The Panerai watch that comes with an ass-kicking

Receive free Watches updates We’ll send you a myFT Daily Digest email rounding up
the latest Watches news every morning. Beneath the watchful eye of Brindisi’s
towering stone memorial to lost first world war mariners, a lone rower skims across
the still waters of the city’s harbour. It’s a beautiful day and tourists stroll
the palm-lined quayside in the late summer’s afternoon sun. But the rower isn’t the
only one on the water. Also in harbour is an Italian warship, the 133m-long ITS San
Giorgio. Inside, waiting to launch, is an amphibious assault vehicle, and inside
her, like a Russian doll, I find myself crammed shoulder to shoulder with my fellow
mates. The vehicle’s rear door is closed and we are plunged into total darkness.
The engine starts and for a moment the only thing to permeate the black is the roar
of its 525hp engine and escaping diesel fumes. Luxury brands have long offered
special gifts for favoured clients and friends. But this “backstage visit” is in an
altogether different league. For one thing, it’s not intended for business clients
at all – but rather for customers, in this case those of the watchmaker Panerai who
have paid £47,500 for the Submersible Forze Speciali Experience Special
Edition, a diving watch that comes with the privilege of having your ass kicked by
the Italian special forces. Panerai’s Submersible Forze Speciali Experience Special
Edition © Courtesy of Panerai We lurch forwards as the tracks grind down the ramp
into the water. I reach for something to grab but too late, I’m in the lap of the
person in front of me, then thrown back again. I am disorientated in the darkness
as the driver powers us across the water, and the first wave of seasickness takes
hold. My stomach is not as resolute as it might have been, lunch having been the
few spoons of Italian combat rations that I could force down. Coming from a country
famed for its cucina, the tin of medaglioni di carne bovina in gelatina (beef
medallions in jelly) was something of a disappointment. Panerai has a long history
with the Italian Navy, having been its official supplier of waterproof timepieces
in the ’30s, but this is the first time the Marina Militare has opened its doors
for a collaboration like this. At first they were not keen on the idea. “When we
first contacted them in 2018, the conversation took us 30 seconds because they told
us, ‘We’re not Disneyland. We are serious people,’” says Panerai’s CEO Jean-Marc
Pontroué. “To be accepted, we had to go back to them to explain the historical
background.” Other Panerai experiences have taken clients to Bora Bora with the
French freediver Guillaume Néry and the Grand Tetons with the climber and
photographer Jimmy Chin. Coming up will be experiences with the US Navy Seals and a
trip to the Arctic with polar explorer Mike Horn. The goal is ultimately to put on
about five experiences a year. My compatriots are a mix of CEOs, lawyers, tech
entrepreneurs, investors and collectors from around the globe, some of them square-
jawed alpha males. But not all. Others have been gifted the experience by
a generous employer, relative or partner. And it’s clear not everyone has followed
the advance training plan. One tells me the only exercise he does is swimming and
basketball, neither of which will be helpful for what lies ahead. The experience
begins with a welcome dinner among the traditional limestone Trulli houses of
Alberobello. At 08:00 hours the next morning we are on parade at the force’s
Carlotto base. The scene is somewhere between Full Metal Jacket and Dad’s Army as
our motley crew stands to attention for the national anthem, the raising of
the flag and an address by the brigade commander, Rear Admiral Massimiliano
Giuseppe Grazioso. He welcomes us, the way Marines like to welcome guests, by
ordering us to do 20 press-ups.  Over the next 48 hours we are thrown into the life
of the Marina Militare. There are rides on a high-speed assault craft and machine-
gun-mounted armoured vehicles, and low-level flying aboard an NH90 helicopter,
which are only just on the right side of the fun-terrifying spectrum. There
is hand-to-hand combat training with a man who looks like he’d slit my throat in
the blink of an eye and an introduction to close-quarter combat during which, in my
enthusiasm, I manage to shoot the hostage, albeit with a replica. To keep things
authentic, there are plenty more press-ups, often in the heat of the day and while
wearing 10kg of body armour. It is tough, even for those execs with ripped abs and
gym-pumped arms, but absolutely brutal for those who were given the experience as a
surprise. But the experience isn’t all physical. Dinner at the end of the first day
is at the beachside fish restaurant Saleblu, whose wooden decking and canvas shades
give it the feeling of a sailboat at sea. Over gnocchi and cuttlefish with white-
chocolate mousse to follow, Panerai’s CMO Alessandro Ficarelli explains that the
whole point of the experience is to offer something “you cannot find on Google”.
