Desert Island Motorcycle Books

In 2022 I was asked by Jonathan Rishton – then-editor (now Publisher) of The Automobile magazine – for a list of  eight ‘desert island’ motorcycle books, i.e., the books I’d take to end of the world. Choosing eight volumes for my desert island was easy; most were the earliest motorcycle books added to my collection, and remain at the heart of my career. The rest have entertained me for decades, with remarkable stories and photographs that spark the imagination. My work is principally online (for theVintagent.com), but it’s print my house is made of. Or at least that’s what you might think, should you pay an actual visit: our walls are actually covered with books. For your consideration, courtesy The Automobile (and if you’d like a physical copy of the Oct. 2022 issue, click here):

The Fetishised Journalist: The Motorcycle (1963) by André Pieyre de Mandiargues

At the time of my selection (2022), this was the only book that had been made into a film: The Girl on a Motorcycle (1968). It stars Marianne Faithfull and Alain Delon, and follows the story of ‘Rebecca’ riding her Harley-Davidson across the Swiss border for a tryst with a former lover, with fatal consequences. Faithfull’s character is based, I am convinced, on Anke-Eve Goldmann, the German journalist and racing motorcyclist who invented the women’s one-piece leather riding suit – the original catwoman. She was friends with Mandiargues, and did not take kindly to being depicted as a sex object – the book is essentially softcore moto-porn. The film was the first in the USA to receive an X rating, but a version of Mandiargues’s novel La Marge (which won him the Prix Goncourt) was far more scandalous, and featured his personal collection of ‘pornographic objects’…

Anke-Eve Goldmann was unknown to me when I ran across a trove of her photographs in 2008. She was faithful to BMWs from the 1950s to the 1970s, barring an affair with a hotrod MV Agusta 750 in the ’70s. It took some digging
to sort her remarkable story; eventually I interviewed her daughter and ex-husband (who took the pictures). Approaches to Goldmann herself proved futile, and my offer to write her biography was firmly rebuffed. The book, the
film and the dissemination of her motorcycle photographs on leather fetish websites in the 2000s simply infuriated her. But perhaps she doth protest too much: those interviews left me convinced The Motorcycle was based more
closely on her life than she cared to have made public. But it was not she who was killed en route to a tryst… The Motorcycle is the one book I’d save above all others, if only to inspire the writing of a stack of increasingly bizarre erotic novels to be discovered with my body.

The Outlaw: The Bikeriders (1968) by Danny Lyon

Danny Lyon was a photographer in the Civil Rights movement of the early 1960s, documenting voter registration
drives in the American South. He returned to his hometown in 1965 and joined the Chicago Outlaws, a one-per center motorcycle ‘patch club’. He interviewed club members and photographed their homes, bars, races, picnics and everyday life in a very early case of ‘embedded’ journalism. He published this work as The Bikeriders in 1968, to a thundering silence. Despite the success of Hunter S Thompson’s similarly themed Hell’s Angels, published one year before, nobody wanted a biker photobook with text direct from the subjects’ mouths.

Lyon lugged boxes of unsold books around for years. In 1986 I was given a paperback first edition of The Bikeriders as a birthday present from ‘Crazy Tits’, signed in purple crayon. She’d found it in a Haight Street used bookstore for 50 cents. I was entranced by the brilliant photography, and eventually the world followed suit: first editions now sell for hundreds, the book has been republished many times, and Danny Lyon has become a legend of activist photojournalism [and now there’s the movie version…] I don’t see Crazy Tits anymore, but my dog-eared copy of The Bikeriders is a treasure.

The Bin Diver: The Vintage Years at Brooklands (1968) by Dr Joseph Bayley

In Swinging London of the 1960s, miniskirts were apparently more interesting than prewar motorcycle racing. Thus a significant pile of large-format glass negatives were found in the bin outside the offices of The Motor Cycle, no doubt part of a general clear-out of historical images lacking flares and sideburns. The fellow into whose hands these plates landed was Dr Joseph Bayley, who recognised many of the gents pictured as former rivals and comrades from his racing days at Brooklands. Bayley reckoned it had been 40-plus years since anyone had seen these pictures (now more than 100 years), and their high quality and natural appeal to racing folk would make a tidy book.

The Vintage Years at Brooklands covers, of course, racers from 1920 to 1930, which in 1968 was
considered the Golden Age by the Grand Poobahs at the Vintage Motor Cycle Club. There have been several
such Ages in the intervening 54 years, but the 1920s does have a special charm: the simple machines, the gallant
racers in their neckties and scant safety equipment, the essentially amateur nature of motorcycle racing at the time. While Bayley mirrors a whole-page photograph with a simple reminiscence of the who, when and what, the pictures themselves speak volumes and the book is simply wonderful.

