The recent film The Bikeriders, which features actors like Tom Hardy and Austin Butler, has an authentic historical background, taking its inspiration from that great 1968 photo book which recorded and celebrated the Chicago Outlaws Motorcycle Club. The Bikeriders: Danny Lyon’s Vision in Photography
In 1963, Danny Lyon was a young motorcycle enthusiast and photojournalist who set out on a mission to capture the essence of American bikers. He wanted to “record and glorify the life of the American bikerider”. The cops have nothing on this guy, whose living record (of the Chicago Outlaws Motorcycle Club) is remade half a century later in color by the cinema. The bikeriders can also be streamed now on peacock, where it stars Tom Hardy, Austin Butler, Jodie Comer, and Mike Faist. The Vandals of Chicago, a fictional Outlaws, come from the acclaimed 1968 photobook by Danny Lyon about licit outcasted bikers; their fabled decline into warlike organization is shown in the film.
Following the course of the real Outlaws, the Vandals grow from a band of ostracized characters without any diciplin (or fellowship) to an awesome, forbidding crew.
Outlaws Motorcycle Club Origins
While The Bikeriders takes up the Illinois Vandals in the 1960s, the true story of the Outlaws goes back thirty years before. According to the official web site of the club, the Outlaws Motorcycle Club was started in 1935 as the McCook Outlaws Motorcycle Club. It was founded by a group of men outside Matilda’s Bar in McCook, Illinois, which lies on the outskirts of Chicago. After a quiet period during World War II, the club held its first big rally and took over Soldier Field in Chicago in 1946.
The postwar period contributed significantly to the rise of motorcycle culture across America., which was a fresh and exciting leisure pursuit. The availability of military surplus motorcycles during peacetime made them accessible to ordinary civilians, and returning veterans were looking for some adventure in their lives out of uniform. It was the combination of a deepening amateur interest and bitter struggles between pro sports teams that had pushed both motorcycling and racing competitions into top slots for leisure activities among Americans., This surge in popularity led to the founding of a number of other motorcycle clubs, especially the Hells Angels–Fontana in 1948, which was to emerge as Manchester’s main rival During this period the Outlaws drew more and more riders from Greater Chicago into their fold, so that in 1950 they moved their headquarters from McCook back into the city itself. It was then, too, that club took on its familiar skull design; in 1954, the crossed pistons were added.Danny Lyon’s Visit to The Hells Angels
In 1959, as a freshman history student at the University of Chicago, Lyon became acquainted with motorcycle culture through a classmate there. An owner as well of a Triumph TR6 motorcycle (and one who rapidly developed some rudimentary skills in photography) Lyon soon combined his favorite hobby with his nascent profession as a journalist.Danny Lyon goes south to join in the Civil Rights Movement
Before he turned to his motorcycle project, Lyon left Chicago in 1962 and went down south to document the civil rights struggle while serving as Staff Photographer for the Student Nonviolent Coordinating Committee. He came to know people like John Lewis (now a congressman), Julian Bond among others there and in his own words became ingrained in that struggle.In 1963, Lyon began the photo essay that would eventually be published as The Bikeriders. To get as much as he could out of the biker society he had now joined as a full-fledged member of the Outlaws in 1965. A “pothead” amid a beer-drinking club, Lyon used photography and analog tape recordings to document his fellow riders.
A Reflection of Lyon’s Work in The Bikeriders Movie
Throughout the Bikeriders movie, material from Lyons’ original work is heavily incorporated. As Bleak Beauty has noted, his audio recordings are ‘verbatim imitations’ throughout the film. His interactions in the audio both with Outlaws members such as Cal, Zipco, and Cockroach and others are faithfully re-created in the movie. This authenticity is evident particularly, as that was designed by screenwriter Nell McAndrew’s husband -, Jodie Comer’s Kathy who is modeled after the true life KATHY BAUER. It is around her accounts that the story of the fictional Vandals which links together the various incidents in the film, mainly consists.
A year later, Bauer, then 25 years old, gave readers a slice of life as clear as the action that unfolds on screen in The Bikeriders between several of the Outlaws and highly respected rider Benny. This is played in the film by Austin Butler. In her talk with Lyon, Bauer looked back on the day when Johnny Davis (Tom Hardy) and his group managed to foist her onto Benny’s motorcycle simply because she had never ridden pillion before: After he was on his way he kept running through red lights so I couldn’t get off, except for one time as a joke when he let me touch the ground just for practice. But I didn’t run! And anyway I didn’t want to because I was scared shitless; I’d never ridden on a motorcycle all my life until that afternoon.
Despite the unusual beginning, the film makes Bauer and Benny subsequently get married — and the story frequently picks up their relationship as a theme in one scene or another.
The Modern Outlaws: One Change from History
Beginning as a small Wisconsin-based association of Easter Seals Ambassadors in 1935, The Outlaws Motorcycle Club has assumed a menacing aspect. Forty years later by 1975, they were incorporated as the actual Outlaws MC-with international chapters or affiliates in Germany, England, France, Australia and elsewhere around the world that maintain an aura of “otherness.”
Chicago Reader estimated that by 2014 the Outlaws had risen to 1,500 members.
But the club has not achieved its homecoming parade. As of November 2023, the U.S. Justice Department officially categorizes Outlaws as one of 300 ’’outlaw motorcycle gangs” (OMGs) that are described as “highly structured criminal organizations” and involved in activities ranging from violent crime to weapon and drug smuggling.
A large amount of all this notoriety has to do with the ongoing war with Hells Angels that predates motorcycle club member Henrik — and which was brutal enough to attract adhesion articles in The New York Times City section more than a decade ago. The Chicago Sun-Times reported that there were bombings, shootings and stabbings between these two groups in the1990s before the tit-for-tat violence settled into a strained ceasefire. St. Paul Pioneer Press said Outlaws favor the coded acronym ADIOS which means “Angels die in Outlaw states.”
In a November 2016 interview with the Chicago Sun-Times, a former Outlaws member named Peter James suggested that the club’s emphasis on crime and violence has decreased over time. “The times changed,” James said. “Somehow there’s no testosterone out there. It used to be the boss’s word was law. He said, and a guy would just go ride off a cliff. The quality of members has gone down today.”
But not all members believe that is true-they insist that the Outlaws Motorcycle Club is more about adopting an alternative lifestyle than being involved in organized crime.
The Bikeriders: A Cinematic Exploration of Motorcycle Culture
In his new film, The Bikeriders, Jeff Nichols could not emphasize strongly enough: “None of this is meant to become a documentary about the Chicago Outlaws.” Instead, as he sees it, “I hope people will understand something of why these groups appeared and prospered in their times and circumstances.”
“When you look at these people in the beginning, if you want to, you can just throw them away—but the film makes you realize how their brains are turning, and hopefully it makes you a little committed,” Nichols told A Rabbit’s Foot. “Not feeling at home in your own skin is something that everybody knows. There must be one, unifying common measure.”
German artist Thomas Mann and Nicholas Ray, who directed Rebel Without a Cause, served as “omniscient observers,” with Mann’s camera taking some of the roles on location for Bikeriders, his director said. Danny Lyon produced both films. The Bikeriders features Kansas City actor Mike Faist as Johnny; Tom Hardy as Katy and Austin Butler as Benny will be played by Philadelphia native Jodie Comer.