Recommended Of course, there are travel operators for high-net-worth individuals
like Cookson Adventures and Pelorus who specialise in taking clients – often led by
ex-special forces types – to the remotest corners of the globe by superyachts and
helicopters. And there are brands that have farmed out their star athletes to
paying clients, such as Red Bull, which sells an ascent of Mont Blanc with the
former Gurkha and record-breaking Himalayan climber Nirmal Purja. But in the luxury
watch market, there is something unique about what Panerai is doing.  Is it worth
it? Among the paying clients, one who is struggling to walk says, “Absolutely.” A
German plumber from Munich in designer jeans pulls a face. “The heart says yes, the
head no,” he says. For details of the next Panerai experience, go to panerai.com

Jerry Lee Lewis: a thrilling one-of-a-kind showman who was mired in scandal

In October 1973, Jerry Lee Lewis was booked to play a showcase gig at the Roxy, a
newly opened LA club that immediately attracted a clientele heavy on rock stars:
among its co-owners were David Geffen, Neil Young’s manager, Elliot Roberts, and
the famed producer Lou Adler. Lewis was, in theory at least, in the throes of
another comeback. He had just completed work on an album called The Session,
recorded in London with an all-star backing band: Kenney Jones of the Faces, Rory
Gallagher and Peter Frampton among them. By all accounts the sessions hadn’t gone
terribly well. Propped up by booze and amphetamines, Lewis’s behaviour was
volatile: Rory Gallagher recalled that whenever something displeased him, Lewis
would reach for his sock, where, it was believed, he concealed a gun. Still, the
combined contemporary star power of his guests helped the album to Lewis’s highest
US chart placing in a decade. But if Lewis was pleased about the attention paid to
him by a younger generation of musicians, he had a funny way of showing it: when
John Lennon walked into the Roxy that night, Lewis stopped playing and began
berating him from the stage: “[he] started on about how the Beatles were shit and
the Stones were shit and there ain’t nobody could play real rock’n’roll the way
Jerry Lee could,” recalled Gallagher. For his part, Lennon seemed entirely
unbothered. After the show, he walked into Lewis’s dressing room, dropped to his
knees and kissed his feet, before asking for an autograph from the man he called
“the real king of rock’n’roll”. It’s an incident that tells you something about
Jerry Lee Lewis himself, but a lot more about the kind of reverence in which he was
held by people who could remember the impact of his early singles. Sixty years on,
it’s hard to imagine what music as feral and raw as Whole Lotta Shakin’ Goin’ On or
Great Balls Of Fire must have sounded like to a kid in late-50s Britain, not that
long after rationing had ended. Just a year before, pop music had meant Doris Day
and Ronnie Hilton and Winifred Atwell: it was cosy light entertainment, aimed at
adults, who’d lived through the second world war and wanted a quiet life. But now
it meant this: a man who appeared to be genuinely unhinged – who had apparently
earned the nickname “The Killer” after he attempted to strangle one of his high
school teachers with his own tie – kicking his stool away, pounding the keyboard
with his heel and leaping on top of the piano, playing music that was intense,
visceral, sexual and completely incomprehensible to anyone over the age of 20, the
sound of a generation gap being torn open. But you can get an idea from the way
musicians who were kids then behaved around Jerry Lee Lewis decades later. Lennon
kissed his feet; when Elton John – who happily admitted his debt to Lewis’s playing
and his brand of showmanship – was finally ushered into Lewis’s presence backstage
at a US festival in 2015, he was, it was reported, visibly shaking with nerves.
