Bad Motor Scooter

From Wikipedia, the free encyclopedia

"'Bad Motor Scooter" was the second track from the album Montrose by the band of the same name. It, along with "Rock Candy" was arguably the best known song by the band, Montrose, with lyrics penned by frontman Sammy Hagar - surpassed however by the blistering "Space Station # 5". It comes in with a phase-shifting guitar that sounds like a motorcycle. It had been that guitar sound that became the defining component of the song. When the song was conceived before this guitar sound, the band and Ted Templeman were not impressed because they thought it was missing something to make it stand out. Ronnie Montrose stumbled upon it while messing with a slide and fuzz box one day in the studio. Ronnie played his guitar in open D tuning, Montrose improvised what became the motorcycle sound while Templeman and engineer Donn Landee kept him going while they failed to get the tape rolling. [1] The sound became the most recognizable feature of the song.The song has also been included on the Sammy Hagar compilation The Essential Red Collection. Hagar still plays this song quite frequently in his live act.

Soundgarden's 1991 album Badmotorfinger was named as a tribute to "Bad Motor Scooter".