Brad Spurgeon's Blog

This is not to put myself on the same level as Nick Mason, the drummer for Pink Floyd, whom I interviewed for a story about car racing that ran in the International Herald Tribune and on The New York Times web site. But I thought that because the interview was on a music theme – and racing – it had its place being pointed out and linked to from this page, specifically from one aspect related to my worldwide open mic musical adventure and that I did not have space for in the published story, but which is completely relevant to this site.

During my interview with Mason, who is an amateur racing driver and who owns many classic racing cars, I told him about my open mic musical adventure around the world in conjunction with the Formula One races. I told him that although I loved doing my job as a Formula One journalist, travelling the world and reporting on car racing, I also liked to use that travel to discover all the unusual, interesting, musical venues around the world where I could go and play my own music.

Bringing up that story led to an interesting answer from Mason, which I put here and which was not in the original interview:

“Well, that’s interesting, because it is the reverse for me,” he said. “Which is when we’re touring, I’ll find some kind of a car connection, someone will go, “Oh you must go and see Bobs Harrison, he’s in Philadelphia, and he’ll spend a day and show you his cars and so on.” So it’s exactly the reverse.”

That thought was quite cool, that he would live his passion of music, where he earns his living, but he would take advantage of that travel to live out the racing car passion too. Yes, exactly the opposite of my situation, where I earn my living as a professional journalist covering racing, and use that to live the other passion as an amateur musician. He is an amateur racer, and uses his professional musician job as a way to further live the racing passion.

Since the beginning of this blog more than three years ago, one of the themes I have always written about and emphasize, is precisely that: Living life to the full and finding ways to live your passions and your obligations together at the same time…. Lots of people manage, but probably not as many do try who should try. It’s nice to see other examples….

PS, as to that “Bobs Harrison” in his quote, I’m not entirely sure that’s the name or words he used there. We were surrounded by Formula One racing cars in action while I interviewed him, and it was loud!