American Chopper History

The world of high fashion is dominated by a small number of couturiers whose glamorous, one-of-a-kind, over-the-top, and extravagantly expensive apparel debuts each season with much fanfare in the salons of cosmopolitan capitals throughout the world. From runway to rack, their designs initiate a process of trickle-down style in which Wal-mart copies dominate sales. The motorcycle industry, too, pays close attention to the seasonal splash of high-priced, high fashion at similarly aggrandized media events. Only instead of the runways of Paris, Milan, Tokyo, and New York I give you the streets of Sturgis, Daytona, Hollister, and Milwaukee. Instead of anorexic models wearing the latest Givency, Dior, Miyake, Armani, and Versace I give you the steroid- and silicone-enhanced bodies epitomized by professional wrestlers and strippers astride the trendsetting creations of the builders represented within these pages. But this book is not about people who ride motorcycles per se or the hedonistic lives they might lead. It’s about guys who build $70,000 motorcycles to die for. It’s about their legerdemain with sheet metal, and their legendary personas. It’s not about biker culture; it’s about how these bikes are culture. Choppers are literally vehicles of self expression. Their creators have a talent for carving, pounding, and welding solid blocks of aluminum and sheet metal into art that moves, and moves the beholder. Handcrafting motorcycles is as much a way of life as a business. In his book Zen and the Art of Motorcycle Maintenance Robert Pirsig wrote, “The ancient Greeks never separated art from manufacture in their minds, and so never developed separate words for them. Actually a root word of technology, techne, originally meant ‘art.’” That fits the bill nicely. Custom builders are the arbiters of change in the world of commercially produced motorcycles. What they define as high fashion—or, as the case may be, cool, trick, or bitchin’—will eventually drift down into the corporate abyss of mass production and media hyperbole. Nevertheless, this volume celebrates their work as more than mere popular entertainment. The building and riding of choppers is an American art form as indigenous as jazz. Its improvised riffs have given rise to as many mechanical doodads, chrome thingamajigs, bars, frames, forks, tanks, and tires—and different ways to combine them—as there are notes in a Charlie Parker saxophone solo. And with the exportation of these kinds of eccentricities to other cultures, chopper style has become as recognizable in Riyadh as in Rochester. But if I may put that simile aside, I began this introduction with a testament to choppers as high fashion, and I’d like to stick with it. It’s not the kind of fashion you’ll see in Vogue; because instead of décolletage you’re going to get stretch in the top tube. Instead of chiffon and taffeta you’re going to get chrome and iron. Instead of the allure of haute couture, I give you a greasier glamour in the name of haute moteur: Art of the Chopper. There’s a line in Quentin Tarrantino’s film, Pulp Fiction, in which Butch, a boxer played by Bruce Willis, contradicts his girlfriend: “It’s not a motorcycle; it’s a chopper,” he scolds. It is a remarkable comment in the context of a film that is as fashionably cool as is it notorious for the gruesomeness it ignores with a vengeance. It violently demands your attention for the sake of art. It is the motion picture equivalent of a chopper. Choppers too demand attention. If you park the latest Ducati, Honda, Yamaha, BMW, or stock Harley-Davidson on a street corner in any city or town in the world, only a few passersby may pay much attention. But bring on a slammed to the ground, stretched and raked-out, big-bore V-twin chopper bedizened with blinding chrome, pipes out the wahzoo, and a radical paint job and you will indeed attract a crowd! Such a motorcycle, like any other coveted work of art, becomes the center of attention wherever it rolls into public view. An object for contemplation, not mere transportation, choppers are paradoxical: They are the sacramental objects of a culture that worships profanity. They are vulgar and ostentatious, and yet achingly beautiful. Their presence will always provoke opinionated remarks, as will any object of desire. Incidentally, never would a rider park one where he couldn’t keep an eye on it; not for fear that it might be purloined, but because every parking spot represents a new tableau to enjoy. Today, baby-boomers have instigated a renaissance in the high art of the low rider, the chopper’s unruly but stylish combination of iron, oil, chrome, paint, rubber, and decibels. But, whereas some people are satisfied with what comes off the rack, say, a stock Harley with a daub of chrome here and a smattering of extra horsepower there, or even a “Wal-Mart” chopper, a connoisseur will demand something tailor made, something jaw-dropping different at a commensurably one-of-a-kind, jaw-dropping price. Owning and riding a custom chopper is an egomaniacal self-indulgence. As Eddie Trotta says, “It’s better to look good than feel good!” But it also represents a defiant stance against mediocrity and conformity, as long as you have the pecuniary clout to turn substance into style just for the hell of it. Owning a custom chopper is the dream of many riders. The word custom implies a high degree of individuality and a paragon of style; that is to say it has all the characteristics of being hand crafted after a