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This chapter presents the politics and experiences of identity as exercised by the motor-bike boys. It first discusses the author's approach to studying the motor-bike boys' culture at large, by making contact with a motor-bike club in a large English city in 1969, thus producing an account based on general observation, conversations with individuals and groups, participation around the club, often with the group just described, and tape-recorded sessions. It then embarks on a more intimate examination of this particular culture. The world of the motor-bike boys was above all else concrete and unequivocal. They perceived it without ontological insecurity, without existential angst.

This chapter assesses how the motor-bike both reflected and generated many of the central meanings of the bike culture. It is one of the main elements of the culture's stylistic make-up. In a general and unspecific way, it was clear that the motor-bike was one of the main interests of the motor-bike boys in the club under investigation. Most of their activities were based on this interest. A large part of conversation was devoted to the motor-cycle: discussing new models, comparing performance, or describing in detail how repair jobs were done. Here, the chapter argues that the motor-bike was not simply one object in a random collection of objects and activities that occupy the life-space of an underprivileged group, but possessed an expressive function which highlights a distinctive and meaningful construction of culture through modern technology.

This chapter explores the musical tastes of the motor-bike boys. Pop music was a manifest and ever-present part of the environment of the motor-bike boys: it pervaded their whole culture. However, the motor-bike boys had very specific tastes that were not part of the current pop music scene, and were not catered for in the on-going mass-media sources. They liked the music of the early rock 'n' roll period between 1955 and 1960, especially that of Buddy Holly and Elvis Presley. By current standards in the commercial market and the pop music provided by mass-media channels, their tastes were at least ten years out of date. By deliberate choice, then, and not by the accident of a passive reception, they chose this music. This reveals the dialectical capacity which early rock 'n' roll had to reflect, resonate, and return something of real value to the motor-bike boys.

This chapter explores how the two youth cultures under discussion — the motor-bike boys, sometimes known as ‘rockers’, and the hippies, sometimes known as ‘heads’ or ‘freaks’ — form a ‘dialectic relationship’ with cultural life. It argues that it is only in the factories, on the streets, in the bars, in the dance halls, in the tower flats, in the two-up-and-two-downs that contradictions and problems are lived through to particular outcomes. Furthermore, it is in these places where direct experience, ways of living, creative acts and penetrations — cultures — redefine problems, break the stasis of meaning, and reset the possibilities somewhat for all of us. And this material experience is embedded in the real engagement of experience with the world: in the dialectic of cultural life.