From The Desk Of Camper Van Beethoven’s Jonathan Segel: Moto Guzzi V7 Classic

La Costa Perdida (429) kicks off Camper Van Beethoven’s 30th-anniversary year amidst an orchestrated (if deserving) surge in recognition for the group—everything from Paul Rudd donning a vintage Camper concert tee in the film This Is 40 to glowing quotes from members of R.E.M. and the Meat Puppets. The LP is CVB’s first album since 2004’s New Roman Times and was mostly recorded at multi-instrumentalist Jonathan Segel’s Oakland home studio a year prior to his move to Sweden. “The process was similar, perhaps, to the recording of Camper’s third album, in that we could experiment and had time to work on things,” says Segel. “The first two CVB albums were recorded in a weekend.” Segel will be guest editing magnetmagazine.com all week. Read our brand new feature on the band.

Segel: Several of us in Camper ride or used to ride motorcycles. I don’t have any anymore, but at one point I had a bunch, old Triumphs, Ducatis, BMWs and a Moto Guzzi. I loved that Moto Guzzi V65SP. Victor also had a Moto Guzzi V65SP, a bike that they really only imported into the U.S. in 1984. Coincidentally, when I started playing with Sparklehorse, one thing we bonded over was Moto Guzzis; Mark had some old Ambassadors, and Scott Minor had an old Le Mans and some other bikes. (I don’t quite remember. He did bring a little Italian single with us on tour once.) We used to rehearse at Mark’s place in central Virginia, and then go riding around on the old country roads. Beautiful.

I started cutting down on bikes in the process of moving from S.F. to L.A., back from L.A. and, finally, to Sweden. I don’t have any anymore, and the last two I had were my BMW R80ST and the Moto Guzzi V65. These were pretty old bikes at the time. I’m not much of a speed demon; ultimately, what I liked about riding motorcycles has more to do with the complete attention you must have, the way the rider feels all of the mechanics and sounds of the machine and internalizes them so as to become part of them. When riding, you aren’t inside a car, you aren’t inside anything. You are outside. You can see and smell the surrounding landscape in a way you can never do in a car. You can get to know your bike in a very visceral way, especially if you are mechanically minded. As a friend who owned Nortons told me, there are no unreliable British bikes, just riders who can’t make them work. I had a 1966 Triumph T100SC that was my get-around-town bike for years, built and rebuilt.

So, admittedly, my favorite bikes were older, both early 1980s. The BMW R80ST was built after the R80G/S machines won the Paris-Dakar rally, and people started to use the R80G/S machine for adventure touring. The ST model was more street oriented, but basically that just meant a 19-inch front wheel instead of 21 inch. I had the large-size tank on this bike; it was amazing for camping, could hold two passengers and gear and get a long ways on any terrain. The Moto Guzzi V65 was a 650cc make of their earlier V50 series, a little stronger, but no bigger. Medium sized. Great for around town and a nice ride to the hills.

Times change and this size of bike is way out of fashion, everything is huge, or fast, or huge and fast. Then with the reinvention of Triumph, they figured out that what people really liked were the old bikes. So they started to make “retro” bikes, essentially styled like the older ones, but made with modern components. Ducati and Moto Guzzi followed suit. A couple years back, Moto Guzzi came out with what they call the V7 Classic, a 750cc bike styled like my old V65. (OK, mine and Victor’s were both the SP model with a bunch of extra body plastic … that we took off. I put a Monza fairing on mine.)

If I could afford to have a bike again, I would buy one. I actually ended up a few years ago having to (financially) choose between guitar and motorcycle, and motorcycle lost.

And I haven’t seen BMW come up with a new R80ST, despite their F650.

Video after the jump.

http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=vDYCTnulPsw