“On the Road” with Darryl Holter

“On the Road” is a podcast produced by JC Whitney. Every other Thursday we bring you interviews with a cavalcade of figures from across the world all united by one thing: their undying love of all things automotive. The following has been edited for length and clarity.

In this interview, Angel Sala-Belen sits down with Darryl Holter—author of Driving Force, founder of 213 Music, and co-owner of Chevalier’s Books in LA. Darryl opens up about his musical journey, sparked by his dad teaching him guitar as a kid. Since then, he’s released several albums, including his latest, Roots and Branches. Darryl also dives into his unexpected shift from music to the automotive world. He played a pivotal role in breathing new life into LA’s historic Auto Row on Figueroa Street, organizing a Business Improvement District to attract fresh investment and energy. He also shares insights from his book, Driving Force, which unpacks how Los Angeles transformed into the ultimate car city.

Angel Sala-Belen: Hello and welcome to JC Whitney’s “On The Road.” I am your host, Angel Sala-Belen, and today we are joined by Darryl Holter. How are you, sir?

Darryl Holter: I’m great, thanks.

Angel Sala-Belen: You are the author of Driving Force, the founder of 213 Music, and you have five albums, with your most recent being Roots and Branches. You also own a small bookstore.

Darryl Holter: Yes, the oldest independent bookstore in LA—Chevalier’s on Larchmont Boulevard. I’m a co-owner.

Angel Sala-Belen: How did you get into music, and where and when was the transition from music to automotive?

Darryl Holter: Well, let’s see. I got into music because my father had learned how to play the guitar himself when he was in World War II in the Pacific. When I was a little kid, he started to show me how to play guitar chords—very simple ones like C, G, and F with one finger. I started to do that probably when I was about four years old, and I learned how to play the guitar around five. I started to play in some local shows and talent shows, and I played on kids’ television shows on Saturday mornings on KSTP and WCCO television. With that, I began playing sometimes on The Westerners, which was a Saturday night show for adults. I would be the little kid playing with a guitar as big as me.

So, I got into playing that, and then I started to listen to rock and roll, which was relatively new on the radio. There was one radio station that did rock and roll in Minneapolis, and there was a country station too. As I got older, I heard Bob Dylan’s music—Bob Zimmerman was his real name. We knew him because he was from Minnesota, and I started to do folk music. I began to do a lot of that as I got involved in the anti-war movement and then in the labor movement. I started to do music that had to do with the war and labor organizing.

When I moved to LA, I shifted away from the political stuff and started writing a lot of other songs. At a certain point, I had about 40 songs written, and I met with a really cool guy, Ben Wendell, who’s a world-class saxophonist. He produced my first self-titled album, then I did an album called West Bank Gone—about the West Bank of the Mississippi, where the music scene started that Bob Dylan came out of. I also did a Woody Guthrie album, a book on Woody Guthrie in LA, and an album of his radio songs called Radio Songs. After that, I did a couple more, and Roots and Branches was two parts: Roots was based on early types of music, and I had older musicians playing with me; Branches was the newer stuff with younger musicians, including my daughter Julia Holter and other people. We did Branches, and that was the last album I did.

My daughter’s a professional musician, while I’m an amateur. Julia Holter is just finishing her US tour; her last show is tonight. She’s done 15 shows in the US, and she’s coming home tomorrow.

Angel Sala-Belen: What kind of music does she do?

Darryl Holter: It’s called new music. She’s classically trained, and you might hear her on KCRW in the morning. It’s kind of sophisticated, beautiful, and very hard to pigeonhole. She’s incredible.

Angel Sala-Belen: So, that transition from doing music to actually being a historian for the automotive scene—helping launch multiple car dealerships in the Los Angeles area—how did that happen?

