Simple and Sexy
There’s an almost indescribable beauty in simplicity. A sense of relief that calms the waters and quiets the storm. When so much of what we do, and the stuff we interact with, and the things we buy walk further down a road of complex and over-engineered multi-functionality, finding something that’s built to do one thing, one lovable thing – something that the thing does very well – is like the perfect, gigantic lime and soda on a scorching day. It’s finding the hidden light switch in a dark, demonised room. It’s the pillow with the perfect plump.
I think I was around 11 years old when my father first took me to Kit Car Centre (KCC) in Jet Park. Bordering OR Tambo International (then Jan Smuts) in Johannesburg, South Africa, KCC was a popular kit car manufacturer. Their catalogue, if I can remember it correctly, was headlined by a Cobra based on Jaguar running gear and fitted with your choice of Yank V8. They also built a Ford Escort/Cortina-based Morgan replica, and a Porsche 356 unsurprisingly underpinned by VW Beetle mechanicals.
My Dad was always toying with the idea of building a Cobra, suggesting, accurately I felt, that we had the space and he had the know-how to build a good one. And that it would be a great family project, and financially, it might actually make a few bob if and when he decided to sell it. My Mom was never quite as enthusiastic, and therefore, it never happened. But it was these visits to KCC that spurred my first automotive love affair. While my Dad hankered after the Carol Shelby-inspired, 2-seater bruiser, it was the diminutive Lotus Super Seven replica that always had my prepubescent butt in its driver’s seat.
Lotus founder, Colin Chapman’s famous saying, ‘add lightness’ was perhaps never more evident in any other Lotus road car than in the Super Seven. Minimalistic in its structure, and low and short and squat in its proportions, the 1957 2-seater road-racer weighed in at a featherweight 500kgs. This meant that even the simplistic 49hp Coventry Climax engine originally fitted would punch the little tyke down the road faster than cars with two or three times the power. And when it came to corner speed, the ultra-low – and low-slung – weight, and perfect front-axle/rear-axle balance gave the Seven an even more pronounced advantage. It had lights, windscreen wipers and a normal exhaust system and was therefore completely road legal. You could drive it to the track, line up on the grid, and win.
While I understood very little about power-to-weight ratios and low centres of gravity and 50/50 weight splits, something about this door-less, roofless, built-for-one-simple-thing little machine, fired the neurons in my car-mad wee brain and kick-started a blood pressure boost each and every time I saw it.
A number of years later, I managed to buy my first hero car. Unfortunately for KCC, I’d also since learnt that Birkin, based near Durban, in KwaZulu-Natal, built a considerably better Seven. Mine was a very early model, fitted with Ford Escort mechanicals. The modest 1.6l ‘Kent’ motor, complete with Weber side-draught carburettors and custom exhaust manifold and pipe, gave the car BMW 325i-crushing 0-100km/h times. More important than the speed, however, was the driving experience. Even in its most basic form, with 13’ rims and relatively narrow tyres (and stock shock absorbers and springs), the handling was like nothing else I’d driven, then or since. The grip from the front end was astonishing. The rear of the car was lively but controllable. The Seven wants corners. And it wants you to drive as quickly as you can through them.
You sit extremely exposed in the cockpit, with no doors and therefore no side windows, and no roof. The front wheels, mounted outside of the front body shell, are shielded by simple motorcycle-style fenders. They are fully visible as they respond to your steering inputs. The sound of the rubber grappling for purchase as you lean on the front tyres in faster corners is almost unique to the Seven. And try as hard as you might, with so little overall weight – and the chunky masses of engine, gearbox and driver so far back and away from the front axle – understeer is nigh on impossible. You turn the steering wheel, the front wheels grip and the car responds. It’s the back of the car, its propensity to oversteer that will kill you in the Seven.
The cockpit is set well back. So much so that you can touch the back wheel from the driver’s seat. You’re basically sitting on the back axle. If ever you needed improved feel for when the rear tyres were starting to move laterally as opposed to forward, having the rear of the car literally shifting under your backside sends the clearest and sharpest of signals. Yes, it will oversteer, but you can catch it quickly and correct it far easier than you might in a more powerful and heavier car.
My Seven was so singular in its purpose, so devoid of any creature comforts – no radio, no heater (let alone aircon) – that aiming at and reaching outright tops speeds seemed almost irrelevant. The simple task of getting from A to B, and arriving unscathed was adventure enough. You could drive somewhere at a completely sedate pace and still arrive knowing you’d just experienced driving at its most visceral and foundational level.
So exposed are you as the driver – truck tyres are taller than your car – and with so few safety features available, you dare not allow your mind to drift away from the task at hand. It demands your total focus. The car skips and dances over even the slightest undulations and imperfections in the road surface. The front wheels find a rut in the tarmac and they follow it. It’s up to you to bring it back into line. If you’ve ever seen an unneutered 18-month old Staffie boy on a lead in the dog park and wondered how its owner was ever going to get the little guy to behave properly, then you have an idea of what it’s like to drive a Seven. Except the Seven is capable of, depending on which engine and gearbox you have fitted, anything from 160 to 250km/h. Today, the best Super Seven replicas are built by Caterham Cars in the U.K.
