Rolls-Royce Phantom and Music: A Century of Iconic Style
“From the Golden Age of Hollywood to the rise of hip-hop, over the last 100 years, music artists have used Phantom to project their identity and challenge convention. Their motor cars often became icons in their own right, with a lasting place in the history of modern music. This enduring connection reminds us that Rolls-Royce and the extraordinary people who are part of the marque’s story are united by one ambition: to make their presence felt”, Chris Brownridge, Chief Executive, Rolls-Royce Motor Cars.
The connection between Rolls-Royce and popular music reaches back almost to the birth of the recording industry. Long before icons like John Lennon, Elvis Presley, and Pharrell Williams wrote themselves into Phantom’s story, artists including Duke Ellington, Fred Astaire, Count Basie, Ravi Shankar, Edith Piaf and Sam Cooke travelled by Rolls-Royce, recognising the marque as the definitive symbol of success and artistry. Music moguls such as Brian Epstein, Berry Gordy and Ahmet Ertegun joined them as notable owners. Across genres, geographies and generations, creatives choose Rolls-Royce as the ultimate reward for brilliance and a canvas for personal expression.
Of all models, Phantom, the pinnacle of Rolls-Royce Motor Cars, carries the closest association with music. Over eight generations and 100 years, a centenary the nameplate celebrates in 2025, some of the most creative and influential figures in musical history have chosen this extraordinary luxury car. Phantom continues to attract them, and it retains its status as the world’s pre-eminent luxury product, combining engineering excellence, fine materials and exquisite, highly skilled craftsmanship. It also gives owners the freedom to define their identity, a quality that has helped many Phantoms owned by musical luminaries achieve legendary status in their own right.
Marlene Dietrich arrived in Hollywood as a star already in the firmament. Fresh from The Blue Angel, and with her signature song Falling in Love Again, she travelled to California in 1930 to film Morocco. Paramount Studios greeted her with flowers and a green Rolls-Royce Phantom I. Morocco earned Dietrich an Academy Award nomination, and her Phantom shared the spotlight, appearing in the film’s closing scenes and publicity images.
In 1956, Elvis Presley released a self-titled album that became the first rock ‘n’ roll album to top the Billboard chart for 10 weeks. In 1963, at the height of his fame, he bought a Midnight Blue Phantom V rich in Bespoke features. He equipped the rear armrest with a writing pad for sudden inspiration and added a microphone, a mirror and a clothes brush so he could arrive ready to perform. In a charming domestic twist, the mirror-polished paintwork attracted his mother’s chickens, which pecked at their reflections in the coachwork. Elvis had the motor car refinished in a lighter Silver Blue that concealed the chips.
In December 1964, John Lennon rewarded himself for The Beatles’ A Hard Day’s Night by commissioning a Phantom V. He specified an entirely black motor car, including the windows, bumpers and hub caps, and he fitted a cocktail cabinet, a television and a refrigerator in the boot. In May 1967, just before Sgt Pepper’s Lonely Hearts Club Band appeared, Lennon had the motor car resprayed yellow, then hand-painted with swirls of red, orange, green and blue, floral side panels and his star sign, Libra, to complete its new persona. Younger fans felt the carefree spirit of the Summer of Love. Their elders felt outrage, memorably summed up by a woman on Piccadilly who shouted, “How dare you do that to a Rolls-Royce!” before swatting the paintwork with her umbrella. At auction in 1985, the Phantom reached $2,299,000, almost ten times the reserve, becoming both the most expensive piece of rock ‘n’ roll memorabilia at the time and the highest price then achieved for a motor car sold by auction.
Many consider this the most famous Rolls-Royce connected with Lennon, yet he owned another. In 1968, to coincide with the White Album and a new phase with Yoko Ono, Lennon purchased a white Rolls-Royce Phantom V. He embraced a minimalist aesthetic, wearing white and transforming his Berkshire home inside and out. Wing Commander Paddy Barthropp had initially been commissioned the motor car in two-tone black over green, and Lennon then individualised it to white throughout. He paid £12,000, the price of a sizeable house at the time, to complete the transformation, and he added a sunroof, a Philips turntable, an 8-track player, a telephone and a television. The motor car later appeared in the Beatles film Let It Be and in Performance, which starred Mick Jagger. In September 1969, Lennon sold it to Allen Klein, founder of ABKCO Records and The Beatles’ manager at the time, for a reported $50,000.
