The Best of Peter Egan by Peter Egan & Jay Leno

Author:Peter Egan & Jay Leno
Language: eng
Format: epub
Publisher: Motorbooks
Published: 2018-10-04T16:00:00+00:00

// SEPTEMBER 1997 //

BASIC BLACK

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A Brief Social History of the Black Leather Jacket

IT WAS AN EMBARRASSING MOMENT FOR ME. A couple of years ago, I went out to lunch with a bunch of employees at the rock ’n’ roll station where my brother used to work. One of the younger DJs came with us, wearing a black leather motorcycle jacket of The Wild One variety. Without thinking, I asked what kind of motorcycle he had.

“Motorcycle?” he said, looking at me, blinking. “I don’t have any motorcycle. Why?”

Foolish question on my part.

Nonmotorcyclists take the black leather jacket for granted now, as a mere fashion accessory. Everyone from the Ramones to Madonna has appeared publicly in some version of the Brando-style “Eric von Zipper” motorcycle jacket, so that it has become as harmless a cultural cliché as carhops on roller skates or the 1957 Chevy.

We live in the age of prefab charisma, where mere money can buy you an artificially aged (right at the factory) Fender Stratocaster or a prestressed fifty-mission flight jacket. Buy the stuff, share the life. And with a black leather jacket, the spurious risk-image of motorcycling can rub off on you without the inconvenience of learning which is the clutch lever or ever getting wet. Or crashing. Everyone wants a piece of the danger, but no one wants to get hurt. We want authenticity to come easy, without too much stress or conflict.

It was not always so.

There was a time in America when symbols had real meaning, and the black leather jacket was a potent one. No one dreamed of wearing a motorcycle jacket without owning a motorcycle.

Why?

Well, for one thing, wearing a black leather motorcycle jacket into the wrong bar could get you beaten up. It could also get you kicked out of school, shunned by “nice” girls, turned down for jobs, and stared at by cops with mirrored sunglasses. Style choices used to come with unpredictable and amazing consequences. Sadly, I am just old enough to have lived through this strange era.

Where did it all start? And why?

Logic certainly had a role. Leather has traditionally been—and remains—the best antiabrasion material for motorcycle clothing. The uniquely intertwined corkscrew cells in leather will not tear or rip along a faultline as most fabrics do. Also, leather is windproof and, when lined, warm. And it’s long wearing and good looking.

Okay, but why black leather?

That’s easy. It’s the same color as dirty chain lube, seeping Harley gear oil, old Indian wheel-bearing grease, the underside of your Triumph, and the blacktop upon which you knelt to examine the gaping connecting-rod hole in your BSA engine cases. Doesn’t show the dirt, as Mom used to say. If we could breed flies and junebugs without yellow-green innards, it would be perfect.

I’ve looked through a lot of my old motorcycle books for the first appearance of the black leather jacket, but it’s hard to tell where the tradition begins. From the earliest days of motoring and flying, people realized leather’s advantages in

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