BEING BIKER

An Illustrated History of Motorcycle Culture

ABOUT THIS BOOK

Forget the violence and posturing purveyed in the media - there is a vast hidden truth beyond the biking stereotypes. And this is what I wanted to represent.

I am not famous or in any way elected to speak for bikers. But no matter who I spoke to, bikers, scooterists, trikers or those odd people who don't ride - everyone seemed to have an opinion. Every publisher, large or small, who saw this book praised it. Yet in their view it was not commercial enough. To my mind, that was reason enough for everyone to want to read it...

INTRODUCTION

I was born a third generation biker. Though I never met my paternal grandfather, I knew him through bed-time stories. Rather than being about the three bears, these would be WWII adventures and biking trips…Dad once began:

‘We were on our way to Cleethorpes early one morning in a thick mist . It did not slow us down as we knew the road and it was usually empty. As we thrummed along the concrete surface (bubump, bubump) a grey shaped suddenly appeared right in front of us. A circus was on the move and apparently the elephants preferred to walk - we were heading straight for an elephant’s backside. We swerved at the last second and grand-dad let out a string of abuse. They ploughed through a hedge and into a field. Grand-dad shouted: ‘keep going lad - the gate’s open’…

Even now I can smell that hot, red Indian motorcycle that both dad and granddad had ridden. I adored my dad’s and my brother’s bikes. To me, these were the family jewels. My sister rode too but mostly pillion I think - I can’t recall a bike. My cousin Harry had a bike - and many adult and younger blokes had one for the road and one for ‘the fields’. My uncle, also Harry, was dad's brother and they shared bikes - they bought an army truck once at an auction and it was full of army bikes. Mum’s a law unto herself: she preferred bicycles, saying they are safer. But I’ve managed to mangle myself pretty badly on both.

Dad on his Velocette

My big brother on dad's James

My sister on my brother's scrambler (a Franny Barnet we think)

Throughout my childhood, I naturally wanted a motorcycle more than anything else. In my early teens, I had a paper round and enjoyed work as a Saturday lad at Havenhand’s motorcycle shop in Rotherham. I would sit on bikes that interested me to see how they felt. BSA Super Rocket - a bit tall and heavy, but so sweetly tuned it whistled. A DOT scrambler - ah, riding the muck was where my head was then. The boss and his son told stories as I polished, washed and shifted bikes around. Like the time they had recovered a bike and sidecar after a nasty crash in the days before helmets were compulsory. They found brains between the petrol tank and seat. I was not put off.

Eddy, the kind old mechanic at the bike shop gave me a racing bicycle frame which he’d found dumped. It had no wheels, seat, or other essentials. I scrounged up and repaired the missing parts from the local tip and then spent my work money on new inner-tubes and tyres (total 17/-6d in pre-decimal England). Eventually, the bike was ready to ride; fresh oil streamed over the Campagnolo de-railer and double-clanger; the wheel rims gleamed, a minimalist aluminium bell went ‘ting’, fresh tape smartened the drop handlebars and two aluminium mudguards not much bigger than butter-knife blades perched above the skinniest wheels: there were no lights, thank you very much. This, I dreamed, would satisfy me until I was old enough for a motorcycle.

As I rolled into the street for a test-run, I saw some youths surrounding a kid with an old motorcycle. He’d just paid a fiver for it and they were sniggering at him because it wouldn’t start. He was in a sweat from the effort of kick-starting and looked embarrassed. Being slightly envious of motorcycle ownership I made a joke and said: ‘I’ll swap you’. Seeing an opportunity to get rid of his junk, he said: ‘OK’ and handed it over without so much as waiting to shake on the deal. He pedalled away on the pushbike, laughing like he’d pulled a master stroke. All the kids laughed. I could not believe it as I turned somewhat radiantly to examine my new possession.

Here I was, left in the street with an apparently dead animal and several leering faces. They were anticipating more amusement. But my dad had taught me a few things about bikes and I’d noticed a loose wire. I twisted it back together and swung on the kick-start. The engine rim-bimmed into life and the kids just gaped as I found myself with my first ever biking grin across my face. Two-stroke fuel had never smelt sweeter.

