Pyro, the early days
Pyro
The early days
Back when I was young I was bullied quite a lot at school, I was a skinny little boy and quite timid which led to me getting beat up and basically tortured by my peers on a regular basis. When I started at Battersea County in 1966 it was a grammar school, in my second year it became one of the first of the 'secondary modern' schools and the number of pupils doubled overnight, there was a large influx of pupils, who to be honest didn't give a shit about learning, they didn't want to be there and disrupted classes on a regular basis.
I lived in fear most of the time and fantasised about getting revenge on quite a few of my tormentors, then someone gave me a book about a biker gang, I don't remember the title and have never found another copy, but it was one of those late 60's ones that was brought out for the shock value and was quite badly written, but to a 15 year old in turmoil it had a certain appeal.
I immediately went out and bought a 6T 650 Triumph for £35, this was my holiday savings and that was a lot of money in 1970. I was 15 and I had to hide it from my dad, it turned out to be an evil piece of shit and I had been ripped off completely, with a bent frame and screwed shocks, sometimes it had second gear and we never did find fourth, but it led me into a world I never realised existed, a world of freedom, of self respect and really good mates.
I told my dad I wanted a motorbike for my 16th birthday and he said no, so I set about borrowing a mates bikes to learn on in preparation for my test, then on my 16th birthday I found my dad had got me a bike, a BSA Bantam D14, but he had taken it apart down to the last nut and bolt and then told me "If you want to ride it, you put it together!" of course he did help me while explaining what was what and it taught me a lot, I don't think I ever had to call him out when I had broken down as I could fix most things myself, he had also put together a tool roll filled with all the tools he thought I would need.
I don't remember what happened to the Triumph, I probably just dumped it somewhere or gave it to a mate for spares.
I passed my test (at 16 years and 5 months) on the Bantam and after owning a succession of Bantams progressed to a BSA 441 SS with an open mega about a year later, it was a choice between that or a 500 Triumph chop and at the time I didn't feel confident enough to ride the chop, the Beezer was deafening with cracking handling and after the Bantams sluggish behaviour, incredible acceleration, with easy wheelies it was just so much fun! Although the brakes left a lot to be desired, it was the first bike I cracked the ton on, well on the speedo anyway.
I soon discovered that wearing a leather jacket with a cut‑off on top made me look twice my normal size, also having the mad staring eyes of a speed freak seemed to put people off of arguing with me. After being bullied for years at school this was a revelation and I did tend to over‑react in some situations. Ten years later I went to a school reunion with the idea of kicking the shit out of one of the guys who had tormented me, when I met him I didn't have the heart, he obviously had no memory of bullying me and was now a boring bloke in a suit who had ended up as clerk for Airfix in Wandsworth, he was stuck in a crap marriage and obviously dying of boredom , I had turned up on a CB750 SOHC bright yellow chop wearing my 'original' jeans, which were quite disgusting - as my mum was forever telling me, leather jacket with filthy cut‑off and a pocket‑full of cash courtesy of some recent dodgy deals, cough, strangely the girls who had had no interest in me at school seemed rather keen to talk to me now.
I was now a six foot tall biker hunk with almost waist length hair and an attitude due to my newly discovered love of amphetamines, the other bikers I ran with at the time were just blokes like me who loved the freedom of bikes, the ability to just go off whenever we wanted to and were enjoying this strange new world of drugs - which would play a large part in my life for the next 15 years, this was also a time that if you wore a denim cut‑off anyone who was not a biker assumed you were part of a biker gang, we played on this quite a lot.
Sus (Andy) named after the Sasquatch cos he was an ugly bugger, he was smaller than Dave and had a long scar running down his face that looked like a sword cut (he actually got it when he tried to overtake a Norton commando in the wet on a Suzuki 125 whilst on a left hand bend, stoned out of his mind he hit a car head on going straight through the windscreen head first, he had an open face helmet on) he would fight anyone at the drop of a hat, we were once threatened by a 30 strong gang of skinheads outside the County arms, Sus told the 'leader' he could have one free punch, the skinhead took a swing and Sus stopped the punch with his hand and then twisted it until the skinheads wrist snapped then shouted "Next!" we bought the poor bloke a drink while he waited for the ambulance, his mates legged it!. Sus had a succession of weird and wonderful machines, most memorable were a Rickman Zundap 125 trials bike and a tuned Suzuki GT550 fitted with expansion chambers and then he fitted a fucking side‑car to it!!! I kid you not! He also had this complete inability to pass his test, from crashing just 5 minutes into his first test, to pulling a driver out of his car window in front of the examiner and repeatedly punching him in the head on his fifth, in the end someone else took the test for him. Sus once picked up a bird by nudging her in the back of her legs with the side‑car until she fell into it and then he rode off, he also collected a policeman in Parliament square one night the same way.
