John Tesh wrote the soundtrack to my cycling youth.
The 1985 Paris-Roubaix is seared into my memory as possibly the greatest classic of all time. I fear the reason is possibly because the music not only stayed with me, but I still have it ringing in my head.
1985 was not the first L’Enfer du Nord I’d watched, though it’s hard to even claim I watched the first several Roubaixs I’d seen.
European bike racing, for Americans in the 1980s, existed largely on paper. VeloNews, a bi-weekly during the road racing season, typically ran race reports with a few black-and-white photos a month after the races were run. Winning Magazine, started in 1983, was a glossy mag running Euro race stories, but it could be months after the race was run. If one was enterprising, there were several international newspaper businesses in New York City, where French newspapers and magazines could be found; with them, you could catch race news earlier, if you only knew when the races were. The UCI didn’t have a website back then
CBS Sports changed the equation. In 1984, they made a deal, most likely to cover the Tour de France, but as both Paris-Roubaix and the Tour were run by L’Equipe, CBS probably had to broadcast Paris-Roubaix to get the rights to show the Tour. Rather than broadcast hours of the race to a likely disinterested American public, or even the final hour, CBS decided to present the 452-minute monument as a 23-minute story, packaged as race containing a history lesson, interviews, and several music video highlight reels.
The timing of the race was also important because video cassette recorders, VCRs, were commercially available and starting to get attached to television sets at homes around the country. As a bike rider, desperate to see real bike racing, that 1984 Roubaix was not only appointment viewing, but mandatory recording. I think every cyclist I knew who had a VCR was doing the same.
The 1984 race was a glorious, grueling mess. I had never seen a Euro road race before, but it was everything American pro sports were not. It was conducted in the public, it had no timeouts, it was dangerous, it was dirty, and the athletes seemed, far more than their American counterparts, to be actually giving the mythic 110% rags like Sports Illustrated liked to prattle on about. I recorded that broadcast, and watched it over and over until someone in my family accidentally recorded over it– a crushing blow.
1985 was going to be different. I watched and recorded the broadcast as it happened, making sure to pause during every commercial break. This time, the half-hour slot had been doubled. Not only was the production better, but the race was incredible. It was another cold, wet, and muddy edition—I came to think that’s just what spring in northern Europe looked like. The early break lasted far into the race, rain soaked the field through the feed zone, the water carriers got as much love from the commentators as the stars, and more. Domestique Theo De Rooy was the hero of the race, not only for staying the lead until the final hour, but because of a bizarre stroke of luck: after he faded out of the lead, he dropped out of the race, seemingly met up with a random spectator, put his bike in the guy’s trunk, and was about to be driven to the finish when broadcast co-host John Tesh, out on the course, somehow caught up with the Dutchman as he was easing his fatigued mud-covered carcass into the guy’s car. The brief interview is poignant (and in English) and cemented my love of bike racing.
But the music. Tesh, who had been a local New York City TV reporter on CBS’s affiliate, was dabbling in sports television and, it turned out, was also a musician. Somehow, the producers had decided that Tesh would write music to go with video of the races. He composed and performed the music, new-agey synthesizer stuff. There’s not a good way to describe it. I don’t think I would have given the music a thought had it not been paired with bike racing. But it was. And that made all the difference. I guess anything that gets stuck in one’s head is ‘good’ in some fashion. Earworms is how they’re often characterized, and a basic search indicates that getting rid of them seems to be a high priority. I don’t think the music is good, but I have desire to erase the sonic memory.
After repeated viewings, the songs were associated with riding. It was a way to a little extra to power over steep hills, to chase down friends as we played training games, as I tried to find a little extra to speed along. It even got included as background music at bike races. I didn’t know the names of the songs, there were no lyrics, but it was on endless loop on my bike rides, particularly the dark, cold, and wet ones. When I was feeling good, going hard, and my cadence was high, it was (it turns out) Road Made for Animals. If I was late and chasing the remains of daylight, I had In The Hunt in my head. A long day and grinding up a hill was when Brain Dead Weasel came on. And more. Since the tunes weren’t exactly hummable, friends and I would toss off Liggettisms at one another on rides.
Tesh released not one, but three albums of his Tour de France music. The first, Music From the Tour de France, released in 1987, was just that. The next two albums, Tour de France (1988) and Tour de France: The Early Years (1990) were beefed-up new-agey wonders, some of the songs he even performed in concert. I can’t imagine even considering attending. Back in 1987, it was a bit of a guilty pleasure—I don’t think I knew anyone who’d admit to liking it—but every bike racer I knew almost certainly had the tunes memorized. A bike racing friend from the 80’s hosted an espoir in the early 2000’s. My friend still had the tapes around and a VCR as well. He said the young rider, on his own volition put the tapes in the VCR and watched before a big race; the kid would even speak the commentary along with the commentators. I wish I had bought that first album; it’s now out of print, and though I have CDs of the next two, they added orchestration and musical musings which detract from the purpose.
Thing is, the music he composed for 1984 and 1985 Roubaix, and the 1985 Tour seemed to be the end of his bike racing musical output. You can find the same tunes matched to video for the Tours and Roubaixs CBS did in 1986, 1987, and 1988. They compressed Paris-Roubaix into a 44-minute package, and compressed a week of the Tour into that time as well. And I had tapes of them all, as did most of my bike racing friends. When I lost my 1987 tape, I duped a friend’s compilation of all the 1987 races on broadcast TV.
CBS’ contract for the broadcast rights with L’Equipe ended in 1988. And then ABC took over. They tried to mimic the CBS packages, they kept Phil Liggett on as the expert, but neither the music nor the commentary matched the over-done magic of CBS. ABC did, however, bridge to sister-brand ESPN’s coverage, which is when viewers in the United States started getting live access to hours-long bike races.
With Paris-Roubaix Sunday, I’ll be streaming it, and when the evil stones of Arenberg are breached, when a rider slides out in the mud, when you can see the lights go out of a rider, Tesh’s music will be cued and playing. And I’ll be transported to those days when I was wearing out a home-recorded video, and then getting dressed in a wool long sleeve jersey to ride in gloriously miserable weather. And it will make the next time I have to face bad weather or riding through a bonk that much easier.