PART ONE:

THE EVOLUTION OF BIKER CULTURE

HOW AND WHY IT ALL BEGAN

Past cultures have been built slowly, on factors like how close people live to each other, religious beliefs and even war. But when Biker culture arrived, it represented a new cultural concept. It came about in a time when travel over greater distances was becoming more accessible and considerably faster than by horse or walking. Thus it evolved in more than one place at the same time. Also in those days, the media had suddenly consisted not only of the effective printing press, but also of radio and then television. These catapulted biking into the midst of distant alien cultures. Biking grew at an unprecedented and rapid rate beyond the ‘international’ and became globalised. Among other things, it was this rapid spread and growth of a new social identity (associated with a machine) that created problems, as the world’s collective brain slowly adjusted.

Besides originating in different places, biking was assumed by people from different walks of life. They had no distinctive features like class, skin colour or skeletal structure as ancient tribes have. Yet Biker culture’s convergent evolution has produced people who are socially very much alike, even in a global context: Comparatively, note how Cowboys, Indians, Mongols and Equestrians all differ greatly in an ethnic context, even though they all share the culture of the horse.

Human cultures usually have great leaders, who either instigate particular movements or are elected to higher positions. Although biking has its prominent personalities, they have always preferred to retain an equal status to other bikers. Pomp and ceremony are anathema to the biking ethos - despite the opinionated riders of certain marques.

Because the essence of biking is mobility, it can be viewed as a throw-off from the universal impulse to travel. Ever since the Big Bang, the universe and everything in it has been travelling. Humans have had to get up and go in order to survive and travel has been responsible for the creation and merging of many cultures.

Although bikers mostly live in permanent dwellings, their culture can be likened to nomadism, because it came together and grew out on the road - and in the many different places where bikers congregated. It was therefore in direct conflict with the way in which other cultures of the late 19th century were being formulated. During this time, Romanies were becoming less and less welcome on the highways and byways. This made it bad timing indeed to be founding a travelling society. True nomads build their lives around Romany-like trading, or the search for food, sometimes dependent on the seasons. Rather than being governed by life’s essentials, travelling motorcyclists assumed their mobility in the search for the perfect road - and for each other. As biking gathered popularity and found its own meeting-places, it became free from the constraints and patterns of geographically static human relationships. A new cultural genre had emerged through mechanised travel, in the pursuit of leisure. The owners of other self-propelled vehicles were behaving similarly; however, their conveyances eventually became accepted by the authorities and public alike. Not so the motor bicycle.

As intelligent beings, people have surpassed the wheel, because the instincts to create works of art and build functional items became naturally integrated. Through that process, human imagination has woven the sparkling threads of culture around the phenomenon of kinetics - the ornate yet rideable custom bike is one example of this. From racing circuits to the back-streets, biking has become a part of human social history. Voltaire said: “If there hadn’t been a God, we’d have invented one.” Out of a more quintessential need, we invented the bike.

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Many cultures pass through time along blood lines. This is not the norm among bikers, whose affectation more often comes from an encounter with a motorcycle; at any time of life. It is from here that a kind of folk lore becomes absorbed by the apprenticed rider. Even though it can provide gainful employment, no individual or group of riders has ever depended solely on biking for survival. Therefore, social conditions have never enforced biking, as they have done with mining, fishing and other work-oriented societies. Neither is there any compulsion to hand it down, as might be found in a religious or tribal belief. Outside of a need for cheap transport, which often delivers people to the same end, taking up biking and then acquiring the lifestyle is more a random selection, made freshly by each individual as they pick up the torch. The result of this is a lateral, rather than a consecutive journey through time. Biker culture has spread outwards from various epicentres, and is better aligned with the randomness of nature, than the conformity of civilisation.

Because biker culture grew by accident rather than by design, there was no need for any rules; yet there is a code of conduct. This is enacted as an improvisation; the guidance of the wise, the code of the road - which is common sense gilded by humanitarianism. It was borrowed from the aeons of other traveling cultures that had gone before; like the Romanies, or the gentlemen of the road - yet had never been written. Indeed latterly motorcyclists became known as knights of the road.

Just why a biking culture came to exist rests in two basic factors. Firstly, when like-minded people get together in leisure time, which is often creative, they naturally develop a degree of camaraderie. Secondly, biking’s position as a public activity caused reactions - often negative - within greater society. This tested the resolve of early bikers, who, as people will, also join forces against adversity. Rather than causing biking to dissipate, the anti-biking force strengthened it. The commonalities between the isolated groups of like-types and the oppression they faced were what caused their culture to evolve through local, national and international phases into a global entity.

Biking began, not with a social misfit trying to burn out and die young, but with an erstwhile venture into the pure delight that vehicular motion inspires. It is in this condition that every biker finds an inner-self and sense of belonging, and where biker culture founded itself.

A Personal Perspective on Nomadism

Having previously travelled much, the last thirty years of my life have been spent in one city; but not all endured at the same address. It started with a series of bed-sits (about four) and then shared houses (another five). A further two private addresses include the one where I wrote this book and now write this additional note. Contrastingly, over the time I have been le incline to move house, travels abroad have ramped up massively; Africa twice, India three times, Cambodia twice, Nepal twice, the Isle of Man twice, Scotland, Costa Rica and Peru. Throughout all of this and more, I have felt welcome, even loved, but never a true spiritual belonging.

