When I fired up the computer this morning a note sprung up saying “40 years today”. Forty consecutive years of writing columns for motorcycle magazines. Maybe celebrate by poshing it up with a carton of Corona? Hmm, beer thoughts at breakfast.
Then the email pinged in. AMCN was about to celebrate it’s 75th anniversary! Good grief, something older than me!
Growing up in the bush we got our current motorcycle news from the not so ‘Green Horror’. At 12 I bought an issue to read about the rumoured Honda 750 four. That must have been about 1968. Bloody amazing, it’s four cylinders made more power than a big-engine Harley – not that you ever saw a 1200 Harley outside the cities back then – and had a disc brake. Whatever that was.
I figured I’d take the proven route and get a brand new Norton Commando for reliability’s sake. After all, once the marble dropped I’d be off to Vietnam so better get some fun in first!
Yep, AMCN was there when the British ruled the roads, saw the beginnings of Japanese dominance, crested the waves of the superbike era and is still out front of the media pack. Wow, that’s real heritage.
Not thanks to me, though. My first gig was with Two Wheels when AMCN was our number one rival. I still bought every copy but now it was to bone up on the racing and bikes before writing. My first ‘out’ job was a new Pirelli release at Oran Park. Free tyres? You bet, so I took old Hilda out and after they’d stopped laughing at my helmet, the Link guys whacked new rubber on the rims. Then we did laps of the park which confirmed me as a Pirelli fan forever but some numb nut on an RZ Yammy kept lapping me. That was the day I met Chris Beattie, freshly promoted to AMCN’s helm. The old R60 clocked slowest bike of the day, kickstarting a career of staying firmly up the back of the pack.
In 1988 I tried to scuttle AMCN by poaching their main event. Yep, Simon O’Leary, the man who drew Fred Gassit, was a very private bloke who took a great deal of finding.
I was lucky, we had Jamie McIlwraith and apart from being a motorcyclist – Jamie wrote the ‘Viper’ column kicked off by Lester Morris – he had contacts everywhere. He tracked down a Sydney north shore address and Jamie, Geoff Seddon and myself rode over with a bag full of cash.
O’Leary turned out to be a mild mannered, quietly spoken creative who’d started drawing Gassit while still studying. Turns out loyalty is bred at AMCN as Simon wouldn’t budge for four times the money.
In 1989 I met Ken Wootton on a trip to Germany to ride the new BMW K1, the ugly red and yellow thing that flopped like a frog in a blender. I’d been around long enough by then to know the K1 was dicky. If a new bike was brilliant, the release was a sausage sizzle on the side of the Old Road. If it was flaky, they’d fly journos first class and soak us in luxury until we’d write a half decent review.
Ken was the only person I ever met who bought a brand new motorcycle on his bankcard, a ZX10 Kawasaki.
During a plush dinner in a Frankfurt revolving restaurant with the entire BMW senior management team looking on, The Woose and I got Revs editor Mike Esdaile so pissed he did the haka at full noise. The Germans are known for enjoying diverse culture, but not that night…
Wootton was the essence of AMCN in the 1990s and 2000s. He was at every motorcycle media event I ever went to and race meets I’d never heard of. Ken was a true believer in the sport and the industry, not unlike the magazine he worked for.
I’ve been lucky to know most of the AMCN crew over the years. Then, maybe six years ago, I was standing on a cold hill up the back of Murwillumbah during a release for the ABS Himalayan. It must have been a good thing, we were sleeping in swags in the rain. I’d just bludged a UDL off Kel Buckley when she asked if I’d like to write for her and Deano at AMCN.
Damn, how come it took so long?
Here’s to AMCN, the world’s oldest surviving motorcycle magazine for all the right reasons!
