Keith Moon, a drummer for The Who, was one of rock and roll’s wildest wild childs. Known for his feverish energy on stage, and self-destructive behavior off-stage, Moon once drove someone’s Lincoln Continental into the swimming pool of a Michigan Holiday Inn. It’s what inspired Oasis to recreate the scene for the now-iconic cover art of their ‘Be Here Now’ album – a sunken Rolls-Royce in a swimming pool.
No, it’s not photoshopped — the band dunked a 1972 Rolls-Royce Silver Shadow in the swimming pool of a country house hotel in the UK — a shoot that totaled over $100,000 in 1997. The Rolls-Royce itself may have been only a few thousand dollars to buy, as it didn’t have an engine, and was destined for the scrapyard. It did, however, shoot to fame as THE sunken Rolls-Royce. Unfortunately, the Rolls-Royce has dropped off the radar in the intervening years, then found to have been a demolition derby racer briefly, and then disappeared again. It all makes the allure of finding it even stronger. Especially since there’s no hope for an Oasis reunion anytime soon.
Photographer Michael Spencer Jones, who toured with the band and shot many of their album covers including this one, has tried hunting the car down to buy it several times after the shoot. As he said in an interview with British GQ a few years ago, he put out a press release with the car’s original MDH119K registration hoping to learn of its whereabouts.
For the shoot, the plates had been changed to SYO724F, the registration of the police van on the cover of The Beatles’ Abbey Road album. Of course, part of the reason the Rolls-Royce has become so infamous is down to the stories behind the cover shoot itself.
Shot at The Stocks House in Hertfordshire, a country house hotel that was previously The Playboy Mansion, it’s a location as rock ’n roll as they come. The Rolls, minus its engine, was lowered into the emptied swimming pool with a crane, onto a blue tarpaulin. Michael Spencer Jones is reported to have instructed the team to repaint the swimming pool twice over to match the color he had in mind for the shot.
What’s more, they tried filling up the swimming pool with a pipe, but only managed a few inches overnight. It’s said they called in the fire brigade to divert all the water in the hotel to the swimming pool to get it filled in time, leaving guests stranded with no water for a while. That’s not all — once the pool was filled, there was a layer of oil scum at the top that would’ve ruined the shot. Thankfully, dragging a stick across the surface fixed that. The cover was originally planned to be a night shot, but one of the shots taken in the day ended up being used, and the rest is rock history.
In 2022, a quarter of a century since the album released, Jones got in touch with the independent Rolls-Royce parts supplier, Flying Spares, that found him the Rolls-Royce for the shoot in the first place. Flying Spares traced the car, sold at a music memorabilia auction for a little over $1,500 a few years after the shoot, to a local demolition racer who remembered the car. There’s little doubt that it’s the same car — the gentleman who goes by the name Danny, remembers that he raced it in 2003 after painting it black and red. Danny called it the ‘Oasis Roller’ and remembers it having axles from a Series 1 Jaguar and a V6 engine from a Ford Granada.
Unfortunately, Danny also recalls that it got smashed to pieces, basically destining it to the scrapyard once again, but there’s no definite proof that it’s been destroyed.
Which means that the coolest piece of rock ’n roll memorabilia might still be out there. It’s one of rock’s greatest mysteries, and if that 1972 Rolls-Royce Silver Shadow is ever found, there’s one place it deserves to be — at the bottom of a swimming pool yet again.