Tony was a courier for Mercury Despatch, he had one of their 250cc Suzuki's, an X7 I believe, and it was always on the rear wheel, I don't think he could ride on two wheels, he made wheelies seem effortless, forever bouncing the front wheel off of the boots of cars to the annoyance of the driver and he was one of those good looking blokes that attracted women with no effort at all, he looked a bit like David Essex.
CB Nick, a CB radio freak that had a 250cc Triumph single, we met after he volunteered to sit on the pillion of my Bonneville, while I wheelied it around Tower Bridge road roundabout after 4 pints of Ram & special, he never wondered why no one else stepped forward, luckily for him this time I managed it, only to be chased by a panda car back to Battersea. Still he seemed to enjoy it although I have no idea what he may have taken before hand cos he was grinning for hours. I still go drinking with him.
Lamb Chops, never could remember his real name, was a fresh faced young bloke who drove us mad, his Uncle was Tony McPhee of the Groundhogs and he never stopped telling us about him, he had this CD175 Honda that for some reason he would ride about 6 inches away from the back of the bike in front of him, he was on the back on my 441 one Christmas eve when we were heading back to Chelsea bridge from the pub, when a car about a hundred yards in front of me slammed his brakes on, the road was well icy and as I touched the brakes they locked up, I jumped and as I bounced down the road could see Lamb chops looking back at me from the back of the bike as it smashed into the car, later when I asked him why he hadn't jumped he claimed his hands were frozen to the rack. Last time I saw him was after he had taken 3 microdots and was talking about walking to the moon, I often wonder how far he got.
Brian Gory, Brian always wanted a nickname but he didn't like any of the ones we choose for him so he just stayed 'Brian', he had a 500 pre‑unit Triumph of indeterminate origin a real bitsa, Brian was a bit like Slob, if you saw him with a spanner you would take it away from him, I once found him trying to top up his oil by pouring oil down the left spark plug hole because he could not get the oil cap off of the tank. Brian crashed his bike trying to race Kawasaki Mach 1 500cc over Waterloo Bridge and didn't manage to stop before hitting the roundabout at around 60mph.
We used to drink in several pubs, the weapon of choice being the 'Hole in the Wall' in Borough high street, which the police shut down in 1978, if anyone knows where Mick the governor is I hope he is doing okay, there will be more about 'Hole' in future articles. The 'Fountain' in Garratt lane where we would rock the night away to 'CSA' a great bunch of guys and a pretty good band who I believe still play today. 'The Castle' in tooting was another popular haunt but that was used by some of the more 'serious' custom bikers, it was a great pub to check out the latest bike builds though, I saw some awesome chops there in the 70's.
Another favourite was the 'County Arms' outside Wandsworth prison purely because it was central to most of us, served some great ales and I could walk home if needed. (If anyone we knew was in there we would stand outside shouting 'want a pint?')
I do have to mention a small bike club called the Centaurs that met at the 'County Arms' they were forever trying to get us to join them, they were run by a second generation American Indian we called, for obvious reasons 'Chief', we never had the heart to tell them that the emblem they all had sewn onto their backs after the club had been going for a year was Pegasus a winged horse.
Those were the days of Lebanese gold and squidy black, Red stars and White lightning, Blues and Dexxies, Tunial and Mandies, sometimes I wonder how we survived, take something to stay awake and then something else to sleep, my weight dropped to six and a half stone at one point. I remember 3 of us staying awake for 3 days on whiz at some parties in the Midlands and then riding home from the last one in Leeds I fell asleep on the motorway, my Bonneville launched itself off of the motorway into a field and I was woken up by my mates upside down in a hedge.
Those heady days of the 70's were some of my favourite times, you could camp virtually anywhere on the coast, the roads were empty at night, no traffic jams especially at the weekend - unless it was a Bank Holiday, beer and petrol was relatively cheap. Okay the bikes were less reliable but unlike today most bikers knew how to fix most problems, and never knowing when you might break down did make life interesting. I once spent 5 days in an obscure village in Cornwall waiting for a new exhaust valve and piston, 2 bikers put me up while I waited and we just got drunk, stoned and went fishing, can't see that happening these days, can you?
Watch out for the part 2 coming soon.
If any of you reading this were using those pubs and have any photos or any stories from those days drop me an email. I would be interested to here about your experiences.