Władziu Valentino Liberace, another musical iconoclast, built a career of flamboyance and virtuosity as the world’s highest-paid entertainer in the 1950s and 1960s through television shows and long Las Vegas residencies. He owned a 1961 Phantom V covered in tiny mirror pieces and drove it on stage during his long-running residency at the Las Vegas Hilton. The motor car later appeared in Behind the Candelabra, the award-winning Liberace biopic, in which Michael Douglas recreated its short but famous journey.
Liberace’s showmanship inspired a young Reginald Dwight, today Sir Elton John, who later owned several Phantoms. In 1973, en route to a Manchester concert in his white Phantom VI, he saw a newer example in a showroom window, told his chauffeur to stop, bought the car and continued to the venue in it. He later updated the Phantom with black paintwork, black leather, tinted windows, a television, a video player and even a fax machine. Most notably, he commissioned a bespoke audio system so powerful that engineers strengthened the rear windscreen to prevent shattering at high volume. Sir Elton also owned a Phantom V, which he specified in striking pink and white with a matching interior. After a USSR tour, where promoters paid him in coal rather than cash, he found himself unable to pay his musicians and gave the Phantom to his percussionist, Ray Cooper, instead. Cooper later used the motor car to pick up a young Damon Albarn from school, who went on to find stardom with Blur. History turned full circle in 2020 when Albarn and Gorillaz recorded The Pink Phantom, with Sir Elton as guest vocalist.
The legend of Keith Moon adds another layer to Phantom folklore. While celebrating his 21st birthday, The Who’s gifted but self-destructive drummer allegedly plunged his Rolls-Royce into the swimming pool at the Holiday Inn in Flint, Michigan, creating one of rock ‘n’ roll’s most enduring images. Accounts vary. In a 1972 Rolling Stone interview, Moon said the car was a Lincoln Continental belonging to another guest, and that he released the handbrake and rolled it into the pool. Other guests insist no vehicle entered the water. The myth endures so powerfully that it became the definitive image of rock ‘n’ roll indulgence, and in the popular imagination, the car in the pool could only be a Rolls-Royce. To mark Phantom’s centenary and its place in rock ‘n’ roll mythology, Rolls-Royce brought legend to life by submerging an Extended body shell, a retired prototype destined for recycling, in a swimming pool. The team chose Tinside Lido in Plymouth, England, a celebrated Art Deco landmark by the English Channel. The Lido links to John Lennon, one of Phantom’s most famous clients, as the backdrop to a photograph of The Beatles taken on 12 September 1967 during filming for The Magical Mystery Tour. That same year, Lennon unveiled his yellow, hand-painted Phantom V, further cementing the nameplate’s place in music legend.
Since moving production to Goodwood in 2003, Rolls-Royce has strengthened its ties with contemporary music. By 2016, the brand topped name-checks in song lyrics, driven in part by hip-hop’s meteoric rise. The genre had become a cultural powerhouse by the 1990s and a household staple at the turn of the century, coinciding with the Goodwood renaissance and the launch of Phantom VII in 2003. A year later, Pharrell Williams and Calvin ‘Snoop Dogg’ Broadus Jr featured a Phantom VII in the 2004 music video for Drop It Like It’s Hot, which topped the US Billboard Hot 100 for three weeks and began Phantom’s lasting connection with the genre’s most influential artists. Curtis ‘50 Cent’ Jackson appeared in Entourage in a Phantom VII Drophead Coupé, and the scene later became a widely shared meme. Dwayne ‘Lil Wayne’ Carter’s Tha Carter II is one of many albums to feature Phantom on its cover. The genre also helped popularise one of the marque’s most distinctive features, the Starlight Headliner, and the phrase “stars in the roof” has become a poetic shorthand for Rolls-Royce ownership.
Phantom has maintained a constant, evolving presence in the story of modern music. In every era, artists and innovators have used it as a means of self-expression, aspiration and identity. As Phantom enters its second century, it continues to symbolise success, individuality and the power of human imagination.