unique design. It has panache. Picture the difference between a Ford and a Ferrari. Now, put the body of a top-fuel dragster on the Ferrari and add about a gazillion horsepower! By contrast, the Harley-Davidson Motor Company refers to “custom” as what the actual riders of custom bikes call “billet barges.” Many are good looking to be sure. And they are distinctive; but only insofar as one bone-stock Harley looks pretty much like any other without the addition of bolt-on accessories. Therein lies the verisimilitude of so many motorcycles cluttered with chrome. They are not customized; they are personalized. Now consider the term chopper. Just the opposite of billet barge, it was coined to describe the kinds of motorcycles from which superfluous parts have been removed, or chopped off, to give them the clean and uncluttered lines consistent with the aesthetic and historical values their riders enjoy. They have an obvious Harley heritage (i.e., the V-twin motor, the rhythmic rumble of the exhaust, the chrome, and the arms-out, knees-to-the-breeze riding position), but they also have an edge that is more avant garde than the enduring expression of Harley’s 1903 legacy. Not to get into the history of choppers here, but, at first they weren’t so much built as they were deconstructed from stock motorcycles. Chopper style, to be technically correct, is the result of a subtractive process. A chopper “builder” strips machines designed and mass produced by corporate culture to their bare essentials, hops up the horsepower to make them faster, which of course is socially unacceptable, and adds a few innovations and embellishments to make each one unique. When all the trappings of factory decoration and government-mandated conformity come off (gewgaws, gauges, reflectors, and flashing lights), the result should reflect one person’s subjective vision with a dissimilitude that is the mechanical equivalent of a wild animal staking out it’s territory. It once seemed to me that the be all and end all of motorcycling was to own a Harley-Davidson. The idea of owning and riding a Harley a dozen years ago seemed like a radical proposition to most people. The contributions of the Harley-Davidson Motor Company are still at the core of motivation for innovation within the industry. The real American Idle, if you will, is potato-potato-potato. But the enormous success of Harley-Davidson in recent years has led to hard-ass bikers rubbing shoulders with the mainstream of society and not liking it. Riding has almost become wholesome again. Regardless, immediately after I got my first Harley the word stock acquired a new significance in my vocabulary. This new and somewhat disparaging meaning struck blows to my bank account and my ego. Drinkers and gamblers, overeaters and sex addicts alike can find empathy within groups of repentant peers; but a Harley-Davidson owner is destined to skulk forever in the purgatory of one-upmanship. To buy a Harley-Davidson motorcycle is merely to put a down payment on the parts you’ll have to buy to make yours look unique. The next step up from personalizing a Harley is to buy or build a custom motorcycle. When you’re ready to reach for the top shelf, it’s time to visit a custom chopper builder. Today, although the culture of cool is prevalent, the idea of literally chopping up an old bike to give it a new look seldom holds true, because chopper style today is less representative of what it once was and more so a vision of what it will be in the future. The so-called “old school” is matriculating to higher education. Existing stock bikes aren’t so much modified as they are begun from scratch with a particular “chopped” look in mind. Still, all modern choppers are derived from old-school choppers based on the classic Harley-Davidson design. Exemplars of chopper style have always probed for increasingly radical ways to express the idea that less is more. Indeed, each chopper is a kind of motor-head haiku, a biker’s best expression of beauty. Although it is by no means as subtle, the best examples are poetry in motion nonetheless. To wit, look at the innovative work Mike Brown is doing in Tennessee; bound to influence the look of choppers to come when it hits the streets. Contrast his bikes with those of Tom Rad in Minnesota, who builds them as if time had stood still. Somewhere between futuristic and quaint lies what I like to call the art techno work of Europeans such as Alan Lee from Belgium. Choppers aren’t back; they’ve been around for forty years. The only difference is that the media has discovered them. Their popularity with the general public and riders alike will wax and wane with hemlines and double-breasted suits. Chopper style continues to evolve in all kinds of directions. According to Jason Martin, the recent influence of cable television on the popularity of choppers helped people understand that, “When they’re buying a bike from a true builder, they’re not buying a motorcycle; they’re buying a representation of that artist.” Martin believes that TV performed a service to the industry. It explained for the first time to a large audience, not just the rationale for owning a chopper, but it also justified how much time it takes and how much it costs to build one by hand. There are any number of mechanics who can bolt a bike together. There are many talented fabricators and painters too. But those who can combine these disparate ingredients and subordinate them to a singular vision of motorcycle artistry are few and far between.

