The Billy Bike
The Billy Bike
Re-born to be wild
DAVID EDWARDS
WORK WITH ME ON THIS. I ASK YOU TO NAME AMERICA'S most famous motorcycle. You respond with, what, some spindly Nineteen-aughtsomething contrivance from Indian, Excelsior or Harley-Davidson?
Won’t cut it, pal—we’re talking fame here, celebrity, stature, star power.
Okay, okay, so maybe you nominate something classic from the Steve McQueen collection?
Now we’re warming up, but you can do better, I know you can. Think mass media.
How ’bout the “Then Came Bronson” Sporty? Evel Knievel’s XR-750 bus-jumper? One of ol’ E.A. Presley’s Hogs? The Terminator’s Fat Boy? Pee-Wee Herman’s Hummer?
Fuh-get about it!
America’s foremost motorsickle is none other than “Captain America,” the chrome-framed, flexi-forked, starred-and-striped Harley Panhead chopper ridden by Peter,
least talented of the acting Fondas, in that 1969 ode to sex, drugs and Steppenwolf, Easy Rider.
These days it’s too easy to dismiss the original ER as simply a dope-drenched road picture, Thelma & Louise without the T-bird and PMS, but the fact is Easy Rider has a high place in Hollywood history. Produced for a paltry $340,000, it has to date grossed more than $50 million. Time magazine named it one of the 10 most important films of the Sixties. It made Jack Nicholson a star and re-ignited the career of Dennis Hopper, never mind that he would quickly extinguish it with near-lethal doses of rum, tequila and cocaine on a bender that lasted 15 years.
More germane to our case, Easy Rider validated the chopper as a countercultural icon, hell on wheels for the hippie generation. Captain America provided a calling card for young, alienated, rebellious gearheads, and almost overnight everything from Schwinns to CB750s sprouted improbably drawn-out forks and sacrilegious, star-spangled paint schemes.
It also fueled the first cruiser craze. Yep, it would take a few years, but when the suits in the boardrooms realized there was big money to be made, repli-chops followed-sanitized for your protection, of course. Harley, which previously had pooh-poohed choppers for their biker-gang connections, cuddled right up to the concept and gave us the FX Super Glide. Norton had its HiRider, Kawasaki its KZ900 LTD, Yamaha its XS650 Special. Soon, cruisers would be the best-selling bikes in the country. That’s how important Captain America was.
This story is not about that motorcycle.
See, the Captain got top billing, but for those really in the know it was way overdone, too clamorous, a chopper in caricature, all apehangers and fishtail exhausts and sky-high sissybar. No, Easy Rider's coolest bike by far was the flamed Panhead ridden by Hopper’s character Billy, sort of a spaced-out Kit Carson with a bad haircut.
Hey, don’t just take my word for it.
Keith Ball, editor of Easyriders, the magazine that takes its name from the movie: “I never liked the Captain America bike; it was too stretched and too gangly-looking. The Billy Bike was more traditional, a ‘tighter’ custom from a design standpoint.”
David Snow, editor of Iron Horse, a New York-based hardcore chopper rag: “I wouldn’t hesitate to ride either of ’em cross-country, but the Billy Bike is less radical, more sensible than the Fonda bike. As far as riding in the city goes, Billy’s bike, with its more compact wheelbase and dragbars, is better suited to splitting lanes and hopping curbs. Captain America would be unwieldy in traffic.”
Beau Allen Pacheco, editor of our all-Harley sister book, Big Twin: “Watching the movie for the first time, my eyes were riveted on the Captain America bike. But afterwards, the more I thought about it, the Billy Bike is the one I imagined myself riding through the countryside. Captain America looks fragile, like a gazelle. The Billy Bike looks like it was made to ride.”
There you have it, I rest my case. The Billy Bike, America’s second most famous motorcycle, but first in the hearts of the chopper intelligentsia.
This story is not about that motorcycle, either.
Sad to say, neither machine had an opportunity to bask in its fame. Just prior to the movie’s release, they were >
snagged at gunpoint by scofflaws and sycophants of the first order, unceremoniously broken up for parts, then distributed throughout the chopper underground before their stars ever had a chance to rise.
Glenn Bator has done something to offset that injustice. Bator, 40, is a bike nut with a bike nut’s dream job. He oversees the expanding motorcycle collection of media magnate Otis Chandler, in charge of acquisitions, restorations and general upkeep for Chandler’s Vintage Museum in Oxnard, California (805/486-0666). So far, the collection numbers about 130, everything from Broughs to Bimotas, Flying Merkels to Munch Mammoths. Eclectic is the key word.
Main thrust, though, is important American motorcycles, which is where Easy Rider's terrible twosome comes in. Three years ago, Chandler commissioned a copy of Fonda’s long-gone Captain America. Bator, after hundreds of hours spent studying publicity stills, re-running tapes of the movie, and talking to cast and crew members, came up with a dead-nuts duplication. Late last year, an exact replica of the Hopper chopper was completed, too, buildtime about nine months.
Research included yet more screenings of the film. “Eve watched it over 100 times now,” says Bator, “and when you see it as much as I have, well, it’s really a bad movie.” But bleary-eyed diligence paid off in authenticity. Ironically, the originals, which would go on to become cinema’s most infamous outlaw bikes (apologies to Brando’s Wild One Triumph), started life as police motorcycles. Fonda and crew purchased several weary nags at auction after their ticket-dispensing days were done, then tossed the twin-shock frames and acquired older Harley “wishbone” rigids, sonamed because of the kinked shape of the front downtubes.
Bator went the same route with Billy Bike II, rebuilding a 74-inch 1962 FL motor to copspec, namely low-compression pistons and heavy-duty generator. The 1950s-era frame was treated to red paint but otherwise untouched-unlike Captain America’s cage, which had its steering head kicked out to accommodate 12inch-over fork tubes. The Billy Bike’s Wide Glide front end runs a more restrained 6-inch extension, and retains the stock drum brake in lieu of the other bike’s stopperless spool hub.
Period accessories abound. The fuel tank is courtesy a Mustang motorbike, heavily reworked, its pearlescent yellow flames applied three times before Bator was finally satisfied they matched the movie bike’s. That’s a Bates headlight perched ahead of the lower triple-clamp. Fenders front and rear were originally meant to ensconce the wheels of some Britbike or another. Solid handlebar risers and a minimalist sissybar were hand-fabbed using movie posters and studio 8x10s as a guide. A brass-body Linkert carb wears two signature items: an air cleaner made from a drilled distributor cap and a long, looping throttle cable left dangling in the breeze. Original saddle builder Larry Hooper, retired, was persuaded to replicate his 1968 handiwork, right down to the silver Chevrolet seat studs.
Bator the perfectionist still has a few items to source. A genuine police kickstand for one, a better front fender for another. “Purists may be able to pick a few nits,” he says. “It’s not quite 100 percent yet, but it’s very, very close.”
After CW photog Brian Blades had worked his magic with a setting sun, it was time to load up both bikes and head for home-with zero break-in miles, the Billy Bike had been trailered to the photo shoot. But Bator couldn’t resist the opportunity for a little onthe-road reenactment: “Let’s ride ’em back to my house,” he enthused. Shotgun-toting rednecks being in (hopefully) short supply around greater Ojai, California, that’s just what we did, me playing Hopper, Bator in the Londa role. Unlike our hapless forerunners, we arrived safely in dusk’s last light.
“Well, I guess we just made history,” Bator said, smile plastered in place. And we had, too.
Captain America and the Billy Bike, almost 30 years later, together again for the first time. □
