“Blokes, birds & Bonnevilles”: Inside the ’80s revival of bikers & rockers

Growing up on a council estate in London, Phil Polglaze got his start at age 16 riding his father’s 1967 NSU motorcycle. He had become friends with a group of bikers just a couple of years older, who in full regalia cut a dashing silhouette on their Triumph motorcycles. ​“On Saturday afternoons, I would watch them work on their bikes,” he says. ​“Soon enough I was taught to rebuild engines.” 

As the years rolled by, Polglaze worked his way up to a secondhand Honda CB72 until finally getting a Triumph of his own. ​“I never had an interest in football,” he says. Instead, he taught himself photography while studying to become a geography teacher. ​“I started documenting life at college, demonstrations, and parties,” he says. ​“So I had my bike, my camera, and my will to live. The tide was beginning to turn.” 

By 1977, Polglaze was living with friends in a tiny house in Mitcham, South London. ​“I took my Pentax K1000 camera everywhere with me – snap snap snap – and word got around that I was a local photographer interested in work,” he says. ​“In 1980, I rolled the chicken bones, took a leap of faith, stopped teaching, and set up a small darkroom in the house.” 

• Read next: Races, revving and revelry: 20 years of US motorcycling in photos

Fortune favours the bold, and Polglaze forged a singular path, amassing an extraordinary archive of the era, which he now revisits in Bikers & Rockers 1983 – 1985 (Café Royal Books). 

The work first took root in 1981, when Polglaze met a bloke named Len who opened a motorcycle repair shop down the road. ​“I told him I was a snapper; he told me of his misspent youth with the Chelsea Bridge Biker Boys, saying that he wanted to organise a biker club, so he formed the Rockers Reunion Club (RRC),” he says. 

In October ​’82, Len organised a RRC ride to Brighton, ​“Sunday it was,” Polglaze remembers. ​“About 40 rockers assembled at the gates of Battersea Park, more like a gaggle of geezers, old and young, ready for the checkered flag to be raised. I knew none of them but I was a biker so I walked amongst them snapping, ducking and diving, as Gene Vincent’s ​‘Be Bop A Lula’ was playing from the hot dog stand.” 

• Read next: When skateboarding and motorcycles collide

Against the backdrop of ​“blokes, birds, bikes, and Bonnevilles,” the Rockers Reunion Club was born, ushering in a new era of British biker cool. ​“The flag was lowered, the bikes roared into the distance, leaving me to return to Mitcham,” Polglaze says. ​“The following Tuesday, I called in to see Lenny with a couple of contact sheets. He told me the run was a great success: nobody was caught speeding.” 

The two struck a deal: Polglaze provided the prints, while Len serviced his bike. ​“Barter, that’s the best way. Everybody was happy,” he says. ​“I’ve always liked to bubble beneath the surface. There are thousands of photographs I’ve printed over 50 years, sold or given away, now on fridge doors, bedroom walls, and mantelpieces.”

Bikers & Rockers 1983 – 1985 by Phil Polglaze is published by Café Royal Books.

Miss Rosen is a freelance arts and photography writer, follow her on X.

Buy your copy of Huck 82 here.

Enjoyed this article? Follow Huck on Instagram and sign up to our newsletter for more from the cutting edge of sport, music and counterculture.

Support stories like this by becoming a member of Club Huck.