Today marks the beginning of the Sturgis Motorcycle Rally 2021. While not a motorcyclist myself, my Uncle Gary was one, a former brother-in-law was/is one and my late friend, Chris Hale, was one as well. That doesn't count all my acquaintances and fellow musicians. I played several motorcycle rallies back in the day. Good times and good people.

I suppose it could be argued otherwise, but biker gangs started as an American phenomenon. Since then, they have been likened to 'barbarians' many, many times. I can recall both sociologists and fantasy novelists doing so. Nomads of the asphalt. Living by their own code.

Hunter S. Thompson gave his journalistic career a boost when he published his first book, Hell’s Angels: The Strange and Terrible Saga of the Outlaw Motorcycle Gangs. Word is—including the testimony of none other than Sonny Barger—that Thompson wasn't always credible and was never respected by the bikers he wrote about.

The line between 'fantasy' and 'bikers' was blurred/crossed when Jonathan French wrote The Grey Bastards and Jim Cornelius reviewed it for the DMR Blog. Mounted half-orcs aren't that different from ex-cons on 'iron horses'--as Lemmy would put it. As Dave Ritzlin points out, Schuyler Hernstrom’s Kyrus is a straight-up ‘biker barbarian’. I should also note that bikers have become a new analog for real barbarians. I’ve seen barbaric Indo-Europeans, Celts and Germanics all compared to ‘biker gangs’.

In 1969, Frank Frazetta--in the midst of creating his iconic Lancer Conan covers--painted a cover for Max Erlich's The High Side, which was published in 1970. Nobody has tried to claim that Erlich wrote a novel for the ages, but it prompted Frank to paint another classic cover, so its existence is justified merely by that.

Check out the iterations of Frazetta's paintings below. Is it just me, or does Frazetta’s ‘Satan’ bear more than a passing resemblance to Vincent Price? It wasn’t unknown for Frank to insert an actual person’s visage in a painting.

Frank was a motorcycle rider himself.

Ride hard, live free.