{"id":623705,"date":"2026-06-06T02:23:10","date_gmt":"2026-06-06T02:23:10","guid":{"rendered":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/uk\/623705\/"},"modified":"2026-06-06T02:23:10","modified_gmt":"2026-06-06T02:23:10","slug":"the-flat-tyre-that-inspired-a-chart-topping-hit-for-america-in-1972","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/uk\/623705\/","title":{"rendered":"The flat tyre that inspired a chart-topping hit for America in 1972"},"content":{"rendered":"

\"America<\/p>\n

Credit: Far Out \/ Discogs<\/p>\n

Fri 5 June 2026 21:00, UK <\/p>\n

The great American road trip<\/a> is a mythologised voyage made famous by some of the very best names in cinema, music and literature. <\/p>\n

In fact, Jack Kerouac once famously wrote, \u201cNothing behind me, everything in front of me, as is ever so on the road\u201d in his beat generation scroll On The Road, and thus captured this sense of the boundless opportunity that exists on the country\u2019s sprawling roads.<\/p>\n

Generally, a sense of magic comes from the roads that travel west<\/a>. The golden coast that sits on that side of the country is steeped in romanticism, this grand idea that out there lies infinite potential to reinvent yourself and, more crucially, to capitalise on what many believed was a source of untapped wealth.<\/p>\n

So it\u2019s no coincidence that art has coincided with that belief. Whether it\u2019s the subtle optimism of Kerouac or the grand romance of music, the roads that lead to the west have been a recurring feature in modern art. There\u2019s \u2018California Dreamin\u2019, by The Mamas & the Papas, \u2018California\u2019 by Joni Mitchell and \u2018Ventura Highway\u2019 by America, which of all three sounds most accurately like that blissful state.\u00a0<\/p>\n

Especially because America\u2019s hit was born from more of a dream state. The aptly named band were bizarrely brought up in England<\/a>, thanks to their fathers being stationed at a UK-based US Army base, and so much of their writing was from a position of longing for the romantic ideals of their home country and namesake.\u00a0<\/p>\n

\u2018Venture Highway\u2019 was no different, and in fact saw writer Dewey Bunnell going all the way back to his early childhood, one that predated the UK move, to try and capture that feeling. \u201cIt was 1963 when I was in seventh grade,\u201d he began, \u201cWe got a flat tyre, and we\u2019re standing on the side of the road, and I was staring at this highway sign. It said \u2018Ventura\u2019 on it, and it just stuck with me. It was a sunny day, and the ocean there, all of it.\u201d<\/p>\n

The quiet desperation of a flat tyre didn\u2019t dampen the optimism. In true Kerouac style<\/a>, Bunnell used it to appreciate the wider feeling of the journey. The perennial excitement that exists in travelling to somewhere, a freedom almost that is then compounded by what the destination, which in Bunnell\u2019s case was California.\u00a0<\/p>\n

Further reading: From The Vault<\/p>\n

\u201cI remember vividly having this mental picture of the stretch of the coastlines travelling with my family when I was younger,\u201d Bunnell said, \u201cVentura Highway itself, there is no such beast, what I was really trying to depict was the Pacific Coast Highway, Highway 1, which goes up to the town of Ventura.\u201d<\/p>\n

That essence of fictionalisation is perhaps what makes \u2018Ventura Highway\u2019 the perfect American anthem. It distils the \u2018American Dream\u2019 into one song that eulogises a place that we can never really be sure exists, yet somehow the journey that takes us there still informs us of something transcendent, or as Kerouac said, \u201cNothing behind me, everything in front of me, as is ever so on the road\u201d.<\/p>\n<\/p>\n

ADD AS A PREFERRED SOURCE ON GOOGLE \"\"\/ <\/a> <\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"Credit: Far Out \/ Discogs Fri 5 June 2026 21:00, UK The great American road trip is a…\n","protected":false},"author":2,"featured_media":623706,"comment_status":"","ping_status":"","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"footnotes":""},"categories":[28],"tags":[197672,8421,776,96,128,196929,56,54,55],"class_list":["post-623705","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","has-post-thumbnail","category-music","tag-197672","tag-america","tag-california","tag-entertainment","tag-music","tag-road-trip","tag-uk","tag-united-kingdom","tag-unitedkingdom"],"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/uk\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/623705","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/uk\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/uk\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/uk\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/2"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/uk\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=623705"}],"version-history":[{"count":0,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/uk\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/623705\/revisions"}],"wp:featuredmedia":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/uk\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media\/623706"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/uk\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=623705"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/uk\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=623705"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/uk\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=623705"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}