The Hidden Pistol: One Man Caravan (1937), by R.E.Fulton

A son of privilege makes an impulsive boast at a fancy London dinner party; his bluff is called, and honour compels
him to make a two-year trip round the globe on a motorbike. That’s the elevator pitch for One Man Caravan, R E Fulton Jr’s account of his 1932-33 round-the-world adventure. It was Fulton’s luck that Kenton Redgrave, owner of
Douglas motorcycles, was at that soirée, and immediately offered to build a special machine for his journey, with an extra fuel tank and racks front and rear for luggage. Fulton packed it with pots and pans, his tuxedo, and a pistol
between the bash plate and crankcase, just in case. He never used any of it, ditching all but the pistol en route.

Fulton’s story is a beauty, plus he took a good camera, an excellent cine camera and miles of film. The book depicts a lost world with familiar names, and the journey made Fulton a philosopher. He forgot the pistol amidst his invariably friendly engagement with locals. His 1932 Douglas Mastif is currently in my ADV: Overland exhibit at the Petersen Museum in LA. I fished under the crankcase but the pistol is gone…

The Hippie Overlander: Jupiter’s Travels (1979), by Ted Simon

Ted Simon was a journalist in Fleet Street for 10 years before convincing the Sunday Times and Triumph
Motorcycles to sponsor a round-the-world (RTW) journey in 1973. Triumph thought it good advertising, but stopped production of Simon’s Tiger 100 model during his first year abroad. Regardless, he dubbed the bike Jupiter
and spent four years and 64,000 miles visiting 45 countries. He published Jupiter’s Travels in 1979 and it was an instant classic of global travel literature, inspiring countless imitators on two wheels. There’s a dividing line on RTW
travel: it’s estimated only 52 motorcyclists made an RTW journey before 1980, but après Ted, le déluge. This book and Fulton’s inspired my wanderlust, an interest in the history of overlanding, and ultimately my ADV: Overland exhibit. It’s a great read for anyone.

The Manualist: Motorcycles, Side Cars and Cyclecars (1914), by Victor Pagé

Vehicle ownership in the pioneer era was a DIY affair unless you had an engineer/mechanic on the staff. Manufacturers offered scant instruction and poor references for maintenance and repair: ‘refer questions to the manufacturer’. It took Victor Pagé to assemble a magnum opus of early motorcycling in 1914 that proved an
invaluable resource: Motorcycles, Side Cars and Cyclecars.

The 550-page book covers 41 mostly American brands, with 350 illustrations and wonderful fold-out technical drawings. For the technically curious, it’s a hoot: a delightful
survey of bad ideas and wrong directions, plus undeveloped brilliance that would take generations to sort. Early editions with the fold- outs are rare, but the book has been recently reprinted and is still fun to leaf through,
especially for the cyclecars.

The Cyclone Tamer: American Racer 1900-1940 (1979), by Stephen Wright

To American motorcycle collectors, the Golden Age of motorcycling happened before 1916. That’s
the year Harley-Davidsons got three-speed gearboxes, and ruined everything. ‘Pre-16’ motorcycle rallies were the heart and soul of the American scene, and Stephen Wright, while born in the UK, was an essential part of that scene as a collector of machines and ephemera, and a restorer of the rarest of racers: Cyclones, Flying Merkels, Harley-Davidson and Indian Eight-Valves. He converted his expertise and collection into three extraordinary books:
American Racer 1900-1940, American Racer 1940-1980, and The American Motorcycle 1896-1914. He’d planned a series of follow-up volumes, but death intervened, so we are left with just the three, and what beauties they are.

My favourite is the first American Racer 1900-1940, published in 1979 in a similar layout to Bayley’s book: large format (11 by 14in) with a facing full-page photograph with just enough text to pique your curiosity, with first-hand
accounts cementing the historical record. If you can find one, dig deep: it’s a keeper.

The Bibliographer: The Art of the Motorcycle (1998), by Thomas Krens, Matthew Drutt (editor)

When BMW approached the Guggenheim Museum offering $3m to be title sponsor of an exhibition, director Thomas
Krens turned to his film curator. Ultan Guilfoyle was a dedicated vintagent, but didn’t consider himself qualified to curate a major motorcycle exhibit alone. He turned to Dr Charles Falco, a professor of optical physics who’d been
working with David Hockney on reverse-engineering the tools used by Renaissance painters to fix perspective on canvas.

Falco is also a vintagent, and had an enormous library of motorcycle books: the pair spent the better part of 1997 sourcing 100 exemplary motorcycles for The Art of the Motorcycle. Starchitect Frank Gehry was hired to design
the exhibition, and wrapped the interior of the Guggenheim’s giant spiral with chrome. Well, mylar, but it looked like chrome, and the show was a whopper, and remains its most popular ever. I had the good fortune of looking round
after-hours with the Brough Superior Club and nearly got myself locked on the rooftop, but that’s another story. The exquisite catalogue is the real story here, and, more importantly, the bibliography in the back: Charles Falco
assembled the most comprehensive English-language list of books about motorcycles ever published. I’m happy to admit I’ve collected all of the books in that bibliography, but now the list is 26 years old, and publishing didn’t stop, so ‘the constant search’ continues.