Jerry Lee Lewis at Wembley Stadium. Photograph: Chris Foster/REX/Shutterstock It’s
tempting to say that the music he recorded at Sun Studios between 1956 and 57 was
so potent and impactful that it rendered Lewis weirdly bulletproof. That’s
certainly one explanation of how he survived enough personal scandal to destroy
anyone else’s career several times over. As the journalist Nick Kent noted, Nick
Tosches’ masterly Lewis biography Hellfire was a book in which “havoc inevitably
reigns: in-laws go mad or become accident statistics, offspring die horrible,
mangled deaths, wives drown or suffer inexplicable fatal overdoses … record people
are terrorized, audiences verbally and physically attacked, promoters bankrupted,
journalists threatened with broken bottles … while The Killer just keeps on
rocking”. He liked to tell people he had served his musical apprenticeship in a
juke joint in his home town of Ferriday, Louisiana, called Haney’s Big House: “the
evilest, baddest, lowest fighting– and –killingest place on Earth”. What he learned
there is a moot point. The sound of raw black rhythm and blues ran through his
playing, but Lewis was never big on naming his influences, although he would
occasionally confess a fondness for Moon Mullican, the self-styled “King Of The
Hillbilly Piano Players” who claimed his music could “make them goddam beer bottles
bounce on the table”. If he thought he was going to follow Mullican’s career path,
however, he was mistaken: before he fetched up at Sam Phillips’s Sun Studios, Lewis
moved to Nashville, but was rejected by every bastion of country music, including
the Grand Ole Opry and the Louisiana Hayride. But he fitted perfectly into the
febrile, risk-taking atmosphere of Sun’s golden age. A blues fan, Sam Phillips had
started out largely recording black performers, but having discovered Elvis
Presley, increasingly concentrated on artists who muddied the boundaries between
R&B, country and hillbilly music. It was at Sun that Lewis’s mercurial
unpredictability was noticed by Phillips, who responded by simply keeping the tapes
running until something happened – these were the circumstances in which Whole
Lotta Shakin’ Going On was captured – and it was at Sun that the stage-shy Lewis
was encouraged to put on more of a show by his label mates Johnny Cash and Carl
Perkins, advice he ran with in no uncertain terms. It took one frenzied appearance
amid the comedians and variety acts on Steve Allen’s Sunday night TV show to turn
Lewis into a national star, but he worked incessantly, taping a phenomenal quantity
of music in a short space of time: in addition to his own recordings, he added
piano to tracks by Perkins and Billy Lee Riley, changing the sound of rockabilly in
the process. It was as if, for all his bluster – and Lewis was never reserved when
it came to proclaiming his singular genius – Lewis thought his time in the
spotlight might be short-lived. For one thing, rock’n’roll was still thought of as
a passing fad. And then there was Johnny Cash’s theory: the God-fearing Lewis was
tormented by the belief his music was sinful and leading both him and his audience
to eternal damnation. In the end, it was something more prosaic that did for him:
the discovery by the British press in 1958 that he had married his 13-year-old
cousin Myra Gale Brown. The reality was even more shocking. Lewis was also a
bigamist: his divorce from his second wife, Jane Mitchum, had not been finalised
when he married Brown, just as his divorce from his first wife, Dorothy Barton, had
not been finalised when he married Mitchum. In the aftermath of the scandal, his
career plummeted. Lewis scored a solitary hit single in 1961, a cover of Ray
Charles’s What’d I Say, but his records were blacklisted, and the fees he could
command for live performances slashed: “He went from making $100 a week to $100,000
a week and right back again,” noted Adam Fields, the producer of the 1989 Lewis
biopic Great Balls of Fire, “and I don’t think he’s ever understood why.” He
changed labels, and made records under pseudonyms to little effect, his woes
compounded by changing tastes and the arrival of the British Invasion. Jerry Lee
Lewis in 1968. Photograph: ITV/Rex/Shutterstock At his lowest point in 1964, a
German producer taped his performance backed by the Nashville Teens at Hamburg’s
Live at the Star Club, ironically one of the Beatles’ pre-fame haunts. Roughly
recorded, it captured the astonishing sound of Lewis with his back against the
wall. Audibly accelerated by something – whether rage, bitterness or chemicals –
it’s a performance of scarcely believable ferocity: from the first note, the
backing musicians struggle to keep up with him. The end result is undoubtedly the
greatest album Lewis ever put his name to. It may well also be the greatest live
album ever made or the greatest rock’n’roll album of all time: whichever you
choose, it’s an implausibly thrilling listen. But it did nothing to help his cause
back home: Live at the Star Club wasn’t even released in the US. Instead, he
resurrected his career by concentrating on the country music that had always formed
part of his repertoire: even amid the madness of the Star Club performance, he
found time to play Hank Williams’s Your Cheatin’ Heart. His country recordings were
tough and sparse, at odds with the late-60s trend for slickness. They were also
hugely successful: cannily repackaged, even country tracks he’d cut in the 50s at
Sun became belated hits. He was invited to the Grand Ole Opry and, clearly still
stung by the memory of his earlier rejection, gave a spectacularly disdainful
performance, ignoring demands that he avoid his rock’n’roll songs, performing for
40 minutes instead of his allotted eight, and announcing to the audience that he
was “a rock’n’rolling, country and western, rhythm and blues singing motherfucker”.
