Alright, since I’m nearly done with Queen In Cornwall and there can’t possibly be more car fiascos (right??) here’s Roger Taylor’s Bad Luck With Cars: The Compilation. Could also be called: How Is This Man Alive
The time he left the headlights of the car on and when he came back the battery was dead so he stole one from a different car
The time he ended up in a ditch at 3am, called his neighbor to wake up his dad, and his dad left him there for at least an hour if not longer
The Reaction car crash when he flipped their van, was ejected through the windshield, and landed in the road (in fairness, this was not his fault)
The police catching The Reaction, the Jayfolk and their friends from London illegally camping, telling them to pack their stuff up, and then ticketing Roger for an overfilled car
Their friend Rick Thorning driving Roger, Clare, and Jill Johnson home and getting into a “nasty accident”
Roger getting into a SECOND accident THE SAME DAY while driving to retrieve Rick’s car
Roger, Brian and Freddie getting stranded in Cornwall after their friend’s van broke down
Roger, Brian, Tim Staffell and Reaction member John Snell getting stranded a mile outside of Truro with a flat tire they then spent multiple hours trying and failing to fix
We just now get to the Queen years.
The time he claimed his Range Rover could turn on a dime and then ended up having to be pulled out of a ditch
His Ferrari bursting into flames on the highway in the south of France (he then found alternate transportation to his destination, went two hours out to sea in a motorboat, ran out of fuel and had to be rescued by the Coast Guard. AGAIN, SAME DAY)
His Aston Martin also burst into flames
I’m counting the entire Monaco Grand Prix incident since that revolved around cars and included him getting escorted to jail in a cop car
The time in Rio when he and Crystal took a rickety car with no roof on a 100-mile drive and it started down-pouring, the car lost all its gears, filled with water, and then a truck passed them fast in the opposite direction and drenched them in a wave of muddy water
Him having to hang out of a window and manually clear snow because his windshield wipers broke off while driving on a Swiss highway during a blizzard
These of course are just the motor vehicle incidents and don’t even include the time he fell head-over-heels backwards off his drum riser, the time he got exploded off his drum riser, the alleged time he was hit on the head with a full can of lager, the time he fell through a gap in the stage, hit his head and knocked himself out, the time he was shot in the leg with a pellet gun, or the time he had to play the entire Hammersmith Odeon show with a stomach virus
Sources for the pre-Queen car incidents: Queen In Cornwall
Sources for the during-Queen incidents: Crystal’s Tales and a newspaper clipping for the boat thing
Sources for the miscellaneous incidents: Crystal’s tales, Brian and Roger in the Greatest Hits video commentary for TYMD, this (again, alleged), Roger himself here, Queen: The Early Years by Mark Hodgkinson, and Brian here
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