First excerpt. This one’s from Chris. Things are going badly wrong and we’re not even out of the airport …

And so to LAX airport, the setting for the beginning of a journey conceived nearly three years earlier; a dream of the open road in an open–top car, of two fearless explorers driving coast to coast across the land of the free. The flight from Heathrow had lasted about ten hours over a distance of six thousand miles, but we’d come a hell of a lot further than that. This was the culmination of months, years of planning, of a trip that would see us catalogue some of the most significant landmarks in music history. A friendship built on a fascination for them was, we hoped, about to find its fullest expression. But LAX was also to be where that same dream, of distant vanishing points sucked in over the windscreen of a two–seater, came within a hair’s breadth of being snuffed out.

Renting the car was Harland’s job. I had no reason not to believe it was in safe hands; Joe’s capacity for forward planning was the stuff of legend. We once made a radio programme featuring rock stars reading books, which required us to roam the backstage area of Reading Festival knocking on tour buses and politely asking their confused, unsuspecting occupants to give a recital from whatever literature they had lying around in their bunks (you’d be surprised). Joe, with his eye on the prize, had made arrangements to be tagged onto the end of the Foo Fighters’ press junket for the day. When his turn came to record lead singer Dave Grohl, the moustachioed rock god politely turned him down on the grounds that he had only ever read one book in his entire life – Catcher In The Rye by J. D. Salinger. So unless Joe just happened to have a copy of it on him right now, it was a no–go. Cue Joe, to the astonishment of both Grohl and his press officer, reaching into his bag and producing a copy of the only book that Dave Grohl had ever read, having done his research that morning and popped into Waterstone’s on the off–chance. Cue tape, hit record, and two paragraphs later my prized recording of the bass player from Editors reading Brave New World was looking altogether a little pathetic.

So as you can see, I had no reason to suppose he didn’t have this all worked out in advance. Arriving at LAX, we hopped onto a shuttle which took us to the car rental dealers about a mile or so away from the terminal. On the way I enquired whether Joe had brought all the necessary paperwork in order to pick up our shiny, convertible Chrysler Sebring.

‘Er, they did send me an email, but I don’t think I printed it off. Should be fine – they’ll have our details on file and I’ve got the credit card I made the booking with.’

‘Welcome to Dollar Car Rental. How can I help you today?’ beamed the desk clerk.

‘We’ve made a reservation for a Chrysler Sebring convertible. Name of Harland.’

‘Certainly sir – do you have the reservation number?’

‘I’m afraid not, but you should have our details on file, and I’ve got the credit card I made the booking with,’ replied Joe confidently.

‘I’m sorry sir, but without the reservation number I can’t verify the booking.’

‘Sorry?’

‘Without the reservation number I can’t verify the booking.’

She gestured towards her computer, which resembled something out of a seventies science fiction movie. It had a built–in keyboard and VDU, with light green type on a dark screen displaying a single box labelled ‘reservation number’. Literally nothing else would allow her to process the transaction. This was a bad start. Jumping back on the shuttle, we turned the dial to ‘the future’, hoping there might be somewhere with internet access – and a printer – back at the airport terminal.

There was. We returned to Dollar clutching the reservation documentation like prized lost treasure in an Indiana Jones movie, finally allowing ourselves to get excited about the prospect of beginning our journey. We were this close to hitting the road at long last, the wind in our hair and the sun on our faces. Our reservation was processed without a hitch and, with insurance documents and drivers’ licences in hand, we made our way onto the forecourt to get acquainted with our wheels.

‘Sorry guys,’ tutted the lot attendant as he inspected the paperwork, ‘no convertibles.’

‘Come again?’ spat Joe, as if to say ‘I dare you to say that again’.

‘Nooooo convertibles today. Sorry. But don’t you worry, I’ll fix you up with an equivalent vehicle in nooooo time at all. I got some great SUV’s to choose from.’

‘We don’t want an SUV, we want a Chrysler Sebring convertible. The one we booked and paid for six months ago,’ replied Joe. The veins in his neck were beginning to throb.

‘They’re all booked out,’ replied the lot attendant.

‘B–but … they can’t be. The lady inside said everything was in order.’

Witnessing Joe transform into Basil Fawlty was not, I’m sad to say, a new experience. I had seen it once before when he threatened to set Alan Yentob on a BBC transport executive at Glastonbury Festival. The poor woman made the unfortunate assumption that television’s need was greater than that of radio and gave our fleet vehicle to someone from Television Centre, receiving a torrent of invective for her troubles like a thousand slaps to the head of a cowering Manuel. It was a little like watching Bruce Banner turn into the Incredible Hulk. (The phrase ‘mild–mannered’ was invented for Joe Harland. But so was the phrase ‘you wouldn’t like me when I’m angry’.) The transformation was swift and terrifying, and by now I was starting to recognise the signs; a bead of sweat at the temples, a change in skin colour, the pulsing of the veins in the neck.

‘Nooooooo convertibles,’ replied the attendant, shaking his head emphatically. For our benefit, he went on to explain how the system at Dollar Car Rental works.

