers, acquiring serious cult appeal.
Giants of the genre such as Alan Hawkshaw and Simon Park are among the hired hands evoking the highways and byways of yesteryear. Even without accompanying visuals, their sound pictures still stand up to scrutiny. But the compilation covers a lot of stylistic ground, tracking musical evolutions and reflecting the changing role of the motor car in society.
Boy racers of a bygone age will feel the adrenaline pumping on hearing the first three tracks. First off the starting line is 1966’s Wire Wheels by the International Studio Orchestra, a brisk piano-led number that has the rock & roll feel of Floyd Cramer’s hit On The Rebound from five years earlier. Then as now, library music’s soundalike qualities were a feature, not a bug.
After that, Johnny Hawksworth looms large in the rear-view mirror with his jaunty, double-bass dominated On The Move, while bold brass and jazzy Hammond organ give extra pace to Cliff Johns’ Motorway. So far, so Swinging Sixties. But things take a curious turn with Basil Kirchin’s queasy mood piece Through New Territory: have we been carjacked by aliens?
Never fear, there’s more motoring euphoria to come. Sweeping strings, proud trumpets, electric harpsichords, pounding tympani, fuzz guitar: a joyous sequence of uptempo jams ensues. Jack Trombey’s manic Town Beat sounds as though the driver may have had one too many, but somehow manages to come to a halt without crashing into the central reservation.
The further this album travels, the more it shows the influence of Seventies soul. John Scott’s Motordown and Steve Gray’s Nevada Junction would both sit well in a blaxploitation movie with their “diamond in the back, sunroof top” groove. Images of car chases in downtown Philly come to mind: we’re certainly a long way from Newport Pagnell services, Toto.
Not that the UK is totally neglected in the second half of this long-haul journey. The Cool’s flute-tastic Highway Song, a sought-after psych classic, places us squarely in the back of a Transit van with a hapless roadie at the wheel. Meanwhile, Frank McDonald’s Lorry Load expertly emulates the locked-in loneliness of the long-distance HGV driver.
Yet the funky freeways of the US maintain their allure. Mike Gillingham and Roy Stone serve up some proto-jeep beats with their Fast Lane, all slap bass and phat synth. And John Fiddy’s Super City brings the American night to life with its bold horn charts and insistent clavinet.
As the end of the album nears, it eases off the accelerator: we’ve taken the slip road and we’re on our way home. Frank Ricotti’s Clearway and Alan Hawkshaw’s Soft Throttle encapsulate that feeling of racking up your last few miles after a long night’s driving. Finally, Alan Parker’s serene, valedictory Hometown tells you as clearly as any sat-nav that you have reached your destination.
Motorway City is another satisfying addition to Bob Stanley’s highly collectable series of compilations. It’s a cunningly assembled sequence of tracks, but also one to set listeners thinking about its significance for the way we live now. With electric and driverless vehicles set to dominate the rest of the 21st Century, the romance of car culture that permeates this music has become a thing of the past – and it’s not clear how it can ever be revived.
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Bob Stanley is the author of numerous books about music, including pop histories Let’s Do It: The Birth Of Pop and Yeah Yeah Yeah: The Story Of Modern Pop. Louder Than War interviewed him in 2012 about his top 10 influences as a musician. You can find him as @rocking_bob on Instagram and Bluesky.
All words by Robert Plummer. More writing by Robert can be found at hisauthor’s archive. He is also on X as @robertp926.
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