As I’ve done in all of these articles, I draw parallels between my love for cars and my passion for music. So how then do I find a musician or a band that in any way relates to one of the rawest, most rudimentary cars on the road? As with the automotive world, and (we’re told it is) automotive progress, today’s music is complex and involved. Not necessarily in its musical structure and lyrical content, but in its production. Listen to the Billboard Top 10, and you’ll hear layer upon layer of electronically created tones and beats. You’ll hear the vocal line, which is recorded digitally, electronically pitch-shifted to move it between the notes of the melody. This electronic manipulation is sometimes done for effect – throw your mind back to 1998 and Cher’s Believe – and sometimes purely because the singer can’t actually sing the intervals – the movement from one note to another – which the melody demands.
You’ll also very often hear that same vocal line pitch-shifted to create harmony lines to bolster and layer the vocal arrangement. 30 years ago, that would have required the singer, or backing vocalists to physically deliver the harmony. Today, popstars often have so little time in their schedule – TikToking their peeps could potentially take priority – that the studio engineers and record producers only have enough time with the singer to lay down a single track. From that single track, the full vocal arrangement is built. Complementing the electronic sounds may well be an assortment of traditional instruments – guitars, strings, brass, pianos and drums. Recording modern pop is a highly complicated project. Modern rock is really no different. Coldplay producer, Rik Simpson is quoted as saying they used 80 different tracks in the recording of the album Everyday Life. Coldplay is essentially a 5-piece band.
In a top-end studio, the production of the track – the techniques used to amplify, compress, equalise and balance the various instruments and vocal tracks – requires a savvy operator with keen ears and years of experience. Sometimes analogue, sometimes digital, the gear used in this part of the process is vital in creating a pro-sounding song. Knowing which piece to use (and how to use it) is a science all on its own.
With all of that being said, is there anyone out there today, in the landscape of popular music, who consistently errs on the side of simplicity? Is there an artist who predominantly creates sounds from organic, traditional instruments and with musical roots in accessible, memorable melodies? Is there anyone who lyrically broaches topics we can all relate to and delivers them in language that firstly, we can understand, and secondly, in which we find some linguistic and poetic inspiration?
A little while ago, I forced myself to watch The Grammys on TV. It might have been 2017. The great and the good were all in attendance and the year’s biggest artists, according to the Academy’s voting members, were there to perform. Beyonce was, as one would expect, spectacular. Nauseatingly beautiful, made up and dressed to the absolute nines, she performed at a level few can match. Her vocal delivery was of the highest standards – and yes, I did think she was singing live, not miming – and her intensity was white-hot. The choreography was magnificent and the (what looked like) 30-odd backing dancers were indescribably well-rehearsed and super-skilled. The amount of effort – the staging, the lights, the pyro, the costumes, etc., etc. – that Beyonce put into that one number was a testament to her professionalism and to her commitment to her craft. It was, without doubt, one of the greatest spectacles I can remember seeing on that august stage.
And then up stepped Ed Sheeran.
Armed with little more than his now trademark ¾ size Martin acoustic guitar and a loop station, Ed brought a level of talent and musicality that transcended showmanship. Yes, the song, “Shape Of You” is perfectly written for a loop station-based performance – it has a fairly simple chord sequence that repeats in the same way for the verse and the chorus. And granted, Ed’s loop station is a custom-built, complex electronic recording and playback machine, crafted specifically to Sheeran’s specifications; the Chewie Monster offers Ed streamlined ergonomics and touch-sensitive triggering, simplifying his on-stage workload. But watching him, I closed my eyes and listened to the song. The simple keyboard bass line, the acoustic guitar chord-cycle, and the lower-octave backing vocals that Ed played and sung into the looper were absolutely not the key ingredients. On that huge stage, The Grammys, a stage upon which the magnificent Beyonce had just lit a lava-hot living flame, with the world watching, a young ginger kid, dressed in a black T-shirt and denims, totally owned his time and fully claimed his space.
The thing that makes the world stop and listen to Ed Sheeran is that he’s a lovely singer singing great songs. Harking back to the early days of Lennon and McCartney, and all the days of Simon and Garfunkel, it’s quite simply a blend of great lyrics and memorable, flowing melody.
Today, our phones are PCs and TVs and cameras. The internet listens to what we’re saying and does our shopping for us. Our cars will soon drive themselves. They’re already helping us avoid accidents and alerting the emergency services when they were unable to do so. Doctors use lasers and cameras and robots to operate. And our 4-year-olds are expected to study and pass exams. Finding simplicity, cherishing the rudimentary, and celebrating the foundational is, to me, like watching the sunrise over the ocean on a calm, cloudless day. It’s more than relief, it’s a life-blood.
