Few cars are as synonymous with cultural power as the Rolls-Royce Phantom. In 2025, the marque celebrates the centenary of its flagship, tracing a hundred years of presence not only on the roads but also in the music industry’s collective imagination. From Hollywood’s golden age to rock’s rebellious decades and today’s stage-commanding stars, the Phantom’s story mirrors the soundtracks that defined generations. In many ways, Rolls-Royce Phantom 100 Years in Music is a chronicle of style, identity, and creative freedom.
Overture: A Quiet Car Meets a Noisy Business
The connection between Rolls-Royce and popular music runs almost as far back as recorded sound. Long before rock stars and rappers, names like Duke Ellington, Fred Astaire, Count Basie, Ravi Shankar, Édith Piaf and Sam Cooke chose the marque as the ultimate expression of craft. Music’s power brokers did too. Brian Epstein, Berry Gordy and Ahmet Ertegun understood that a Rolls-Royce was language, a way to speak status without saying a word. Of all models, Phantom became the clearest sentence.
Scene One: Hollywood Sets the Tempo
Marlene Dietrich arrived in California already a star. At Paramount, a green Phantom I awaited her. It later shared the screen in Morocco (1930), where the car folded into the studio’s dream-factory image. The moment is important because it places Phantom at the intersection of cinema, celebrity and music from the start. It is a prop, but also a partner.
Verse and Refrain: Rock Turns the Phantom into a Self Portrait
Elvis Presley’s Phantom V was finished in Midnight Blue and fitted with a microphone, a writing pad in the rear armrest, and grooming accessories. A domestic footnote made headlines: chickens at his mother’s home pecked at their reflections in the mirror-polished paint. The coachwork was refinished in a lighter Silver Blue to hide the chips. The point is simple. Even the details become part of the legend.
John Lennon’s relationship with Phantom showed how a car can hold two eras at once. His first Phantom V, delivered in 1964, was entirely black, right down to the window surrounds and hub caps, and carried a cocktail cabinet, a television and a refrigerator in the boot. In May 1967, just before Sgt Pepper’s arrived, it was resprayed yellow and hand-painted with swirls of red, orange, green and blue. Floral panels ran along the sides, and his Libra star sign completed the composition. Some loved it. Others did not. An older passer-by on Piccadilly famously struck the paintwork with an umbrella and shouted a verdict. In 1985, the car sold for $2,299,000, far above its reserve, setting a record both for rock memorabilia and for a motor car sold at auction.
He then moved in the other direction. In 1968, to mirror a new phase with Yoko Ono and the launch of the White Album, Lennon bought a second Phantom V and commissioned a complete transformation to white, inside and out. It gained a sunroof, a Philips turntable, an 8-track, a telephone and a television. The car appears in Let It Be and in Performance with Mick Jagger. Lennon later sold it to manager Allen Klein for a reported $50,000. Two cars, two statements, one lesson about image as work.
Showmanship: Mirrors, Pink Paint and a Strengthened Rear Screen
Władziu Valentino Liberace covered his 1961 Phantom V in tiny mirrored tiles and drove it on stage during his Las Vegas residency. The effect was pure theatre. Decades later, the car appeared in Behind the Candelabra, confirming how objects keep earning meaning when they pass through culture more than once.
Sir Elton John, a student of spectacle, owned several Phantoms across different periods. In 1973, en route to a Manchester show in a white Phantom VI, he spotted a newer example in a showroom window, stopped, bought it, and continued the journey in the new car. He later updated a Phantom with black paint, black leather, tinted windows, a television, a video player and even a fax machine. The audio system was powerful enough that the back windscreen had to be strengthened. Another Phantom V wore pink and white and eventually became payment in kind to percussionist Ray Cooper after a tour of the USSR. Cooper once used it to pick up a young Damon Albarn from school. The circle closed neatly in 2020 when Albarn’s Gorillaz released “The Pink Phantom” with Elton as guest vocalist
Myth-Making: The Car in the Pool
The story that The Who’s Keith Moon drove a Rolls-Royce into a hotel swimming pool refuses to die. Accounts differ. Some say the car was a Lincoln belonging to another guest. Others say no car entered the water at all. The image survives because it captures an idea about rock excess. For the centenary, Rolls-Royce acknowledged the myth by submerging a retired Phantom Extended body shell in Tinside Lido, an Art Deco landmark at Plymouth. The choice tied two Beatles-era references together. A photograph of the band was taken at the same lido on 12 September 1967 during filming for Magical Mystery Tour. That year, Lennon’s yellow Phantom V also made its public debut. Folklore, meet curation.
Hip-Hop: Stars in the Roof and a New Visual Vocabulary
Production moved to Goodwood in 2003 with the launch of Phantom VII. Within a year, Pharrell Williams and Calvin “Snoop Dogg” Broadus Jr put a Phantom in the video for “Drop It Like It’s Hot”, which topped the US Billboard Hot 100 for three weeks. The image stuck. Curtis “50 Cent” Jackson appeared with a Phantom VII Drophead Coupé on Entourage, and the clip became a widely shared meme. Dwayne “Lil Wayne” Carter placed Phantom on the cover of Tha Carter II. The Starlight Headliner found a second life in lyrics as “stars in the roof”. By 2016, Rolls-Royce was the most name-checked brand in song lyrics. The car became shorthand for having arrived.
The global picture broadened. Burna Boy, Wizkid and DJ Cuppy appeared with Phantoms, underlining how the car’s appeal crosses continents and scenes. This is the practical side of Rolls-Royce Phantom 100 Years in Music. A phrase like that is not a slogan. It is a map.
Why Silence Works for People Who Live by Sound
Artists use Phantom for two reasons. First, it is a controlled space. Before a show, the quiet helps focus. After a show, it lets adrenalin settle. Second, it is a bright sign in public. The grille is recognisable in every decade’s photography. That combination makes sense in a trade built on attention and recovery. The car steadies the private moments and amplifies the public ones.
Coda: What the Centenary Really Says
A centenary invites a tidy narrative, yet the stronger truth is messier and more interesting. Across eight generations, Phantom has served as canvas and companion. It has been repainted, mirrored, tinted and recorded. It has also been shouted at, sung about, filmed, ferried moguls as well as the talent. It’s been myth and punchline. Most of all, it has been useful, which is why it keeps turning up.
For readers searching this subject, Rolls–Royce Phantom 100 Years in Music is the cleanest path into the archive. It covers Dietrich’s studio era, Elvis’s tailored excess, Lennon’s twin visions, Liberace’s glitter, Elton’s constant reinvention, Keith Moon’s legend and hip-hop’s lyric sheet. It shows how a quiet car can travel at the volume of fame. As the marque looks ahead, the Phantom remains what it has always been to musicians of every stripe: a way to arrive as yourself, then leave with the scene in your wake.