It goes a little something like this (and I’m paraphrasing here). The desk clerks accept payment as normal, process the reservation, reassure the customer that everything is in order and, pausing only to try and sell them a variety of expensive extras such as satellite navigation and additional insurance they don’t need, invite them to make their way outside to pick up their vehicle. There, the underlings on the forecourt are tasked with finding you an ‘equivalent’ car to the one you have ordered. It’s a very effective arrangement as it apparently dispenses with the need to keep in stock any of the cars that have been (a) advertised or (b) paid for.

‘Equivalent to a Sebring is an Aspen or a Land Cruiser,’ continued the attendant. ‘Great cars. A lotta room in the trunk.’

‘I don’t care HOW much room they have in the trunk!’ exploded Joe, arms flailing, ‘it’s not the trunk I’m interested in! Had it escaped your notice that the Aspen and the Land Cruiser have one very crucial feature in common?’

‘No sir. What’s that?’

‘A fucking roof!’ For emphasis as he delivered this last point, Joe banged his hand hard against a metal sign just over his left shoulder, swore lavishly and profusely, and began to hop on one foot. This was not going well. Once we’d established that all the ‘equivalent’ vehicles available to us had a roof – that is, there were no equivalent vehicles – it was time to see the manager. We went inside, approached the customer services desk and demanded to talk to whoever was in charge.

Clayton the manager, bright of shirt and slight of frame, skipped over all smiles and handshakes, trying hard to affect the kind of open body language he had no doubt learned about in a ‘dealing with difficult customers’ training video. He was going to need all the customer service know–how he could muster, for here were two of the trickiest customers ever to darken his reception area. One of them was angrier than a grizzly bear with a wounded paw, and the other … well, the other had seen an awful lot of high concept action movies.

‘What seems to be the problem gentlemen?’ chirped Clayton.

My turn. This called for some Steven Berkoff. Specifically it called for Berkoff as Victor Maitland in Beverly Hills Cop. (‘Now listen to me, my tough little friend’.) The part is played with casual, teacherly nonchalance, garnished with the wild–eyed intent of a serial killer about to tuck into his latest victim. Think Hannibal Lecter presenting ‘D for disembowel’ on Sesame Street and you’re halfway there. I stepped into character.

‘The problem, sir, is that you’ve had six months advance warning of these two ‘gentlemen’ walking in here with a credit card and a desire to drive out in a car with no roof. You’ve failed. What are you going to do about it?’

Okay not exactly up to Berkoff’s standards, much less Anthony Hopkins’, but this kind of thing doesn’t come at all naturally to me. I’m just not good at making a scene.

‘I’m really not sure there’s anything I can do sir,’ he squirmed. ‘There are no convertible cars available today.’

Berkoff would never have settled for this. ‘Now listen to me,’ I whispered (I wanted to call him ‘my tough little friend’, but resisted), ‘we’re staying in LA for two days. That gives you precisely forty–eight hours to deliver a convertible Chrysler Sebring, as ordered, to the Four Seasons Hotel on Doheny Drive, and then we can all forget about this sorry episode.’

‘Let me see what I can do for you sir.’

Crikey, it was working.

Off he went and returned with a pretty blonde in possession of a smile even wider than his and a masters in customer service. She asked us to give her ten minutes while she ‘looked into the situation’ for us.

Sure enough, eight–and–a–half minutes later she returns (we timed her), and we are dispatched to the lot once more to find a gleaming, silver – convertible – Sebring waiting for us with the keys in the ignition. Bingo. I flashed a smug, self–satisfied smile at the lot attendant as I unlocked the boot, placed the luggage inside and slammed it shut. The attendant offered to give us a tour of the controls, but we had no time for that. These jokers had kept us hanging around for long enough already. It was time to hit the road.

I reached for the key. Nothing there.

‘Joe, key please. Let’s get the hell out of here.’

‘I haven’t got the key, you have.’

‘Mate, I’m not in the mood for jokes. The sooner you give me the key, the sooner we can be sitting by the pool at the Four Seasons sipping a margarita.’

‘I honestly don’t have the key. You had it last. You put the bags in the boot.’

Shit. I had locked the keys in the boot. In a little under a nanosecond I felt less Victor Maitland than Frank Spencer. I called the lot attendant over.

‘We, er, appear to have locked the keys in the boot.’

‘Excuse me?’

‘Trunk. I mean trunk. I’ve locked the keys in the trunk.’

‘Absolutely no problem sir. We’ll have you a new one cut in no time.’ His bubbly efficiency made me feel even smaller than I felt already. Bloody Americans and their impeccable customer service.

In under five minutes we were on our way. Finally, this was it! Santa Monica Boulevard, destination Beverly Hills. The roof was down as planned, but we needed some music to lift the mood. I searched the CD wallet for something to mark the occasion, the auspicious beginning of a momentous journey, a search – three years in the planning – for the beating heart of rock and roll America. Something that would summon up the spirit of Americana and help us on our way. Something that would send a message beyond the grave in a language the spirits would understand, to say that we were here and we meant business.

Huey Lewis and the News.