Get your motor runnin’ and head out on the highway...

(Universal Music On Demand)

A few years ago, before the responsibilities of marriage and parenthood, I joined two friends on a road trip up the West Coast of America. We flew into Los Angeles, hired a convertible, and drove up Pacific Highway One through Yosemite National Park to San Francisco, before swinging round and heading back to LA via Death Valley and Palm Springs. It was the trip of a lifetime, and yet beyond the scenery, the experiences and the memories, it will forever be characterised in my memory by the iPod playlist we had compiled for the journey.

These were songs which evoked the spirit of what America used to be, classic tunes spanning the decades from legends in their field. As the fusion of guitar and drums pumped out from the stereo you couldn’t help but put your pedal to the metal and hit the highway at full pelt, the sun sinking slowly into the distant west as our car headed ever onwards.

So many of the tracks which made up that playlist are included on this three-disc compilation, a retro-rock journey through the heart of America which perfectly captures the memories of that remarkable trip even on the less than wild back-roads of Hertfordshire.

The hits come fast and furious - Livin’ On A Prayer, The Power of Love, Ride Like The Wind, Sweet Home Alabama, Centrefold, The Passenger, Eye of the Tiger, Don’t Stop Believin’ being just a handful of the 60 tracks included on this collection, creating a memorable fusion of the musical landscape of the good ol’ US of A.

More than a decade since that life-changing road trip, the chance of repeating it grow increasingly more unlikely with each new year, but at least I still have the memories and the music…