Fate had conspired to deliver my dream right into my hands and I rode valiantly up the garden path with something that constituted more than just an acquisition. This had been a social event. The other kid’s lives stayed the same. Mine was changed forever.

The author, BSA Bantam field bike, circa 1968

*

The questions of when or how someone becomes a biker are comparable with Shamanism or searches in lost worlds. In my mind, I was spiritually already in the biking world before I’d got a bike. Yet even as I pushed that maroon and yellow wreck into the shed, I realised that the journey had only just begun. I had breathed life into the spirit of my dreams. The fire in its lungs was the fire of my passion. But beyond the ride, there now came the politics of ownership. It is along this path that the moment of realisation - that you have become a biker - lies.

It is not a qualification that you are presented with. Like a shooting star, biker status is in constant transience. It is not defined by sentiment or intelligence, but the lucid logic of pure spirit. Rather than just wake up one day and tell yourself you’re a biker, it actually often dawns through the ways in which other riders come to regard you. Despite your own aspirations, their acceptance of yourself marks your arrival. But it is such an ephemeral and sensitive condition. If you expect some rider to knight you and call you: ‘biker’, you’re deluding yourself. The task of name-calling lies with someone outside of biking, whom you might overhear referring to you as: “You know so-and-so...that biker.”

*

To some, the words biker and culture are ill-suited, oxymoronic, even pretentious. But most people recognise that there is a lifestyle, inspired by an ongoing love affair with motorcycles and motorcycling. Bearing testament to this, most areas of motorcycling, from history to heroes, are well documented. However, that certain condition that can only be experienced by those consumed by the biker lifestyle has remained untold. I think in retrospect, that is because like being gypsy, or guitarist, or refugee - such human conditions defy description. They might only be conjured through the mood that comes through within a body of text - a reel of film  - a photo album - or within the way someone talks and or behaves. Even a shed full of bike-related items might tell you the biking story. It is an ethnographic study, but as many now deduce, ethnography, like media studies, is not a precise science or even a field of academic discipline. It is a telling, a story, with which we either engage or repulse emotionally. That's why there's an excess of effusive nonsense spoken about such things.

The mass media seem obsessed with the sensationalised rebel minority image. Academics have done no better, researching deviancy rather than culture. Between them, they have over-looked a hundred years of biking history, and ignored the majority of bikers. More than just re-telling motorcycling histories, this work tries to answer an insistent need among bikers to put their genuine lifestyle into a rational perspective - to write the unwritten without destroying its meaning. The biking culture’s integration with art, literature and music have given it more than just a political mind; it also has a soul, and an intangible tract of intellectual real-estate. Like a sort of mental Marco Polo, this is where I went walkabout...

My aim was to avoid the pitfalls of three extremes; sentimentality, sensationalism and over-intellectualisation. I also wished to help the reader - whoever they are, to draw rational conclusions about the joys, as well as the contentions, of motorcycling. So it is not a sensationalised tale about bikers from elsewhere, who stagger intoxicated and fighting through lives of debauchery. It is about those people who can be seen riding everyday, rain or shine, who celebrate the pure essence of biking. It has been compiled by listening to those who consider themselves bikers, talking about how they live, rather than how they ride.

*

The motorcycle’s aggressive voice demands attention and promises excitement, and the experience of riding can create an emotion close to battle frenzy. But the society founded in biking is more amiable than this might suggest. Biker culture grew out of circumstances both within and outside of biker influence. Its openness has allowed it to survive fashion and other cyclic changes, adding to itself and borrowing from other cultures along the way. Freedom is its most notable and enduring feature. Attempts to found a society in freedom usually fail, or end up making rules that not all agree with. Biker culture has created an intangible mystery, by succeeding without any all-encompassing laws. This apparent chaos is governed by consensus - a mutual, unwritten agreement that is more functional than law; because it is made willingly and freely.