I lived in fear most of the time and fantasised about getting revenge on quite a few of my tormentors, then someone gave me a book about a biker gang, I don't remember the title and have never found another copy, but it was one of those late 60's ones that was brought out for the shock value and was quite badly written, but to a 15 year old in turmoil it had a certain appeal.
I immediately went out and bought a 6T 650 Triumph for £35, this was my holiday savings and that was a lot of money in 1970. I was 15 and I had to hide it from my dad, it turned out to be an evil piece of shit and I had been ripped off completely, with a bent frame and screwed shocks, sometimes it had second gear and we never did find fourth, but it led me into a world I never realised existed, a world of freedom, of self respect and really good mates.
I told my dad I wanted a motorbike for my 16th birthday and he said no, so I set about borrowing a mates bikes to learn on in preparation for my test, then on my 16th birthday I found my dad had got me a bike, a BSA Bantam D14, but he had taken it apart down to the last nut and bolt and then told me "If you want to ride it, you put it together!" of course he did help me while explaining what was what and it taught me a lot, I don't think I ever had to call him out when I had broken down as I could fix most things myself, he had also put together a tool roll filled with all the tools he thought I would need.
I don't remember what happened to the Triumph, I probably just dumped it somewhere or gave it to a mate for spares.
I passed my test (at 16 years and 5 months) on the Bantam and after owning a succession of Bantams progressed to a BSA 441 SS with an open mega about a year later, it was a choice between that or a 500 Triumph chop and at the time I didn't feel confident enough to ride the chop, the Beezer was deafening with cracking handling and after the Bantams sluggish behaviour, incredible acceleration, with easy wheelies it was just so much fun! Although the brakes left a lot to be desired, it was the first bike I cracked the ton on, well on the speedo anyway.
I soon discovered that wearing a leather jacket with a cut‑off on top made me look twice my normal size, also having the mad staring eyes of a speed freak seemed to put people off of arguing with me. After being bullied for years at school this was a revelation and I did tend to over‑react in some situations. Ten years later I went to a school reunion with the idea of kicking the shit out of one of the guys who had tormented me, when I met him I didn't have the heart, he obviously had no memory of bullying me and was now a boring bloke in a suit who had ended up as clerk for Airfix in Wandsworth, he was stuck in a crap marriage and obviously dying of boredom , I had turned up on a CB750 SOHC bright yellow chop wearing my 'original' jeans, which were quite disgusting - as my mum was forever telling me, leather jacket with filthy cut‑off and a pocket‑full of cash courtesy of some recent dodgy deals, cough, strangely the girls who had had no interest in me at school seemed rather keen to talk to me now.
I was now a six foot tall biker hunk with almost waist length hair and an attitude due to my newly discovered love of amphetamines, the other bikers I ran with at the time were just blokes like me who loved the freedom of bikes, the ability to just go off whenever we wanted to and were enjoying this strange new world of drugs - which would play a large part in my life for the next 15 years, this was also a time that if you wore a denim cut‑off anyone who was not a biker assumed you were part of a biker gang, we played on this quite a lot.
A few of the guys.
Dave was a big bloke with a beard that strange things seemed to live in, he rode a T120R tricked up to the nines with a C&G exhaust that had adjustable baffles, he looked like he would tear your head off if you looked at him wrong, but was really a quite mild‑mannered bloke, in fact in all the years I knew him I only saw him hit one person, mind you they didn't get up again for a while. My most indelible memory of him was at Chelsea bridge one night on a company courier bike, a brand new 380 Suzuki with 107 miles on the clock, he was holding the throttle fully open with the clutch in showing off, then the clutch cable snapped hurling him into a line of 11 bikes parked outside the tea‑stall, if he had been a smaller bloke I think they might have killed him. We were rolling around on the floor pissing ourselves.Sus (Andy) named after the Sasquatch cos he was an ugly bugger, he was smaller than Dave and had a long scar running down his face that looked like a sword cut (he actually got it when he tried to overtake a Norton commando in the wet on a Suzuki 125 whilst on a left hand bend, stoned out of his mind he hit a car head on going straight through the windscreen head first, he had an open face helmet on) he would fight anyone at the drop of a hat, we were once threatened by a 30 strong gang of skinheads outside the County arms, Sus told the 'leader' he could have one free punch, the skinhead took a swing and Sus stopped the punch with his hand and then twisted it until the skinheads wrist snapped then shouted "Next!" we bought the poor bloke a drink while he waited for the ambulance, his mates legged it!. Sus had a succession of weird and wonderful machines, most memorable were a Rickman Zundap 125 trials bike and a tuned Suzuki GT550 fitted with expansion chambers and then he fitted a fucking side‑car to it!!! I kid you not! He also had this complete inability to pass his test, from crashing just 5 minutes into his first test, to pulling a driver out of his car window in front of the examiner and repeatedly punching him in the head on his fifth, in the end someone else took the test for him. Sus once picked up a bird by nudging her in the back of her legs with the side‑car until she fell into it and then he rode off, he also collected a policeman in Parliament square one night the same way.
