If you think about heaven, you probably think about being a rock and roll superstar, having a collection of great cars, the money to enjoy them and a few other pleasures that we can’t mention in a family newspaper.
Nick Mason is the only member of Pink Floyd to make a noise on every album. Pink Floyd liked noise. Particularly psychedelic noise combined with lyrics so deep that you would have trouble understanding them sitting on the deck of the Titanic, 3800m down. For instance Nick wrote the jolly 13-minute ditty Alan’s Psychedelic
Breakfast on the 1970 album Atom Heart Mother. The song starts with the unforgettable lines “Oh … Er … Me flakes … Scrambled eggs, bacon, sausages, tomatoes, toast, coffee … Marmalade, I like marmalade … Yes, porridge is nice, any cereal … I like all cereals … Oh, God. Kick-off is 10am.”
By hitting the drums and writing a few songs such as this Nick made $100 million. But he is not the world’s richest drummer. Ringo Starr has $360m in the bank, Dave Grohl $280m, Don Henley $250m and Charley Watts $180m. And as you know there are lots of drummer jokes, such as like: Why is a drum machine better than a drummer? Because it can keep good time and won’t sleep with your girlfriend. Kiddies, next time dad and mum say “finish school, go to uni, study hard and work for a bank”, you know what to tell them.
But Nick has the best cars of any drummer. In fact he has more than 40 best cars including McLarens, Bugattis, Maseratis, and some Ferraris including a 1962 250 GTO worth about $50m.
Bill Wyman left the Rolling Stones in 1993. Apart from his musical, photographic and archaeological abilities, Bill is pretty handy in some other departments. Maximmagazine named him one of the world’s top 10 living sex legends. He did OK playing bass guitar and has $96m in his back pocket. But Bill didn’t want much. “I hope I get a nice house together and a nice car before rock and roll dies,” he once said. At 52, he married his sweetheart Mandy Smith who was 18. Bill’s son Stephen (from another marriage) went on to marry Mandy’s mother. Anyway there is point in all this.
Bill who is now 78 and doesn’t look as much the sex legend as he did in the 60s, is selling two cars, a 1966 Mercedes-Benz 250 S and a 1971 Citroën Maserati SM (pictured). Bonhams is auctioning them next month at the Goodwood Festival of Speed. The Merc would normally be worth around $50,000 and the French-Italian combo about $80,000, but there may be fans willing to pay more for a former Stone’s wheels.
You probably forget the socialists at Citroen bought Maserati in 1967 in a moment of madness equal to Alan’sBreakfast lyrics. The thinking was something like this (translated into Australian): “We ‘ave the great French body but we need the super engine just to prove how good front-wheel drive could be. Let’s buy an Italian company like Ferrari, Lamborghini or Maserati and shove it in the front of our masterpiece Francais next to the hydro-pneumatic self-levelling suspension.”
Now at some levels, the idea actually worked. Motoring writers raved about the handling and stopping and last year Classic Driver magazine called it “the most beautiful Maserati ever”. Not only did the SM not sell well, it helped Citroen go broke. Soon after Chrysler bought the company and went broke. Anyway eight years ago, under Fiat ownership, Maserati made a profit for the first time in 17 years.
The Australian
