MOST of us have treasured memories of visiting the Bathurst 1000 from when we were growing up.
Bathurst-born musician Michael Evans is lucky enough to have his on video, which he set to a song that he composed, inspired by the Bathurst 1000.
In the lead-up to the 2021 edition of the Mount Panorama enduro, Evans’ band Forgonia released an album titled ‘The Mountain’, headlined by a three-part instrumental song named ‘Bathurst’.
“I just really wanted to make an album inspired by my love for motor racing, Mount Panorama, the emotions around the 1000 weekend and all the family around that,” Evans, now a Sydneysider, told V8 Sleuth in 2021.
“I grew up in Bathurst, my family’s from there. My dad was a musician, and I started playing music from about six and took up drums.
“Motor racing and music were my two loves; I was never going to be a race car driver though, so I went down the music path.
“I’ve been playing music for 15-20 years now, and I’ve been throwing these songs around for a while.”
Originally started as an outlet for Evans and his brother Dave to write and play their own music together, Forgonia is now largely a solo project, although the sentiment of the song led to a prevailing theme around the other musicians that played on ‘Bathurst’.
“I was trying to make it a real Bathurst-centric project,” Evans said.
“The whole album, the rock band section, the guitars, drums, bass, that was all recorded in Bathurst in my dad’s music room. The cellist is from Bathurst, as is the guitar player, my brother plays piano on there, I went to high school in Bathurst with the bass player…
“I couldn’t get the strings and horns done there – COVID affected that – but I got to use local musicians from Bathurst. The girl who designed the album art is from Bathurst originally as well.”
Listen to the song and watch the video in the player below!
THE SONG
The three parts of ‘Bathurst’ reflect the lead-up to the race, the race itself, and the aftermath.
And no, it’s not a coincidence that Part 1, titled ‘The Lap of the Gods’, is exactly two minutes and six seconds long.
“Every time I go up to the Mount I think of it in three stages; I wanted to have a song based on my experience of the Mountain but also try and relate that to the race itself,” Evans explained.
“The ‘Lap of the Gods’ is obviously about Murphy’s lap; I told the mastering engineer it was really important that the song went for two minutes and six seconds, and he was like, ‘alright…’
“That one is all about the build-up to the weekend, the pent-up excitement and the release of being able to be up at the track, plus also the nerves I’d assume the drivers would have before their lap. And then it kind of springs in. That solo violin is kind of them just being on the track by themselves; it’s one of the few times there’s only one instrument playing at any time on the whole album. Then the crescendo through the lap.
“Part 2 is the main song, that’s the race. It’s kind of like a musical representation of how the race goes for me. It kicks off and builds slowly through the morning, the little ‘bump-bump-bump’ section is the pit stops, and then the ambient section afterwards is when a Safety Car comes out and it slows right down. Then it’s back into it again for that last stint and crescendoing to that.
“The Road Home was like the podium celebrations afterwards; I feel like it’s sort of a coming down moment, where it’s really reflective. We’d walk most of the way home to where my parents lived, so it’s also drawn from us walking down to the pits and down Boundary Road afterwards, that reflectiveness of it. That’s what I was trying to do between the three parts.
“I’ve always loved instrumental music. I’m not someone who really listens to lyrics, I love the music side of it. I like being able to tell a story through music because you can make your own emotional journey into what the music means.
“As I said, I have this theory about the violin on Lap of the Gods representing Murphy being out on his own when he starts the lap of the Gods – but that might mean something else to somebody else. I love that instrumental music can do that.
“I did have a bit of an idea of trying to put team radio or commentary over the top of it to try and tell the story, but that was going to be a rights nightmare and I didn’t think it really needed it.”
THE VIDEO
Perhaps the centrepiece for race fans is the video that accompanies ‘Bathurst’, comprised entirely of home video footage shot by Evans’ dad – “He had one of those big shoulder cameras, it wasn’t even one of those little Sony ones,” Evans said – throughout the early to mid-1990s.
Along with footage of Michael and his brother as youngsters in the Evans family home, much of the vision includes snippets shot around Mount Panorama during race week and the once-traditional media day prior to the event.
“Dad was a musician in the 80s and 90s, and his other job was delivering bread. In October he would deliver the bread to the teams up there, so we would always go up on the Tuesday or Wednesday before the race and have a bit of a wander around,” Evans said.
“I got to meet Allan Moffat a few times, and Peter Brock and Dick Johnson and the like, but we were always a Ford family so Moffat and Johnson.
“The media days were so cool to be a part of, you’d just have the afternoon off school and sneak up. I love that bit of footage with Brock and Neil Crompton and they’re just sitting and having a chat at the top of the Mountain. Just to have been a part of that, with no other crowd around, you got to see them be themselves.”
In addition to candid shots of touring cars biggest stars – plus Evans sitting in the drivers’ seat of Moffat’s Cenovis EB Falcon! – Evans’ dad captured a few moments that proved to be historic.
One shot shows Moffat, deep in thought, sitting in the driver’s seat of one of his Cenovis Sierras at the ’92 Bathurst Media Day. Another shows him driving it out onto the circuit, one of the last times – if not the last time – he drove a contemporary touring car in anger around the circuit.
Another snippet is a bit more personal to Evans: vision of his dad’s band playing the national anthem on pit straight prior to the Top 10 Shootout for the 1995 race.
“We think that was the only time a national anthem was played on the Saturday; it doesn’t usually happen,” Evans said.
“He was in a band called Banista that was reasonably successful in the Central West and Bathurst in particular. They never broke through unfortunately, but he got to do the anthem on the Saturday of the 1995 race.
“It was really cool to just have the experience of that, but to then be putting together a film clip based around music and motor racing, to have footage of dad playing music on pit straight on race weekend is a pretty niche piece of footage to have!”
Click HERE to listen to more music from Forgonia.
