The John Lennon Raleigh
Image: Maru Sandoval. When I should have been the happiest kid
Liverpool
maybe the world. Lennon
Liverpool
maybe the world. Lennon
The music is movement. And the movement is essential to maintain the balance of the universe. At that level, the bike is like a musical instrument, must be set as tuning a piano or a guitar before leaving to play. Perhaps that is why the Sleep Number One of Lennon's childhood was a bicycle. Since childhood he liked to shoot in the streets of Liverpool, to the role of Mendips and beyond, pedaling rhythm, melody and harmony.
As a means of transport so common in his time and his country, it is possible that cycling has influenced his artistic style, in the form of creating and performing music. If the country of Johnny Cash imitation progress Train and Dick Dale surf the swirling waves, we can imagine that Lennon composed and played with the pace of a bike ride English style. On occasion
said he lived for his bike before all children have left their bikes in the yard, but he does not, on the contrary, insisted on putting it into the house and the first few nights he kept beside his bed while asleep. To no avail that Aunt Mimi tried to stop him, as he tried to persuade him to forget the issue of music: "That's the guitar is fine, John, but you never earn a living with it ..." With that background
bike rack is not surprising that Lennon has been one of the greatest figures of rock and the Beatles would pass into history as the most important group. By his biographers as Robert Rosen and the thousands of images we have seen the world's most famous rock star, we know that many bicycles pedaled along his life before and after the movie Help! There is no record of the walks that led to his son Sean, a curious picture of Bettmann where John and Yoko appear on his robes and riding a white bicycle with flowers, or pictures taken by Ben Ross of the pair kissing in somewhere in New York, mounted in their respective cycles.
For the type of pedals and hardware I used, note that Lennon was a regular cyclist. But we do not want to embarrass any reader with the disturbing figure of Yoko Ono (who maintains a separate relationship with the bike by conceptual art and sculpture Marcel Duchamp Bicycle Wheel), so we turn our attention to another most interesting photo of Lennon a sepia of the early fifties in which stands proudly with his first bike with his cousin Stanley Parkes. The Number One Dream come true was a Raleigh shot 28, an all steel bicycle classic, most popular bike in Europe for several decades of the twentieth century. Raleigh
founder, Sir Francis Bowden, a man was sick and terminally ill. I used to take long trips, but in 1887 he contracted a rare disease that no one could diagnose or cure, his health deteriorated so much that this year the doctors gave him no more than six months. One of the doctors suggested, as a last resort, to do exercise. Without much hope, Sir Frank Englishwoman who rode a bicycle pedaled through the streets of Nottingham, went to roll and an unusual act, escaped death, moved away from her fast, leaving it cold in the distance.
next year, healthy and happy, escapist two wheels bought a small workshop on Raleigh Street and established a factory where they were assembled two bicycles per week. Since then, Raleigh Cycling the Company is part of the tradition of design and mechanical engineering in England, the birthplace of the Industrial Revolution, with its machines, factories and their workers. In 1896, the new plant started production work with bands in series driven by six massive engines, the largest bicycle assembler known at the time, where a decade later would produce 30 000 cycles a year. As if this were not enough, the brand was consecrated by the phenomenon Zimmerman, the rider from New Jersey who won 2.300 Raleigh bike riding skills (the Lance Armstrong of the time), to withdraw also started manufacturing Zimmy bicycles.
Six decades later, the rock and bicycles British invaded the United States, the Beatles and Raleigh went ahead and caused anger. In 1951, the company produced each piece of the bike, 120 parts total, and produced more than one million units per year. A few years later began the invasion. In the history of cycling, as in the rock, british invasion known as the period in which Raleigh gringo cornered the market after the Second World War until the late sixties, when it became the largest producer a bike in the world.
For teenagers in Europe and North America the brand was synonymous with the first contact with the freedom and speed, as happened with the music of Liverpool. When you start the seventies, Raleigh created another classic song type quartet, the Chopper, that bike with a small front wheel and a big back (our version of this model is the famous Tramp), which saved the company a big financial hole and allowed him to venture into the realm of BMX and mountain bikes.
In 1980, Dutchman Joop Zoetemelk won the Tour de France in a TI Raleigh Creda. That same year, the eighth of December, John Lennon was shot dead by Mark David Chapman on a cold night covered the world. The "bible" Chapman was The Catcher in the Rye by JD Salinger, novel where Holden Caulfield is usually talking to his dead brother, Allie, and every time she sees him in his recollections appears in his bike.
In 2002, 114 years after its foundation, the Raleigh factory also closed its doors to be demolished. It was a symbol of Nottingham, had worked there for generations, whole families of working and now left only watch with sadness the new college building. Raleigh bicycle production and its other brands (on the way acquired Rudge, BSA, Triumph and Diamondback) went to Korea and Vietnam, 25% cheaper than assemble them in England, supposedly with the same quality. In Nottingham remain the administrative offices, the design and distribution center now occupy a new home in Triumph Road. But the real "Working class hero" ran out of their jobs, the city's spirit away with it. Every year since his death, between October 9 and December 9 John Lennon is remembered -9, the lowest number present in his life, mainly for its musical legacy, universal bike. He liked to ride, was another way to break free and do rock'n'roll.
The BICLA and his bike. As they say his followers, ascended to heaven on his glasses riding a bicycle.
