The opening lyrics of the 1970 hit “Vehicle” offer advice you wouldn’t want to pass along to your kid: “Hey, well, I’m a friendly stranger in the black sedan, won’t you hop inside my car?” Those words are sung over a driving, soulful rhythm fueled by a beefy horn section, and despite the creepiness factor of that first line it’s funky and accessible enough that the song went all the way up to #2 on the charts.
The band was the Ides of March, the lead singer and lead guitarist was Jim Peterik, and they would ultimately place five singles onto the Billboard Hot 100 chart, as well as two albums on the trade publication’s LPs list, the first sharing the title of their biggest hit. None of those other four chart singles would even make the top 40, but we’d definitely hear from Peterik again—more about that in a minute, but first let’s get back to “Vehicle.”
When the song, written by Peterik and released in mid-March (naturally) by Warner Bros. Records, first hit the airwaves in the spring of 1970, many listeners assumed at first it was by Chicago, the then-new band that was making horns hip again in rock music. The similarity was uncanny, and while it wasn’t Chicago the band (or the similarly inclined Blood, Sweat and Tears), the Ides of March did indeed hail from Berwyn, Ill., a suburb of Chicago the city, where they’d formed in 1964 as a quartet called the Shon-Dels (no relation to the Tommy James-led outfit). The original lineup featured Peterik, vocalist/guitarist Larry Millas, vocalist/bassist Bob Bergland and vocalist/drummer Mike Borch.
They changed their name to the Ides of March two years later, taking it from the William Shakespeare play Julius Caesar, which famously contains the line “Beware the Ides of March,” referring to March 15, the day on which the Roman leader was assassinated.
The Ides of March found some success locally, and their first single, “You Wouldn’t Listen,” on the Parrot label, made it all the way to #42 nationally. They released five singles in all on Parrot, then one on Kapp, the band adding three horn players to its initial lineup between 1967 and ’69. In 1970, with their new Warner contract in hand, the expanded band released “Vehicle,” which sold a quick million copies, peaking at #2 nationally on May 23 and going double platinum.
The song, Peterik, has said, was written to be tongue-in-cheek—he wasn’t really inviting anyone into his car for candy, as the lyrics suggested. It was inspired, he once explained, by a girl he’d dated. It seems that after several months together she’d dumped him, yet she still insisted on asking him for rides to one place or another. “All I am to you is your vehicle,” Peterik retorted, and a hit record was born.
At first, Peterik recalled in an interview for the website Songfacts, his opening line was “I got a set of wheels pretty baby, won’t you hop inside my car?” After looking at an anti-drug pamphlet that intimated that pushers lured unsuspecting kids into their cars to get them hooked, he changed it to the now-familiar lead-in.
At first, he recalled, the band thought of “Vehicle” primarily as a live-in-concert tune, not one that would sound good on record. Fortunately for them, they went for it anyway. Before they knew it, they were scaling the charts and touring with the likes of Led Zeppelin and Janis Joplin. (There’s a happy ending to the real-life story too: Peterik and the girl got back together and were married.)
Listen to the Ides of March’s biggest hit, “Vehicle,” from 1970
Related: What were the other top radio hits of 1970?
The Ides of March were unable to grab the golden ring twice though, and after a switch to RCA Records in 1972, they lasted another year before calling it quits.
In 1978, Peterik, born Nov. 11, 1950, formed a new band, which he called Survivor. Four years later, they landed a song co-written by him, “Eye of the Tiger,” in the film Rocky III. It went to #1 on the charts and remained there for six weeks. The Ides of March, meanwhile, reunited and remain together to this day, celebrating their 55th anniversary in 2019. Talk about survivors.
Watch “Vehicle” performed by the Ides of March in 2018, with the original members still in the band, including singer Jim Peterik
The Ides of March released a 55th anniversary album, Play On, in 2019 with 14 new songs and a re-release of “Vehicle.” Special guests on the album include Grand Funk Railroad alum Mark Farner, Joe Bonamassa, Ambrosia’s former singer David Pack, and Paul Shaffer. The band’s recordings are available here.
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11 Comments
This was my favorite song when I was 13 that year. I got to see them in concert at UMBC in ’71. The Ace Trucking Company was the opening act.
Hey Stu, We saw them together! H***S***, 41 years!
This was not course my favorite, but also give a listen to L.A. Goodbye. Great musicians, great group of guys, still touring!
Classic!
Saw these guys play in Columbus, OH last summer. They put on a great show! In addition to Vehicle, I was impressed that Jim Peterik also wrote two classics for 38 Special: Caught Up In You and Hold on Loosely.
51 years later, I see it was a band of white guys
This always sounded like it should’ve been a Blood, Sweat, and Tears song. I can totally imagine David Clayton Thomas singing it.
So surprised to find out that Jim Peterik is from Berwyn (Berrrrwwwynn as Son of Svengolie always said). It is like that movie Spinal Tap where there is a scene of the heavy metal band performing bubble gum rock in the mid 60s. So, he was in the Ides Of March, then Survivor! And in between he wrote songs for southern rock band 38 Special.
Great song – still sounds fresh 50+ years later.
“Vehicle” has a personal, and special, place in my heart, because as a 15 year old in 1970, we had a rag-tag garage band, who were in awe of Chicago and BS&T, in addition to the now-classic rock acts of the time.
Being that we were your typical four piece band (lead, bass, drums, and rhythm), we had a problem – we were so enamored by “Vehicle”, and wanted to work on learning it , without horns.
Suffice to say, it was not effective without those power horns.
So, as necessity is the mother of invention, we got creative.
With the high school’s Battle Of The Bands approaching that fall, we reached out to specific members of the high school marching band’s brass section, and cavalierly posed the question “How would you like to be spotlighted on a stage for a night, instead of a dot on the field ?”
Easy sell – closed that night.
We practiced all of August to mid-September (They had Fall Football marching band obligations, after all).
On the first Saturday night in October, we went on, right after two extremely talented competitors in the BOTB.
Nervous to the core, we went on stage, and opened with “Vehicle”.
After that horn-filled climax, the audience gave us (courtesy of Ides of March) a standing ovation, with a lot of hoopla.
All of us were smiling ear-to-ear, especially the “recruited” marching band horn section.
We didn’t win the overall Battle of The Bands, but we sure had our brief, but memorable, moment under the bright lights.
That’s a pretty freakin’ sweet memory to tell. Cheers!
Just to re-emphasize a couple of points, one being that most people I knew of back in the early ’70s thought “Vehicle” was BS&T, as Peterik was sounding very much like David Clayton-Thomas, much more so than either Terry Kath or Robert Lamm (and definitely not Pete Cetera). And on my weekend oldies show, I’ll occasionally do segments of “songs that should’ve been hits but weren’t”, and “L.A. Goodbye” is a regular feature on those segments. It was a radio friendly just-less-than-three minutes, had a catchy chorus, and some great background vocals to complement Peterik. But I think it only got to #73!