Tony was a courier for Mercury Despatch, he had one of their 250cc Suzuki's, an X7 I believe, and it was always on the rear wheel, I don't think he could ride on two wheels, he made wheelies seem effortless, forever bouncing the front wheel off of the boots of cars to the annoyance of the driver and he was one of those good looking blokes that attracted women with no effort at all, he looked a bit like David Essex.
CB Nick, a CB radio freak that had a 250cc Triumph single, we met after he volunteered to sit on the pillion of my Bonneville, while I wheelied it around Tower Bridge road roundabout after 4 pints of Ram & special, he never wondered why no one else stepped forward, luckily for him this time I managed it, only to be chased by a panda car back to Battersea. Still he seemed to enjoy it although I have no idea what he may have taken before hand cos he was grinning for hours. I still go drinking with him.
Lamb Chops, never could remember his real name, was a fresh faced young bloke who drove us mad, his Uncle was Tony McPhee of the Groundhogs and he never stopped telling us about him, he had this CD175 Honda that for some reason he would ride about 6 inches away from the back of the bike in front of him, he was on the back on my 441 one Christmas eve when we were heading back to Chelsea bridge from the pub, when a car about a hundred yards in front of me slammed his brakes on, the road was well icy and as I touched the brakes they locked up, I jumped and as I bounced down the road could see Lamb chops looking back at me from the back of the bike as it smashed into the car, later when I asked him why he hadn't jumped he claimed his hands were frozen to the rack. Last time I saw him was after he had taken 3 microdots and was talking about walking to the moon, I often wonder how far he got.
Brian Gory, Brian always wanted a nickname but he didn't like any of the ones we choose for him so he just stayed 'Brian', he had a 500 pre‑unit Triumph of indeterminate origin a real bitsa, Brian was a bit like Slob, if you saw him with a spanner you would take it away from him, I once found him trying to top up his oil by pouring oil down the left spark plug hole because he could not get the oil cap off of the tank. Brian crashed his bike trying to race Kawasaki Mach 1 500cc over Waterloo Bridge and didn't manage to stop before hitting the roundabout at around 60mph.
We used to drink in several pubs, the weapon of choice being the 'Hole in the Wall' in Borough high street, which the police shut down in 1978, if anyone knows where Mick the governor is I hope he is doing okay, there will be more about 'Hole' in future articles. The 'Fountain' in Garratt lane where we would rock the night away to 'CSA' a great bunch of guys and a pretty good band who I believe still play today. 'The Castle' in tooting was another popular haunt but that was used by some of the more 'serious' custom bikers, it was a great pub to check out the latest bike builds though, I saw some awesome chops there in the 70's.
Another favourite was the 'County Arms' outside Wandsworth prison purely because it was central to most of us, served some great ales and I could walk home if needed. (If anyone we knew was in there we would stand outside shouting 'want a pint?')
I do have to mention a small bike club called the Centaurs that met at the 'County Arms' they were forever trying to get us to join them, they were run by a second generation American Indian we called, for obvious reasons 'Chief', we never had the heart to tell them that the emblem they all had sewn onto their backs after the club had been going for a year was Pegasus a winged horse.
Those were the days of Lebanese gold and squidy black, Red stars and White lightning, Blues and Dexxies, Tunial and Mandies, sometimes I wonder how we survived, take something to stay awake and then something else to sleep, my weight dropped to six and a half stone at one point. I remember 3 of us staying awake for 3 days on whiz at some parties in the Midlands and then riding home from the last one in Leeds I fell asleep on the motorway, my Bonneville launched itself off of the motorway into a field and I was woken up by my mates upside down in a hedge.
Those heady days of the 70's were some of my favourite times, you could camp virtually anywhere on the coast, the roads were empty at night, no traffic jams especially at the weekend - unless it was a Bank Holiday, beer and petrol was relatively cheap. Okay the bikes were less reliable but unlike today most bikers knew how to fix most problems, and never knowing when you might break down did make life interesting. I once spent 5 days in an obscure village in Cornwall waiting for a new exhaust valve and piston, 2 bikers put me up while I waited and we just got drunk, stoned and went fishing, can't see that happening these days, can you?
Watch out for the part 2 coming soon.
If any of you reading this were using those pubs and have any photos or any stories from those days drop me an email. I would be interested to here about your experiences.
