- This year marks 100 years of the Rolls-Royce Phantom.
- R-R celebrates by submerging a Phantom in a famous UK pool.
- Because that's rock-and-roll, right?
Rolls-Royce plus popular music equals a car in a swimming pool: everybody knows that, thanks to the legendary story of The Who drummer Keith Moon piloting his into the chlorine on his 21st birthday. Or did he? (More on that down the page.)
As part of a series of celebrations around the Phantom's 100th anniversary, Rolls-Royce submerged a Phantom Extended body shell in the swimming pool at Tinside Lido in Plymouth, UK.
It was just a body shell, eventually destined for recycling. And no, that's not the Keith Moon hotel (that apocryphal story is set at the Holiday Inn in Flint, Michigan, in the US). But it does have a music connection: the Lido served as a backdrop to a photograph of The Beatles taken on 12 September 1967 during their visit while filming for The Magical Mystery Tour.
The same year, Lennon unveiled his yellow, hand-painted Phantom V, arguably the most famous rock-and-roll-Rolls-Royce of all time.
So yes, Rolls-Royces and popular music just got together. Here are some of the artist-highlights.
Marlene Dietrich
Fresh from her breakout role in The Blue Angel, and having introduced the world to what would become her signature song, Falling in Love Again, Dietrich travelled to California in 1930 to begin filming Morocco.
At Paramount Studios, she was greeted with the gift of a green Rolls-Royce Phantom I. Morocco earned Dietrich an Academy Award nomination – and her Phantom also took its share of the spotlight, appearing in the film’s closing scenes and publicity images.
Elvis Presley
In 1956, a self-titled album by a promising young singer named Elvis Presley became the first rock ‘n’ roll album to top the Billboard chart, where it remained for 10 weeks.
In 1963, "The King" bought a Midnight Blue Phantom V with a host of bespoke features that included a microphone, a writing pad in the rear armrest, and a mirror and clothes brush.
The original mirror-polished paint famously attracted the attention of Elvis’s mother’s chickens, which would peck at their reflection in the coachwork. It was refinished in a lighter Silver Blue that did not show the chips.
John Lennon
In December 1964, John Lennon rewarded himself for The Beatles’ A Hard Day’s Night by commissioning a Phantom V. It was entirely black, including the windows, bumpers and hub caps; it also boasted a cocktail cabinet and a television, as well as a refrigerator in the boot.
However, like Elvis’s Phantom V, Lennon’s would also undergo a complete transformation. In May 1967, just before Sgt Pepper’s Lonely Hearts Club Band was released, it was resprayed yellow, then hand-painted with swirls of red, orange, green and blue, with floral side panels and Lennon’s star sign, Libra.
When the car sold in 1985, it reached US$2,299,000, almost 10 times the reserve price. It was the most expensive piece of rock ‘n’ roll memorabilia at the time, and the highest price ever achieved for a motor car sold by auction.
Lennon also purchased a white Rolls-Royce Phantom V in 1968 to coincide with the launch of the White Album and to mark a new phase of his life with Yoko Ono. This was characterised by his wearing white clothes, decorating the interior and exterior of his Berkshire home in bright white, and pursuing a minimalist aesthetic.
Originally commissioned in a two-tone black-over-green by Wing Commander Paddy Barthropp, a wartime Spitfire pilot turned chauffeur, Lennon individualised this car in line with his personal style. It was transformed to white inside and out, fitted with a sunroof, Philips turntable, eight-track player, telephone and television.
It would later appear in the Beatles film Let It Be, as well as Performance, which starred Rolling Stones frontman Mick Jagger.
Liberace
Liberace was the world’s highest-paid entertainer in the 1950s and '60s thanks to his TV shows and long residencies in Las Vegas.
Among the extravagances that earned him the soubriquet Mr Showmanship was a 1961 Phantom V covered in tiny mirror pieces that he would use to drive on stage during his long-running residency at the Las Vegas Hilton.
The car appeared in the Liberace biopic, Behind the Candelabra, in which Michael Douglas recreated its short but famous journey.
Sir Elton John
In 1973, en route to a concert in Manchester in his white Phantom VI, Sir Elton saw a newer example in a showroom window. He instructed his chauffeur to stop, bought the car, and used it to complete his journey to the venue.
Later, he would update the Phantom with black paintwork, a black leather interior, tinted windows, a television, a video player, and even a fax machine. The most significant addition, however, was a bespoke audio system that was so powerful that the back windscreen had to be strengthened to prevent it from shattering when the volume was turned up.
Sir Elton also owned a Phantom V, for which he commissioned a striking pink-and-white exterior paint finish and matching interior. Following a tour of the USSR, where he was paid in coal, rather than cash, Sir Elton was unable to pay his musicians. Instead, he gave the Phantom to his percussionist, Ray Cooper, in lieu of a cash fee.
Cooper later used the car to pick up a young Damon Albarn from school, who went on to find stardom of his own with Blur. History came full circle in 2020, when Albarn and his virtual band, Gorillaz, recorded The Pink Phantom, with Sir Elton appearing as a guest vocalist.
Keith Moon
Legend has it that while celebrating his 21st birthday, the gifted but fatefully self-destructive drummer of The Who, Keith Moon, plunged his Rolls-Royce into the swimming pool at the Holiday Inn in Flint, Michigan, creating one of rock ‘n’ roll’s most enduring legends.
Accounts of what really happened that night differ wildly. In an interview with Rolling Stone in 1972, Moon stated the motor car was a Lincoln Continental belonging to another hotel guest; he said he let off the handbrake and rolled the car into the pool. Other party guests maintain that no motor car ended up in the pool at all. But none of that should get in the way of a Rolls-Royce-rock-and-roll legend.
Hip hop star
By 2016, Rolls-Royce had become the most name-checked brand in song lyrics, driven in part by the rise of hip-hop.
Pharrell Williams and Snoop Dogg featured a Phantom VII in the 2004 music video for Drop It Like It’s Hot, which would top the US Billboard Hot 100 for three weeks.
50 Cent appeared in the TV series Entourage in a Phantom VII Drophead Coupé – a scene that would go on to become a widely shared meme; Tha Carter II by Lil Wayne is one of many albums to feature Phantom on its cover.
The genre has also played a key role in popularising one of the marque’s most distinctive features: Starlight Headliner. The phrase "stars in the roof" and its variations recurs in rap lyrics and has become a suitably poetic shorthand for Rolls-Royce ownership.