I suppose if you were being pedantic, you could trace the history of the Raleigh Chopper right back to that fateful day late in 1930 when Henry Ford unveiled the Ford Motor Company range of cars for the 1932 model year. Why? I hear you cry? Because that car was the first to have a Ford V8 engine, and with it was born Hot Rodding and Customising as we know it today. All over America, but of course centred around California, people started putting that ol`flathead V8 into just about any car that would take it, the 1932 became a Kustom Klassic, and slowly the trend for changing what came from the factory started to hit the Motorbike world also. If we jump forward a few decades, by the mid 1950s the California custom scene was in full swing: A certain style of motorcycle was firmly established when this picture of Ralph "Sonny" Barger was taken in May 1959. The engine was highly tuned, the frame was stripped to bare necessities, the front end was lightened and stretched. But most important from our historical viewpoint, two factors stand out, first the fitment of high "ape hanger" handlebars... purely a style statement, and secondly the fact that the rear mudguard had been cut in half to save weight (and look cool). This process was known as "Chopping" and the style of bike had taken its name from this, the style was the Harley-Davidson CHOPPER .And the guys who built them, had younger brothers.......... Eventually we arrive at our "seat" as mentioned in the title of this piece, An American Bicycle saddle manufacturer called Pearsons Majestic had developed a seat for bicycle polo.. Yes, riding around with a stick in your hand trying to pot goals, just like Prince Charles. But cooler. The seat was long and thin, and needed supporting at the rear by a tube hoop attached to the rear wheel nuts. For bicycle polo, the seat was fitted to 20 inch bikes, with low flat handlebars. Now, bicycle polo never really caught on (surprised?) but Pearsons persevered with the solo polo seat, trying to sell it through cycle accessory shops. Jumping quickly back to those Californian younger brothers, They had seen the potential of the seat, the rear support hoop looked like a motorbike sissy bar, and as motorcycles and bicycles shared a similar handlebar thickness,fitting 15 inch high apehanger handlebars was easy.. No one knows whether it was a reject polo bike that got the treatment, or whether it was a purpose built chopper bicycle, but the fact remains that some unknown Californian kids back in the very early 1960s produced, in their back yards, the first bicycle to bear the name 'Chopper'. Huffy is an American bicycle company based on the west coast, and rumour has it that they tried the polo saddle/apehanger combination on a 20 inch bike in 1962. That rumour has built to legend status over the last few years on the American Musclebike websites, but quickly jumping to historical fact, a guy named Al Fritz was working as a concept designer for the giant Schwinn bicycle company in the early 1960s and he also saw the California chopper bikes, and he also took note.... I think this fact alone indicates that the apehanger bike craze was fairly big on the west coast by 1962, with two major bike companies sitting up and taking notice. The Huffy soon faded from sight, but Al Fritz took what he had seen back to his bosses thousands of miles away in Chicago, and built a 20 inch bike to demonstrate what he had seen out west. This polo seat and apehanger bike, legend has it, was no hit with the bosses of the super conservative Schwinn Corporation, but Al was sure he was on to a good thing, and persevered. His perseverance won over in the end, as in June 1963 the first Schwinn Stingray 20 inch bicycle rolled into dealers stores all over the USA The Stingray was an overnight success, thousands were sold in the first month, and Al Fitz had a grin going from one ear to the other...... A new era in bicycle history had begun....The Musclebike had arrived.

Upon returning from World War II, soldiers seemed dissatisfied with the motorcycles that were being built by Harley-Davidson and Indian. The bikes they had rode in Europe were lighter, sleeker, and were much more fun to ride. These vets started to hang out with other ex-soldiers to relive some of the camaraderie they had felt in the service. These groups of buddies realized that their motorcycles needed changes that Harley was not providing. These new "bikers" (another new term at the time) started their "chopping" by removing or shortening (bobbing) the fenders on their bikes. This made the bikes look cool and uncluttered. They originally called the new chopped bikes "Bobbers". The bikes kept evolving through the 60's and in the 70's and they started to call them "Choppers". In 1969 the movie "Easy Rider" was released which brought the Chopper into the public eye. That movie set into motion the wave of cool Choppers and Chopper builders that we see today. People wanted a Chopper and nobody was building them so they had to go build them themselves. Just what is a Chopper? The Chopper is created by removing or "chopping" off unnecessary parts from the bike. Who needs a windshield, front fenders, big headlights, clumsy blinkers, crash bars, big seats, etc? Chop them off and make the bike sleeker and lighter. Bikers started raking the front end so the tire was further from the bike, it gave the bike a cool look, which goes a long way with a biker. Handlebars were raised high and called ape hangers. The front tire was made thinner and the rear tire was made fatter. Some bikers even removed the battery and used a magneto to reduce weight. The gas tank, headlight, and blinkers were all made smaller. Anything deemed to be unnecessary was removed. This made for a bike style that was unique and tailored to each rider since each rider decided just what needed to be done to his bike to create the Chopper he desired. As individual backyard mechanics started to get noticed, more talented designers started building Choppers and their work became highly sought after. An individual now no longer needed to actually do the Chopper work, just express what he wanted to a Chopper designer and the designer would do the rest. Arlen Ness was one of the first and most recognized such designers. In the 1990's, the Chopper movement was revitalized. Although Harley Davidson is best known in the biker world, there are many other brands that people use to build Choppers. To many chopper riders, it's the end product that matters, not the name brand, but there will always be a segment of bikers that only want Harley. Choppers started because riders were dissatisfied with what Harley-Davidson was producing. Rather than abandon H-D, riders streamlined the H-D bikes by removing excess equipment and then modifying the engines, rake, and suspension. The result was a personalized bike much like the bike in Easy Rider. The steady evolution of the motorcycle continues. New factory bikes are more and more technically sophisticated with plenty of accessories, yet the Chopper continues to thrive as riders seek that minimalist simplicity that only the Chopper can supply. Are Choppers here to stay? You betcha! The Discovery Channel has helped by bringing the Chopper to the masses and the more people that see em, the more that want em!