Darryl Holter: Well, what happened was that I was teaching at UCLA and doing research on the labor movement and industrial relations. This was after the Rodney King riots, and if you were here, you saw that downtown was in really bad shape. Most of Figueroa, the historic Auto Row of LA, was boarded up. My father-in-law, Nick Shamus, was a dealer—he had Felix Chevrolet, the oldest dealership in LA. He started in Studio City with a used car lot but then built up a group of auto dealerships on Figueroa. However, during this difficult time, he was diagnosed with terminal cancer. He asked me to come downtown, leave UCLA or take a leave, and help him.

So, I came down and tried to help the family by reorganizing his businesses. I also received a call from Steve Sample, the president of USC. He asked me to meet with him for lunch and told me that people were freaked out by the neighborhood and afraid to send their kids to the university. They were even considering moving USC, like Pepperdine did, up to Malibu. Pepperdine used to be in South LA, further south.

I got a letter from General Motors suggesting that maybe we should move Felix Chevrolet to the suburbs. I said, “We’re in the same situation.” Steve Sample asked, “What can we do?” I told him I’d think about it, and two weeks later, I came back with a plan to organize the property owners into a Business Improvement District, which we did. We organized 105 property owners, taxed ourselves half a million dollars, and used that property tax to hire our own people to keep it clean and safe, so we didn’t have to depend on the city. That made the difference for the Figueroa Corridor. It ended up bringing in the Galen Center, University Gateway (which we built across from Felix), and eventually the Staples Center and LA Live. All of that new investment on Figueroa came about because of the improvement district.

Angel Sala-Belen: Were there any huge implications felt across the market or in the area that originated from what you had done?

Darryl Holter: I led the Figueroa Corridor; I organized it and led it for 14 years, and it still exists today. I just had a meeting yesterday. We have a Safety and Security Coalition to discuss all the problems we have with homeless encampments, vandalism, vagrancy, fires, and arson. Because I organized them so many years ago, they still look to me, so I’m still involved in these things. We’re dealing with these problems even today.

Angel Sala-Belen: Did you find anything in your fact-finding or in writing this book that maybe curated or changed the timeline or trajectory for automobiles in America?

Darryl Holter: Well, here’s the thing about it: this book is an attempt to answer a couple of big questions. One of them is: Why did LA become a city of cars? It didn’t have to. How did that happen? So, let’s take the first question: why did it happen? There were a number of things that separated LA from the rest of the country.

One is that the city of LA was a little town and only really became a city in the 1880s and 1890s. Around the turn of the century, it became bigger, and the automobile started at the same time. Unlike other cities, the city of LA and the automobile developed together—they were babies together, teenagers together, young adults together. Their relationship is intertwined. That’s part of it.

LA had a lot of other things too: incredible weather, where you could drive your car year-round. You couldn’t do that in Chicago or most of the United States. There was also this incredible geography—oceans, rivers, mountains, deserts. That was interesting. You also had a relatively young and affluent population who were very interested in cars, and Hollywood, which was important for cars too. All these elements contributed to LA becoming a car city.

But what I found in my research was how this happened. How could automobile manufacturers make a connection with automobile buyers at a time when no one believed cars would ever work? Everyone supported horses and didn’t think you’d ever take the horses away from the horse carriage.

What I discovered in my research, which I didn’t know until then, was that manufacturers had a lot of serious problems they couldn’t overcome. They had no money to make cars, no money to lend to buyers unless they were already rich, no idea how to fix cars, and they didn’t even make cars—they really just assembled them. They took parts others made and put them together. So, how did they do it? They relied on local people in Los Angeles who decided, “I’m going to be a car dealer.”

Who were these people? Mostly bike guys who had bike shops on Main Street in downtown LA. They knew about things that were mechanical, so they got into cars. If you wanted to buy a car, you’d say, “Yeah, this is what I want.” I’d say, “Okay, give me a deposit.” You’d give me a deposit, I’d add to that, and we’d send it to the manufacturer. They’d use that money to buy parts, assemble the car, and send it back in two months. The dealers provided the money for the manufacturers to make their cars. No one knew this. I didn’t know it!