He was not asked back. Lewis spent the rest of his life alternating between country
and rock’n’roll, the latter frequently at the behest of artists at least a
generation younger than him: his hit 2006 album Last Man Standing saw him duetting
with an all-star cast that included Mick Jagger, Bruce Springsteen, Jimmy Page and
Rod Stewart, a formula its follow-up, Mean Old Man repeated. His personal life
remained as terrifyingly chaotic as ever. At his 41st birthday party in 1976, he
shot his bass player, Norman Owens, apparently by accident: later the same year, he
was arrested outside Elvis Presley’s home Graceland after drunkenly crashing his
car – which had a loaded gun on its dashboard – into the gates. He was plagued by
health issues: in 1981, a ruptured stomach nearly killed him. A 1984 Rolling Stone
investigation baldly accused him of abusing his fourth wife, Jaren Gunn, and of
having some involvement in the death of his fifth, Shawn Stephens, although the
allegations were unverified. Then there was the saga
of his cousin Jimmy Swaggart, the televangelist who became embroiled in sex
scandals involving prostitutes: “we all got our urges,” offered Lewis in his
defence. Somehow, Lewis’s career kept going: he even seemed to find some kind of
stability towards the end of his life, with his seventh wife Judith Brown, although
his ability to alarm interviewers remained fully intact. He released records
intermittently, but remained a huge draw live. By 2019, he was one of the last
living links to the 50s rock’n’roll explosion still regularly performing, although
he would doubtless have told you that he was without peer even when the rest of
them were alive. “There ain’t never been anyone as good as me,” he said in the late
80s. “There ain’t never been anyone who could cut me, boy.” Certainly, there was
never anyone like him, although plenty of artists followed in his wake, either
energised by the astonishing music he made in the 1950s, or hypnotised by his stage
presence, or seduced by the notion of the rock star as a terrifying, ungovernable
force of nature, a notion he more or less invented. “I don’t have nothing to prove
to nobody,” he once noted. “I just like to kick ass is all.”

Fed up with L.A.'s skyrocketing rent, they embraced communal living

When Faith Blakeney, an interior designer known for her all-embracing, soulful
interiors, first laid eyes on a charming Spanish rental in Culver City three years
ago, the single mother was living with her daughter, Noa, in a 600-square-foot
granny flat in Palms. “We lived in an attic,” clarifies Noa, now 16. “I had been
dreaming of a house,” Blakeney recalls. “My boyfriend and I had been hunting for a
house for a while. When I saw the turmeric-colored rental, I thought, ‘This is the
house.’ I sat on the curb outside the house and prayed. I envisioned us in the
house. I manifested the house. The neighbors must have thought I was crazy.” Faith
Blakeney and her daughter, Noa, at home. (Mariah Tauger / Los Angeles Times) Her
manifestation worked. After calling the homeowners and sending them a portfolio
filled with photographs, their personal history — even their credit scores —
Blakeney, 45, got the three-bedroom rental, even though it was a huge leap of
faith, financially speaking. “For the first time in 10 years, I would have my own
bedroom, a bathtub and a washer and dryer,” says Blakeney. The house also would
allow her to set up her design studio in the two-car garage behind the house. Noa
was excited to be able to have friends over. “I’d never had a yard before,” she
says. “Our place was so small, my mom was sleeping on the floor.” “I slept in a
niche off of the living room,” her mother elaborates. “It was incredibly charming.
