Customer Reviews

The Bikeriders

5 star:		(12)
4 star:		(6)
3 star:		(1)
2 star:		(0)
1 star:		(0)

 

 

This is a cool book. Great pictures and good copy although I would have liked more details. In that it was primarily written about the Mid-West, it focuses on the OUTLAWS MC and the roots of the club. It's always good to find information about other 1% clubs (since the HELLS ANGELS MC has always been the major focus of most "outlaw biker books"), however more details on other clubs would have been a plus. It does remind one that there was a time when the OUTLAWS and ANGELS could ride and party together and didn't feel a need to shoot each other on sight. It's also helps us remember that the early outlaws bikers didn't all ride Harleys. While I believe the book's a little pricey, if you're into Outlaw Bikers, this should be in your collection.

If you're interested in bikes, the biker lifestyle, or how the 'outlaw' subculture developed, you must invest in this book. Danny Lyon rode with the Chicago Outlaws in the early sixties and his photographs form a unique visual documentary about the life of the early bike rebels. The photographs are superb; the accompanying texts revealing and fascinating. If nothing else, this book illustrates the origins of the Harley-Davidson 'chopper' and the prevalence of British bikes in motorsport 40 years ago. Simply one of - if not the - finest books on motorcycle culture ever published.

More a photography book than anything but also has interviews with the people who grace these pages. Chronicles the early years of the Outlaws MC, the pics in this book are amazing. The bridge being ridden across in the photo "Crossing the Ohio River" which is considered by many to be the greatest motorcycle photograph ever is about a five minute ride from where I once lived. Every time I rode across that bridge I thought about that pic. The Bikeriders is one of the few, if not the only, non-sensationalized books having to do with outlaw motorcycle clubs.

An amazing collection of incredible photography from an almost undocumented era in American motorcycling. Powerful, moving, deeply authentic.

Throughout history, there have always been people who felt that they had nothing left to lose. People who had come to the conclusion that polite society was just a whitewash over something that was rotten to the core. Often, they decided this during very hard childhoods, as they found themselves betrayed by parents who were themselves just too screwed up to love their children.

Arriving at 18, mad at the world, a fast bike and a wide-open horizon look pretty good to these people; and if you don't care whether you live or die, you ride that bike fast and crazy and you grab whatever goodies life has to offer, legal or not.

I was deeply saddened and powerfully moved by the images in this book. Again and again I got the impression that these are people who are riding away from something as fast as they can, in the ultimately futile hope of outrunning whatever it is. I'd be willing to bet that the pirates of 300 years ago had a similar look in their eyes; a look of sadness and desperation, mixed with the ferocity of an incurable anger.

The photographs are works of high art, and from the perspective of a lifelong motorcyclist, it is wonderful to see choppers that were actually built by their owners rather than bought out of a catalog by people who are "squares" 5 days a week. These images remind us of why we motorcyclists got the reputation we're trying to live down; and despite my sadness for the messed up lives I see here, like everyone else I have to look at this book. Nothing is quite as fascinating as the freedom, the tragedy, the passion and the sadness that comes from having nothing to lose in a society that judged mercilessly without wanting to know what they were judging.

Give a copy of this book to your white-collar buddy with the store-bought $35,000 bar bike; it might give him a little more understanding of who he thinks he's trying to be.

I purchased this to give to a friend who is just getting into riding, to give him an idea of what it was like 'back in the day'. When it arrived, I opened it to take a look at it and looking out of these old photos were the faces of some of the people that I had known back in the early and mid 60's......

To make a long story short, I let him take a look at the new book that I had bought myself...and kept it.

Amazing pictures! Looking back into the past is alway problematic as our vision of "how things were" rarely jive with reality. We carry pictures in our minds of people and incidents from our past, but when confronted with real images it's a bit of a shocker.

Danny sure drives that nail home with this book.

Danny Lyon was a young photographer, living in Chicago in the mid-1960s, and went with a friend to a biker's outing in Wisconsin. He eventually immersed himself in this subculture of men, women and bikes, creating photos that are now an archaeological document of a lost time.

Not only are the photos provocative and fascinating, but Lyon writes with a grace and brevity that remind me of Ernest Hermingway (another Chicagoan). Here is one sample:

"Back then in Chicago, they had a lot of names for things, names that were of the Midwest and of that city, words belonging to that place and to the people who lived there. One of those words was bikeriders..."

One will see in the images that the photographer carries his 1960s intelligence and mind into the people's lives. This is not a book about biker fashions and being cool. It is a chronicle of how some rejected the standard ways in society and set up their own rules of how to live. In their freedom and wandering, the bikeriders exemplify the lost Americans who are forever in search of sensation and meaning.

I cant believe I had never heard of this fantastic book until now.A great variety of classic photos of old school midwestern bikers in the mid sixties....and the interviews with the chicago outlaws and their women really catch the spirit of the time also.I really loved it.I can't help but wonder what happened to some of these characters over the years

What a great book! Danny Lyon is a national treasure... this book redefined documentary photography, practially inventing the participant/observer stance.

I bought this book because I was familiar with The Hells Angels but not so much so with The Outlaws. The book is mostly photographs and has a few chapters in which Mr. Lyon interviews some of the members from the mid-sixties and the women associated with the club during this time. I found the picture of Funny Sonny riding [...] on the back of an Outlaws motorcycle wearing a full-cut Hells Angels patch to be a huge surprise. I read Hunter Thompson's book and he wrote about a Funny Sonny and I wonder if he's the same guy. It also appears from reading Funny Sonny's chapter in the book that he was gay, which one doesn't expect from an outlaw motorcycle club member. I also was shocked to see that Cal, who was an ex-Angel still had a Death Head tattoo on his left arm. I thought that he had to remove the tattoo once he was no longer a Hells Angels member or The Angels would do so, as the image belongs to the club and not the member. I didn't know that an ex-HAMC member was allowed to join another OMC and an enemy one to boot. This book is interesting but not what I was originally expecting. However, it's photographs are good and lets you see what the members of that era looked like. Some of the bikes in the photos appear to be falling apart and are full dressers and I was very surprised to see this as well.

I liked it because of the pictures and interveiws from the 60's. It was before the "Biker Lifestyle" was known beyond people that actually rode motorcycles, and before it became mainstream and acceptable as it is now. You can see they were working class Guys that were tough, but not sinister or criminals. Unlike the guys in the 1% clubs today ivolved in shady activities and the upscale guys dressing up on the weekends pretending to be bikers. Even the Author noted the end of the old Chicago Outlaws that he rode with. These Guys were motorcycle riders and were involved with racing, traveling, and partying with each other no matter what the club colors were. You could tell they liked Harleys but rode all brands. The Harley Sportster was popular because of it's performance. Now and since the 1980's it's labeled as a girls bike because of it's smaller size and lighter weight compared to the big twins.