The dealers also had to rent space to sell the cars. They didn’t have money to buy a place, so they rented a storefront on Main Street, put one car in there as a demonstrator, and if you wanted to order it, you’d give a deposit. The manufacturer would then build it and send it back.

The same thing applied if you wanted to buy a car on credit. Dealers didn’t have credit, but they knew you. So, I’d say, “Okay, Angel, I know you. Give me $400, and I’ll give you a promissory note for two more payments.” The dealers figured this out too. They also had to figure out how to fix cars—there were no warranties, no manuals. They just had to learn as they went along because no one knew how to do it.

I was a dealer for 19 years, with eight stores and 1,100 people working for me. I had 50 managers, but I didn’t know this story until I discovered it in the documents I found.

Angel Sala-Belen: Yeah, so this sort of gives more of an “aha” to why things are the way they are today. Like, when you’re looking at the dealership, why do they put an exorbitant dealership fee on things? Oh, it’s because the dealership is fronting a ton of the operation.

Darryl Holter: That’s right. All kinds of questions you might have about today can be answered by looking at the historical context. That’s the most important thing I tell people about history. History allows us to understand the sources and origins of the issues we face today. Where do they come from? Why do we have homelessness? Why do we have unemployment? There are reasons. Go back, understand them, and you’ll have a better idea of how to move forward in the future.

Angel Sala-Belen: With this story right here, has it created any other leads for you and maybe a possible new book?

Darryl Holter: This is funny because people ask me, “You took this book up to 1930. Now, are you going to write a book from 1930 to 1950?” You know what I say? No, because it gets really complicated. It’s a whole new thing, and I’ve done the very beginning of it. That’s all I’m going to do. This is the first book on how cars were merchandised in America in any city. I thought there would be other books, but I didn’t find any. Now people can look at this and say, “Okay, that’s how it was done in LA. How was it done in New York? How was it done in Chicago?” Let them go out and do all that work and say what happened after 1930. Other people can do it.

Angel Sala-Belen: So what happened in 1930?

Darryl Holter: Well, 1930 is a very important point because of the Depression. The end of the ’20s and the beginning of the Depression caused the number of automobile manufacturers to drop. This is really when you have the Big Three. The Big Three comes out of this because they’re the only ones that are still standing. Well, there’s a little more than that, but not many. A lot of dealers and manufacturers went out of business during the Depression.

Angel Sala-Belen: Do you have a defining moment in a car that shaped you in an inspiring way?

Darryl Holter: Well, let me tell you a story about the first car I ever bought. I’m in Minneapolis, and my father was in the printing industry, but he knew cars. He bought his first car when he was 15 years old—a Model T—and he knew how to work on cars. He even made race cars until my mom made him quit. I have a photo of me in his race car when I was two years old, sitting on his lap.

Anyway, my father would always take me with him to look for cars because I could look at the front of the cars and always tell what brand and what year it was, if it was anything from 1946 or 1947 on, since they didn’t start making cars until after the war. In those days, used car lots didn’t put the years or makes of the cars on them—maybe just the prices. So, we would go out at night when there weren’t any salesmen around and look at the cars on the lots.

We were in Minneapolis, and we found a lot on East Lake Street near the Mississippi River. There was a small used car lot, and they would put the older ones in the back. My dad was looking, and I was looking. I went into the back and found a 1949 Mercury. I looked at this Mercury, and it was in the back—this was in 1962—and I said, “Hey Dad, come look at this ’49 Merc!” He looked at it and said, “Geez, it’s pretty.” I said, “It’s clean.” He said, “Yeah, but it’s pretty old, Darryl. I don’t know.” I said, “Yeah, but it’s really clean and looks like it doesn’t have many miles on it.” He said, “Yeah, it looks good, but it’s kind of old.”

We went home. The next day, I went to class, went to hockey practice (I was on the hockey team), and then went over to my girlfriend Jane Peck’s house. I was at Jane’s, and I called my mom to pick me up in the ’58 Chevy. While talking with Jane in front of her house, I was going on and on about this ’49 Mercury I saw the night before. Then I said, “You know what, Jane? See that car driving down the street? It looks like that car.” And as it came closer, guess what? My dad was driving it! My dad went down and bought the car. I paid him $299; he paid $100 on it. I was only 14, so he drove it for a year until I got my license, and then I had my first car—a ’49 Mercury.