It wasn’t high enough for a bed so I put a mattress on the floor. It wasn’t as sad
as it sounds. But yes, I slept there for 10 years.” Several months later, when
Blakeney and her boyfriend “lovingly uncoupled,” the designer found herself in a
difficult situation. “I was terrified,” she says. “Even sharing the rent with
someone else, I was paying 2.5 times more rent than before. I knew that I needed to
stay in the house for continuity for my daughter. But I also knew very clearly that
I needed to find someone to help.” Interior designer Faith Blakeney inside her
bedroom. (Mariah Tauger / Los Angeles Times) Blakeney had always wanted to
experiment with communal living. She had grown up that way in Berkeley with her two
siblings, including Justina Blakeney of Jungalow fame. “We always had family
staying with us,” she says. “In my soul, I’m a kibbutznik: I get nurtured and
nourished by having people around.” Even though it was unconventional, she was
excited by the prospect of living with a housemate. She also was concerned. “I
wasn’t going to accept anyone into the house,” she says. “That person was going to
have to be special and accepting of moving in with me and my daughter.” For teenage
Noa, her mother’s predicament was embarrassing. “None of her friends lived in a
situation like this,” says Blakeney. Details inside the bedroom of interior
designer Faith Blakeney, including a plant by the windowsill, left, and assorted
colorful clothing, right, hanging in the hallway. (Mariah Tauger / Los Angeles
Times) Blakeney cast a wide net, by reaching out to friends and posting on Spare
Room, an online roommate-finding site. “I talked to several people and even had
people approach me who were single parents,” she says. “Some men applied, and while
I thought it might be nice to have some male energy in the house, I didn’t think
that would work.” Many of the people who inquired were college-age students. “There
are less people in our age range who are doing the housemate thing,” she says. “ A
lot are put off by the stigma. It’s time to shake things up a bit!” After a mutual
friend connected Blakeney with Sally Montana, a German-born photographer who splits
her time between Los Angeles and New York, the two of them met over Skype and
Blakeney offered her a virtual tour. Roommates and friends Sally Montana, left, and
Faith Blakeney share a laugh. (Mariah Tauger / Los Angeles Times) “Sally literally
showed up on our doorstep with two suitcases,” says Noa. “I’m so glad she did; she
makes our house feel like home.” Despite the fact that both of them are fire signs,
Blakeney and Montana are opposites. Blakeney is an extrovert. Montana is an
introvert. Montana is a neatnik and Blakeney and Noa are … less so. While Blakeney
likes to blast music and dance, Montana likes her time alone. As a student and
assistant instructor with the Chinese Hawaiian Kenpo Academy in New York City, she
can often be found practicing karate in the living room. Yet despite their
differences, the creative freelancers have come to appreciate many of the same
things: friends, family and Noa. Montana, who regularly practices karate in the
living room, is a student and assistant instructor with the Chinese Hawaiian Kenpo
Academy in New York City. (Mariah Tauger / Los Angeles Times) Asked if people
questioned her decision to move in with a single mother and a 13-year-old, Montana
admits she was nervous but has come to enjoy the co-housing dynamic. “I never
wanted kids,” says Montana, 44. “But I’ve enjoyed having the slightest impact on
Noa. I didn’t have a circle of women growing up. I wish I did.” Blakeney views
their differences as an opportunity to grow and understand others. “If I had it my
way, I’d start my day blasting music, dancing and talking loud on the phone.
Instead, I wake up and I’m quiet. I put my headset on, I go on a walk and try to
honor their vibe. It doesn’t always work. They have to be patient with me and honor
my vibe too. It’s great practice for being out in the world: You’re not always
going to be around people who are like you.” “Before, I used to hole up in my
apartment,” Montana says. Now, she is more social and appreciates having people
around. “When I came home from a business trip recently, people were in the
backyard for a birthday party, laughing and having fun. There was leftover food. It
was a nice feeling.” Likewise, Blakeney came home and heard laughing in the yard.