I first attempted to leave home (I seem to recall a frustration with school) aged about five. I packed a tiny suitcase with the spanners and tools that dad allowed me to use, with the intention of finding employ as a handyman. I had had all my Corgi and Dinky cars apart and put them back together (ish) and knew much more having watched every fuse-change, door-knob mend, saw-cut and whatever over dad’s shoulder. Mum had taught me to mend and cook and my brother and sister were never short on advice. So I was pretty much prepared for the world. I would get a motorbike or a van eventually. Meantime, I stood at the end of the street and hitch-hiked. Unfortunately, adults in the 1950s were not prepared enough to know they should stop and probably offer me a job as well as a lift. Such folly has retarded my progress ever since.

As I approached my teens, I begged for a bicycle but had to make do with a scooter (you stand on a platform with one foot and push against the floor with the other). It rendered a two-wheel sensation but wasn’t going to get me to the seaside in a hurry. I had the great fortune to befriend a dog that belonged to the local priest, Father Woodhouse. Being brought up in that religion I knew the man (a good violinist by the way) and I offered to walk Laddie, the roug collie should he ever be too busy. I walked the dog's legs off. It got me past the end of the street and into strange places – strange because they were new to me and had their own character. Barnsley, Wentworth, Hoyland, Wath – all the places in between.

While other kids played footy against someone’s wall, I was off talking with tramps, milkmen, farmers – anyone I encountered on the road. And I can remember many of those encounters and walks even now. There was a tramp with red hair and beard, bowler hat and herringbone great coat who guessed my weight just by picking me up. He somehow had a knack (possibly some trade?) whereby he knew the weight of many things and could guesstimate accurately. It cost me a penny later as I checked with a weighing machine (this was pre-bathroom scales days). He was correct to the nearest ounce.

Anyway, he recalled times before the railway ran through Kilnhurst, when horses were more common than cars. Drovers and travellers came and went with the seasons, horse fairs were big-time and while it was not all rosy, people cared about where they were. He would look at the sky and plants and animals and give me a weather forecast. It was almost like he commanded nature, but actually he respected and knew it very well. He treated me as an equal, where other adults would be bemused, annoyed or somehow lofty about some kid in a short-trousers. A series came on TV for a while called ‘The Littlest Hobo’ and I empathised with the boy and his roaming canine friend before the opening credits had ended. But then I was disappointed as the story lines were totally unreal, trumped up media bosh that posed as entertainment. Sitting on a couch might entertain some, but even sitting writing this is driving me crazy. One day the tramp just wasn’t there any more, so I moved on, feeling a little low.

Moving on or running away as some people see it, is a crucial moment. After we loose a loved one, we’re supposed to move on. But when we avoid some issue, we’re accused of running away. It’s all in the perspective. To me, my travels weren’t running away – I’d found something more useful to do with my time than to even get involved in whatever others were doing. I only latterly understood games and the outcome, win or lose. What I hated was the way others cheated to win or lost with no dignity. If it’s a game , where’s all your self respect, your respect for others? I decided very very young I was having nothing to do with games. Moving on is a bit like winning. It means you aren’t somehow nailed to people whom you cannot even trust.

The point is that while others were perhaps taking root amongst each other, I was off exploring anywhere for the simple reason that I’d never been there before. Through this I was encountering people, animals, objects and places with whom or which my relationships would be casual, fleeting, open and mostly light-humoured. As I entered my teens I would wag off school and explore, often on my own.

I eventually hitch-hiked for real and a stream of drivers, café staff and other out there people became enmeshed in my tangled psyche. My first proper hitch-hike took an eternity (thirty six hours to get from Sheffield to St Ives – all those peculiar street names and it was just so - Cornish. Oddly, I might often declare in my mind that these new places were where I’d come and live. On occasion I did. Beaconsfield, Birmingham, Portsmouth. But there was no hearth as it were - and yet neither did I yearn for Ryecroft where I was born. All parental and familial love aside, nothing called me back.

All these strangers I was meeting would discuss often deep and private matters with me – as I would them. There is a saying about how it is sometimes easier to tell a stranger about your secrets or what you feel deep inside. Gosh, what I have learned in confidence. Maybe this is how confessionals work in churches, it helps to purge the spirit by sharing burdens. This too is perhaps how songs become useful not just as a cathartic for the performer, but also as a release for the audience.

This pattern of travel kept me feeling free. I valued the friendships I garnered on the way. But try as I might, I could not connect with the land enough to want to stay, or feel compelled. Is it in the genes, or maybe it was nurture created through my earlier exploits? I look out of the window as I write and there are two bikes in the shed ready to clear off – although we come back to the same shed. I cannot sense my forefathers unless I’m out playing or riding. As Tony Mcphee once sang, ‘I’m not drunk I’m just dissatisfied’. In the motorcycle, think I can say that I’ve found a balance between hopeless wandering and getting in a rut. And I recall mum saying something about home is where the heart is.