I said to my dad, “Dad, this is a car like James Dean had in Rebel Without a Cause.” He didn’t even know who James Dean was—he was busy working all the time instead of going to movies. But that was my first car.

Angel Sala-Belen: Perfect. That’s amazing. Gotta love Dad for that!

Darryl Holter: He was great. We were really close, my dad and I.

Angel Sala-Belen: Yeah, and he pulled up to the girlfriend’s house. That’s so cool. Darryl, where can people buy your book?

Darryl Holter: I encourage people in LA to buy it at Chevalier’s Books, which is my bookstore. Also, I should mention that it’s an expensive book in a sense because it has this beautiful cover and contains 160 incredible photos, most of which no one has ever seen. This is a book that doesn’t just sit on your shelf at the end; it sits on a table so everyone can see it. That’s the way I’ve designed it. You can buy it at Chevalier’s Books on Larchmont Boulevard in LA, but you can also go on Amazon and buy it for the cheapest price. As you know, Amazon’s strategy is to sell everything more cheaply than everybody else to gain market share and put everybody else out of business, so the cheapest price you’ll find will be on Amazon.

Angel Sala-Belen: Is there a website other than Amazon?

Darryl Holter: There’s a Driving Force website that’s kind of connected to my music website.

Angel Sala-Belen: Okay, so they can either come to your bookstore on Larchmont Boulevard, or they can go online. Alright, Darryl, well look man, I really do appreciate you coming in today. It was a pleasure meeting you.

Darryl Holter: Are you going to hear my guitar?

Angel Sala-Belen: There’s a guitar? Please!

Darryl Holter: Okay, so I’m down at Felix Chevrolet, I’m in the service department, and I keep seeing in the back of the service department a car with a cover on top of it. I say to one of the parts managers, who’s been there for about 40 years or something, “What is that back there with that cover on it?” And he says, “Oh, that? Mr. Holter, you want to know about that?” “Yeah, well, what is it?” “Oh, well, that’s a car that someone brought in here for us to fix, and then they left it and never came back to pick it up.” I said, “Well, what is it?” “Well, it’s an old Chevy.” “So, how old is it?” He said, “Oh, I think it’s a 1950.” “Well, when was it left here?” “Oh, I think it was left here like in 1959.” So, I said, “Well, I want to look at that Chevy.” So, I took a look at it, and there it was. We fixed it up, and I wrote a song called Don’t Touch My Chevy.

[Music]

well you can borrow 10 bucks now and

then I hope I get it back you can take

my fancy cowboy boots in my steps in hat

never just one place where I draw the

line and I never give an inch 

and if you don’t want the scene to get heavy 

don’t touch my Chevy 

don’t touch my Chevy 

don’t touch my Chevy 

well you kid take my Martin G18

probably get away you can drink my

Johnny Walker Blue and live for another

day yeah but when it comes to my vehicle

keep your hands to yourself 

you don’t want the scene to get heavy 

don’t touch my Chevy 

don’t touch my Chevy 

don’t touch my Chevy 

it’s vineyard 50 Chevrolet 

we painted it jet black it’s got

three speed on the column ship straight

Pops in the back and it’s traveled every

street and Road freeways in LA for half a

Century got from Felix

Chevrolet well you can grab my Graphite

fishing rod and my world class reel as

well and you can kiss my fine wife on

the cheek and probably live to tell yeah

but when you standing by my car you’re

skating on thin ice

you don’t want the scene to get

heavy 

don’t touch my Chevy

don’t touch my Chevy 

don’t touch my Chevy 

Darryl Holter: There you go—don’t touch my Chevy.

Angel Sala-Belen: That’s right, guys. So if you see Darryl out there driving his Chevy, please don’t touch it.