“Sally was having a full moon bonfire … with my mother,” Blakeney says, laughing.
“I feel like Faith’s parents adopted me,” adds Montana. “How could I not?”
Blakeney’s mother, Ronnie, responds with a warm smile. Faith Blakeney, right, with
design assistant Lena LaTour, has transformed the garage into a workspace. (Mariah
Tauger / Los Angeles Times) It’s obvious from what you see in the home, which is
nestled on a tree-lined street, that Blakeney is interested in creating a relaxed,
lived-in bohemian vibe for herself and her family. The house is filled with art,
colorful kantha throws, houseplants and vintage furnishings and accessories. The
kitchen, which is also filled with art, stands out for its black-and-white
checkered flooring, pink walls and a vintage brass pendant she found on the online
vintage marketplace Chairish. The cozy chair in the living room, left, and the
breakfast nook, right, colorfully decorated. (Mariah Tauger / Los Angeles Times)
“I’ve always been a treasure hunter since I was very young,” Blakeney says. “My
father used to take me to the auction house to buy furniture for our home, and our
family home was full of antiques, and so through the years I’ve collected art and
furniture. In our kitchen, we don’t have any new plates or silverware. They are all
vintage. It’s a fun hodgepodge, and every time a glass breaks at a party, I
consider it an opportunity to go search for new, more awesome cups. That’s how our
whole house is. There is very little that is precious.” Darby Saxbe, director of
the USC Center for the Changing Family, isn’t surprised to hear of the women’s
living arrangement. “It’s a positive trend in my mind,” Saxbe says. “We are not
built to live the kind of lonely, isolated lives that you so often see in a car-
centric city like Los Angeles. Co-housing circles us back to earlier modes of
living where we formed community bonds that can be interdependent and help with
things like childcare.” Faith Blakeney and daughter Noa have some fun making a
video at their home in Culver City. (Mariah Tauger / Los Angeles Times) “I think
the pandemic was a wake-up call for a lot of people,” Saxbe continues. “When we
were in lockdown, people felt even lonelier and it led them to take stock and be
more mindful about building connections. Home prices and commuting have made us
more isolated and separated.” (According to a recent report by the listing portal
Rent, about half of the 100 most expensive cities for rent in the U.S. are in
California.) Blakeney agrees. “I’ve lived in Berkeley, Italy, New York and Los
Angeles, and one thing I learned during the pandemic is that people are really
alone here,” she says. “People are isolated, and it’s ironic because we spend so
much of our time and energy and money trying to live on our own. People want a
house and don’t want to share their apartment. The next thing you know, you’re
alone every day. You’re working your ass off to pay for it. I feel like we got it
all wrong. And it’s costly to us. Not only financially, but to our mental health.”
Now that the three women have fallen into a comfortable rhythm, the hardest part is
deciding what’s next. Faith Blakeney, left, daughter Noa and roommate Sally Montana
at their home in Culver City. (Mariah Tauger / Los Angeles Times) “At a certain
point, Noa and I will grow out of this space, and I definitely see us moving out
sooner than later,” says Blakeney, who is in a relationship. “I see this as a
really beautiful moment and opportunity to have the kind of experimental co-living
that I’ve always dreamt of. I’ve found I love it and it works. I can see exploring
this kind of living situation in the future.” Montana sees herself splitting her
time between Los Angeles and New York for a while. “When I’m here, this feels like
home,” she says. “When I’m in New York, that feels like home.” For now, their
living situation “feels natural and healthy for all three of us,” Blakeney says.
When the women moved in together in February 2020, they were
struggling. Three years later, their careers are flourishing. Sally Montana, left,
Faith Blakeney and Faith’s daughter, Noa, hang art in the living room of their
Culver City house. (Mariah Tauger / Los Angeles Times) “We could live separately
and comfortably right now,” Blakeney says. “But we love our living situation. It’s
an empowered choice. We are choosing to be here.”