From the pipe-smoking BMW rider to the head-shaved custom fanatic, bikers identify within each other a self-elected citizenship that becomes a familial bond. The riders of trikes and other machines that defy definition, all interact on equal terms. Purists rightly argue that trikes - these other vehicles - are not bikes in a strict sense of the word. But their owners share the same beliefs as those on two wheels, and they add a varied and valid presence to biker society. Unlike the construction of a motorcycle, the separate parts of biker culture can and do exist independently. Yet a single recurring theme predominates. Just as the horse once made a global journey, so too, the motorcycle has been ridden into every stratum of society. This has resulted in a belief that there is one, global biker nation. Among these people is a selfless attitude, a care-free, unaffected humanitarianism that is the biker spirit.

*

While I was still young, a couple of serious biking accidents brought me to a cross-road. The threat of amputation (not to mention death) persuaded me to try something else. That something else would have to be special. You don’t just miss the thrill of the ride; you also go into cultural shock. I became a hippy and hitch-hiked round Europe, where I made a living playing guitar in the street. Then I traded up to an electric guitar and played in rock and blues bands, often to biker audiences. But the bands bled my wallet rather than stuffing it. During the time that I was away from biking, there was a transience that I could not identify. I eventually met a partner, who, I discovered, shared my past interest in bikes. Inexplicably at the time, the new friends we gravitated towards were bikers.

Having quit the bands, I got into college. My studies included photography, and I visited the Sheffield Speedway, simply to capture images of moving objects. As I crouched on the inside of the first bend, the earth-shaking approach of the bikes awakened something inside me. The camera was forgotten as my excited eye followed their rabid progress and a gruff, but boyish Wow tore from my throat. But this was no dewy-eyed reminiscence. I was at the same cross-roads that had changed my life once before. It was spooky yet beautiful, realising that I had a second chance to ride the road I’d missed - and discovering in that same instant that my re-awakened dream had retained all of its former passion. So I did the honourable thing, and got a bike. Back in the saddle, I experienced that indescribable feeling that life had just begun - again. But there was more to it than just biking thrills. I found myself questioning my own integrity for having ever left; because the new biking acquaintances I was making felt like old friends.

So becoming a born-again biker was more than just an acquisition. More than a relived hobby. Once again, the politics of lifestyle followed the ride. I got through college and astonished myself by getting accepted into university. What started as an essay on subculture began to grow out of all proportion. I found that previous studies into biker culture left something to be desired...because the analysis means nothing if the gut feeling is lost - or if the truth is ignored. Having been in, then out, then in again with bikers, I felt able to view the situation objectively.

Their discussions revealed a need to map the thoughts that they have, but are reluctant to speak of. Like me, they don’t see themselves as archetypal bikers. There are no static norms, because we all choose to live differently. Different from mass-society and from each other. Yet our separate paths often converge in a celebration of that choice.

During my earliest biking days I had fancied writing a book; I even kept notes - but I had no idea what it would be about. I just recall it being very bikey, and that it had to be on the level. My rediscovered enthusiasm as a born-again biker now provided the vital spark. It gave me enough momentum to ride many miles and listen to many bikers, in a quest to describe biking Valhalla.

It has been predicted that we will soon be struggling to continue using fossil fuels like petrol. Will that be the death-knell of biker culture? Given the zest and relish with which bikers live, it is unlikely that they could accept the demise of such a life-style. They will struggle and innovate to survive; they always have, which is part of why they are who they are. As I re-edit this in the 21st century, we are already witnessing electric bikes being ridden at the Isle Of Man TT.

I do not presume to be the self-elected mouth-piece of all bikers. Neither is this work meant to be ultimately conclusive. However, as the essential biker ethos emerged, some previously hidden secrets were uncloaking. I now had something that I could put back into that community that has given me so much. Like the jungle, biker is a magical, secret place. Only certain people can survive there, which is why their culture exists. And for those people, these two words will be familiar:

RIDE FREE

Alex Oliver

Sheffield 1997